Whether you're establishing a new legal department or optimising an existing one, it is necessary to align your legal team with the broader goals of your organisation. This toolkit offers a comprehensive guide to building and managing an effective legal function, covering everything from team composition and development to outsourcing, collaboration, and risk management.

At a glance

• Changing legal teams: Legal teams are faced with constantly changing demands and therefore GCs and leaders must create an efficient and adaptable legal function to meet the demands of the wider business.
• Team composition: Important factors to assess include who your team is made up of in terms of seniority, scope, specialists, generalists and the development that is required.
• Team structure: The legal team could be a centralised function or decentralised and embedded within the wider departments of the business, choosing a model should be based on collaboration with other teams.
• Outsourcing: A balance of in-house and outsourced work can be used dependant of on the expertise, capacity and budget that the team has available.
• Wider collaboration: Lawyers can utilise the support of many other functions and services across the business such as HR, Risk Management, Procurement, Learning and Development, Knowledge and Research, IT and Pro Bono.