Global Survey Report: The Integration Imperative

The Integration Imperative: Optimising the legal engine for the future

Two years ago, 4% of in-house teams called themselves strategic partners to the business. This year, it's 71%. The mandate has changed. The engine running it hasn't fully kept pace.

AI is improving individual tasks and new tools are being adopted. But for most in-house teams, the benefits aren't scaling across the function. Systems are fragmented, governance is still maturing, and workforce models haven't adapted to sustained change.

The legal engine is evolving, it's just not yet connected.

What's in the report

• AI adoption: where it's genuinely delivering across legal workflows, and where full deployment still falls short

• AI governance: how teams are building oversight frameworks, and why most are still works in progress

• The strategic shift: what's behind the jump from 4% to 71% strategic partners, and what it actually demands of the function

• Workload pressure: why it remains the top challenge for in-house teams, even as the profession's priorities shift

• Flex talent: why it's widely used but still treated as a short-term fix, and what changes that

• The integration imperative: what it takes to move from isolated progress to a legal engine that performs as a whole

678 legal, risk and compliance professionals told us what's working, what isn't, and what needs to change.
Download the report and see where your team sits.