5 trends in our Community
5 trends in our Community
5 trends in our Community
Crafty Counsel helps the in-house legal community to grow their network, nurture their careers and cultivate their resources. This year, we launched our Community Hub, a ‘super app’ for in-house legal that helps bring our community into one place.
We reflected on what we’ve learned this year from the Hub and our multitude of online and in-person events.
1. Tech and AI: From apprehension to opportunity
In the past, the community has shared mixed feelings of confidence around legal tech. But embracing AI is a hot topic in 2024, with many more lawyers seeing its potential to take over mundane tasks and free up valuable time to focus on strategic thinking. There’s a clear uptick in the number of lawyers actively seeking and sharing tech learning resources in our Community Hub, showing a positive shift towards viewing AI as a valuable asset for legal teams.
2. Addressing resource and time constraint
In-house legal teams are constantly trying to juggle a big workload with reduced resources. This is a common sentiment among community members, especially when teams are reduced from sizes like 90 to as few as three. This intensifies the need for streamlined processes and effective automation to manage the workload – something that could especially help sole counsel and small legal teams.
3. Difficulties with contract management
Our community often expresses frustration over the “huge number of contracts” and the repetitive nature of handling amendments on client contract templates. This constant flow of contracts forces them into “busy work,” preventing them from engaging in more important legal tasks. The challenge is to reduce time spent on third-party contract negotiations and streamline the contract review process.
The second most popular topic in the Community Hub this year was contracting. This ranged from conversations about inspiring T&Cs, best practice for contract reviews, and signing authority.
Legal skills vs. personal skills
Of conversations in the Community Hub focused on practical legal skills, such as risk management, GDPR and data protection, RFPs, and employment law.
Of conversations in the Community Hub focused on personal skills or career development. This included conversations on mentoring, parental leave, ways of working, training the business.
4. Making way for strategic thinking through better prioritisation
Understanding how to properly prioritise work, particularly in terms of each task’s value to the business, is a key challenge highlighted in our community. Lawyers struggle to “focus on the bigger picture” amid an abundance of admin tasks. The community recognises the need for strategies that help clarify what work drives strategic decisions and impacts business success to ensure teams are proactive.
5. A bigger focus on training and development
We’re seeing a positive shift relating to training and career development within legal teams, as emphasised by community members discussing the importance of “being ruthless on priorities” and “getting out of the way to coach and develop the team” to create opportunities for team members. This trend should lead to better retention and prepare teams to handle more sophisticated legal challenges.
The most popular ask from Community members to others in the Community Hub was for training recommendations. The topic of training included data protection, AI, practical legal skills, ethics, and IP.
Insights from the Community Hub
Most popular conversation topics in the Community Hub.
Top asked for vendor categories in "Recommendations".
Almost half the requests for law firm/lawyer recommendations were for outside of the UK - this included Germany (this was a popular one!), India, Mexico, and Spain.
Most recommendation vendor categories in "Recommended".
Most popular topics for advice or resources from Community members in the Hub.
