The role of the General Counsel has changed dramatically. And yet, in the moments that matter most, it has not changed at all.
Across industries, the GC has moved from adviser to strategic partner, to enabler and leader – increasingly accountable not only for legal risk, but for the operating model of the legal function itself, including talent, data, spend, governance and the procurement and management of external counsel. In many organisations, the remit is even wider, extending into ethics, compliance, data privacy and company secretarial responsibilities.
This expansion is happening at the same time as the operating environment becomes more complex. Geopolitical volatility, regulatory change and accelerating technology cycles create the familiar “what keeps me up at night” list – and that pressure is felt particularly sharply in African markets, where constraints and cross-border execution realities compress timelines and raise the premium on trusted judgement.
So, what has remained the same?
A GC’s differentiator is still built on a core formula that has held for decades: Business connectivity, judgement, planning and execution. The “what” and “how” may evolve, but the foundation does not.
The temptation of the change narrative
Every GC is being told to “transform”. Generative AI (and now agentic AI) is the loudest example of that pressure. The danger is not AI itself. The danger is prioritising fashionable problems over real ones – and in doing so, degrading service delivery while introducing new risk.
This is where an uncomfortable disconnect starts to appear. Data shows many legal teams are excited about deploying AI in areas that are relatively “fixable”, such as legal research, contract templating and IP management. Yet the bigger pressures – expanding regulation, budget constraints, and widening responsibilities – often show less evidence of meaningful AI deployment plans, or of tackling the root causes that consume disproportionate time and cost.
It is not that research and templating do not matter. They do. But if technology investment becomes a substitute for operating discipline, the legal function can end up running faster in the wrong direction.
AI: Friend, not Saviour
The most useful way to frame AI for a legal function is simple. AI is an amplifier. It amplifies good operating models – and it amplifies bad ones too.
If your stakeholder relationships are weak, AI will not fix them. If risk ownership is unclear, AI will not clarify it. If processes are undisciplined, AI will not bring order – it will scale inconsistency and create the very risk you hoped to avoid.
That is why legal departments should treat AI as an illustration, not the centre of gravity. Anyone who has lived through major IT projects knows the basics: project planning, change management, user acceptance, governance. Yet legal teams sometimes approach AI more subjectively than they would ever allow in the business for other systems.
The better approach is to fix real problems first and then deploy AI in ways that reinforce a coherent operating model.
The “durable goods” that never go out of date
When the environment becomes volatile, the most valuable investments are the ones that do not expire. In-house teams do not need more noise. They need stronger fundamentals, executed consistently.
Those fundamentals are not mysterious:
- Front-line exposure and commercial judgement: Understanding how the business makes money, where it bleeds risk and what success looks like for colleagues outside legal.
- Process efficiency: Playbooks, templates, escalation paths, decision rights and the discipline of “sharpening the axe” so the function moves with speed and confidence.
- Decision velocity with depth: Risk-calibrated calls, including the ability to deliver an early, strong “no” rather than a late, weak “yes”.
- Relationship capital: Stakeholders, boards, regulators, counterparties – the asset that reduces friction when the stakes rise.
- Soft skills lawyers are not traditionally trained for: Influence, negotiation, conflict dynamics, crisis communication and leadership through ambiguity.
In the African context, these strengths matter even more. Multi-jurisdiction compliance, uneven enforcement, governance pressure and the reality that external counsel in smaller markets can be costly and variable in quality all place a premium on clarity, responsiveness and trust. In cross-border matters, outside counsel are often your “boots on the ground”. That relationship cannot be managed on price alone.
From Risk Manager to Risk Integrator
One of the most important shifts for the modern GC is a mindset change.
Risk will always be present. But in a world of evolving risks, the GC should be more than a defensive “risk manager”. The higher-value role is risk integrator – the leader who connects risk to decision-making and execution, harnessing risk intelligently in pursuit of outcomes.
This framing matters, because it influences everything: how the function is resourced, how the team is trained, how technology is deployed and how external counsel are instructed and held accountable.
Outsource wisely, but never outsource what’s yours
Legal functions will always outsource and insource tasks, processes and specialist inputs. But there are three things a GC cannot outsource without diluting the role: Judgement, Brand and Purpose.
In practice, that means owning the counsel you put on the table, not hiding behind it. It means positioning yourself not as “a function”, but as a business person with unique legal skills, aligned to common purpose with the enterprise. It means avoiding the language of separation (“the business insists”) and choosing the language of accountability (“this is the counsel I recommend”).
Key takeaways for the GC navigating AI and volatility
The more the environment changes, the more essential it becomes to double down on what remains true:
- Strengthen the core: Connectivity, judgement, planning and execution.
- Be a risk integrator, not only a risk manager.
- Outsource tasks and processes, not judgement, brand or purpose.
- Invest in durable goods: Relationship capital, decision velocity, soft skills and root-cause improvements.
- Treat AI as an amplifier. Fix fundamentals first, then scale what works.
- Harness diversity and leadership: The GC role is shaped by context and great GCs do not look alike.
In the end, AI will not replace the GC. It will test the GC. It will test whether the fundamentals are real – or merely assumed.
And that is why the future belongs to legal leaders who build strong operating models first and then use technology to amplify the best of what they already do.
By Zaeem Soofie | Director, Fairbridges
Zaeem is a director at Fairbridges, Africa’s first law firm. He is also a non-executive director on two boards and a former regional and global GC of BP and Office Managing Partner of a global law firm.
