Artificial intelligence, geopolitical uncertainty and the accelerating pace of technological change are forcing in-house legal leaders to rethink not only how legal services are delivered, but also the skills, structures and relationships that will define the future of the profession.
That was the message from a panel of senior in-house counsel from global corporations who gathered at the IBA’s 23rd annual global mergers and acquisitions conference in New York last week to discuss the most pressing issues facing legal departments, from technology, managing international legal teams and navigating political instability to preparing the next generation of lawyers for an AI-enabled future.
Moderated by Standard Industries general counsel Valentina Cassata, and Sony Music Entertainment’s deputy GC and head of global M&A Susan Meisel, the discussion included Alan Cardenas, GC of Coursera; Yuto Matsumura, chief legal officer of Hitachi; and Kaori Terauchi, senior vice-president, GC and chief compliance officer of ITOCHU International. Gisèle Rosselle of law firm Strelia and a member of the IBA’s corporate and M&A law committee provided additional commentary.
While the panellists represented organisations with vastly different scales and operating models, they shared a common concern: the legal profession is entering a period of profound technology transformation that will reward adaptability and penalise complacency.
Technology, regulation and staffing keeping GCs awake at night
Asked what issues are currently keeping them awake at night, two legal leaders pointed to technology and the speed at which it is evolving, one mentioned the fragmentation of the regulatory landscape and another identified staffing as an issue.
For Matsumura, the greatest risk is failing to keep pace with developments that are reshaping business and society. “Not catching up with the speed of technology” is his primary concern, he said, explaining: “If we don’t catch up, the human aspects of our profession will be left behind.”
Terauchi identified AI as both a significant opportunity and a source of concern, particularly around its use within legal departments and across businesses more broadly.
Cardenas, whose company Coursera operates in nearly 200 countries, pointed to the increasingly fragmented regulatory landscape as one of his chief concerns. “As the world evolves, there are differing standards and as jurisdictions try to put their foot down, keeping track of all the rules has become a growing challenge,” he said.
Rosselle identified another concern affecting both in-house teams and law firms: talent. Increasingly, she said, legal departments are seeing fewer junior lawyers and a growing concentration of mid-level and senior practitioners, raising questions about future workforce structures.
Managing legal teams across borders
The complexity of modern legal operations was evident in the discussion about managing global legal functions.
Terauchi described a relatively lean legal structure for her organisation, mentioning that they relied on “many” outside counsels in their model. ITOCHU International operates with a centralised legal team in New York consisting of 11 lawyers supporting 35 to 40 subsidiaries across the US, only two of which maintain their own legal departments. As a result, external counsel plays a critical role.
“We tend to work with fewer law firms and it’s relationship-based,” she said.
Rather than relying on formal panel arrangements, the company typically works repeatedly with the same firms to build consistency and institutional knowledge. Long-term relationships, she said, help outside counsel to gain a deeper understanding of their business and its decision-making processes.
Matsumura oversees a dramatically larger operation, with more than 1,000 legal professionals spread across approximately 50 locations worldwide. For him, effective communication is the defining challenge. “Managing a global team means facilitating communications between the legal team, business team and the external team,” he said.
Ensuring that lawyers understand the organisation’s direction and can communicate it consistently to internal stakeholders and outside counsel is central to his role.
Coursera’s legal team spans three continents and operates in nearly 200 countries, requiring expertise that varies significantly depending on the issue at hand.
“It’s about finding the right counsel and finding the right partner,” Cardenas said, adding that various company matters may require local M&A specialists, commercial advisers, higher education expertise or counsel capable of working with government stakeholders.
Geopolitics moves centre stage
The discussion also highlighted how geopolitical risk has become a central consideration in corporate decision-making.
Rosselle observed that geopolitical analysis now enters transaction planning much earlier than in the past.
“Geopolitical risk has moved to the front of the deal,” she said. “In practice, we bring that analysis in early with the client and will discuss whether we need a different structure, different investor, different jurisdiction or maybe a different timetable.”
She said the resulting geopolitical disruption has increased the demand for outside counsel because “there are more moving parts, more scenarios to stress test and more check-ins with the board before capital can come to the transaction”.
For Terauchi, geopolitical uncertainty is not a new phenomenon. Japan’s reliance on imported natural resources means companies have long been accustomed to monitoring global developments and planning for disruption.
“We have been very attentive to what’s been happening elsewhere in the world, so we are prepared for instability,” she said.
Despite ongoing uncertainty, she stressed that it has not diminished the company’s appetite for M&A activity. “Instability does not faze us; we are used to it,” she said. “It doesn’t make us lose our appetite for M&A transactions.”
Matsumura took a similar view, explaining that while investors dislike instability, lawyers should view it differently.
“For a lawyer, it creates opportunity,” he said.
He mentioned that Hitachi has undergone extensive transformation over the past two decades, divesting large parts of its traditional manufacturing operations and repositioning the business around new growth sectors. The company no longer manufactures many of the consumer products with which it was historically associated, including televisions, washing machines and refrigerators.
Instead, it focuses on businesses such as power-grid infrastructure and mobility systems, both of which are benefiting from major investment trends, including growing demand for data centres.
“How you deal with uncertainty is not new to us,” Matsumura said. “We are doing the same exercise we have always done.”
Soft skills that matter most
The panel agreed that the future value of lawyers will depend increasingly on skills that extend beyond legal knowledge.
Cassata identified three capabilities she believes will be critical for GCs and external advisers alike: human skills, technological fluency and multidisciplinary expertise.
“The capacity to listen, empathise, work as a team and collaborate” will remain essential, she said, even as legal knowledge becomes increasingly accessible through AI systems.
The panellists endorsed that view.
“The single most important job of leaders is to make decisions and have good judgement,” said Terauchi. While AI can support decision-making, she argued that experience remains indispensable. “AI helps in decision-making, but you need experience to make good judgements,” she said. “Human oversight will stay.”
Cardenas agreed that AI is fundamentally changing access to information. “In many ways, when we talk about the human element, AI is a supercharger for the legal profession because it helps us understand information,” he said. “AI gives us access to all the historical information on the planet; that’s why it’s so critical for legal professionals to exercise wisdom, expertise and judgement.”
Cardenas said he doesn’t believe lawyers need to have a “hard-core” technical background to be successful, but he does think that “the lawyers who use AI will replace the lawyers that don’t”.
He also cautioned that legal professionals cannot limit themselves to purely legal concerns, noting that future legal leaders must understand risk management, accounting, marketing, strategy, M&A and broader business priorities.
“We have to have a multidisciplinary view,” he said.
Matsumura echoed the importance of business understanding. “To make decisions, you need to know the company,” he said. He estimated that less than 5% of his time is spent on purely legal issues, with the remainder devoted to understanding business opportunities and his company’s strategic priorities.
AI changes workflows, not the need for lawyers
The discussion also addressed how AI is reshaping legal operations.
Cardenas described significant adoption of AI tools within Coursera’s legal department, including contract review, legal summarisation and workflow management.
“The first review of a contract is always AI,” he said.
Human oversight, however, remains essential. “We always have a human in the loop,” he explained. As he sees it, the objective is not to eliminate legal work but to enable lawyers to focus on higher-value activities.
Rosselle Strelia offered that many assumptions about AI and legal employment are misguided.
“It is a common mistake to think that efficiency means fewer lawyers,” she said.
Instead, she predicted that firms will expand into new practice areas such as AI governance, AI compliance and related advisory services. At the same time, she suggested that junior lawyers may become even more valuable because they are often more comfortable with emerging technologies than senior practitioners.
“AI-fluent juniors will bridge the gap with the seniors,” she said.
Matsumura agreed that staying current with technology is essential. Hitachi has established a legal centre of excellence dedicated to AI integration and improving legal operations. He also participates in a form of reverse mentoring in which an AI specialist meets with him regularly to discuss new developments and best practices.
Trust remains the ultimate differentiator
As AI commoditises access to information, panellists agreed that soft skills such as trust, judgement and relationships will remain the ultimate differentiators for successful lawyers.
In fact, Cardenas said the proliferation of technology has raised his expectations of outside counsel.
“Everyone has access to the same information,” he said. The question is no longer who possesses information, but who can use it to help clients make better decisions.
“I am consistently surprised that outside counsel, including elite firms, don’t understand that technology is a tool for them to help me and my team make better decisions,” he added.
The importance of soft skills has increased the need for experience in networking, Cassata said, noting that her company recently created a position that focuses exclusively on building relationships. “Creating connections and understanding how to build them for our company is vital,” she said.
Roselle agreed: “Context, judgement and trust” are increasingly what clients are paying for. “Of all our skills, trust is the hardest to build and to replicate,” Roselle added.
As legal knowledge becomes easier to access and technology becomes more powerful, those human qualities may prove to be the profession’s most valuable assets.
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