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Not long ago, in-house legal teams were primarily seen as internal advisors reviewing contracts, navigating employment law, and minimising litigation risk. Today, the role of General Counsel (GC) and their teams has expanded dramatically. They’re not just legal interpreters; they’re stewards of compliance, risk, and governance across the entire organisation.
In mid-sized companies especially, the legal function is now expected to manage everything from data privacy and ESG disclosures to third-party risk and whistleblowing procedures; often without proportional increases in headcount or budget. The modern in-house legal counsel is wearing many hats, and the pressure is mounting.
Global regulatory expansion is a key driver behind this evolution. Laws like the GDPR, CCPA, SOX, UK Bribery Act, and evolving ESG reporting frameworks (like CSRD in the EU) have widened the scope of legal oversight. In-house legal leaders now find themselves managing not only legal obligations but the operational infrastructure required to monitor, document, and report compliance.
A 2024 survey by ACC and Exterro found that 73% of in-house legal teams now play a leading role in data privacy and compliance, while 58% oversee governance and risk management functions - roles once siloed in separate departments.
One area of especially sharp scope creep is vendor and third-party risk management. In a globally connected, SaaS-driven world, companies rely on dozens (if not hundreds) of external vendors — each with its own data access, compliance posture, and contractual nuances.
Legal teams are increasingly tasked with:
This isn’t just a checkbox exercise. According to IBM’s 2024 Data Breach Report, 19% of data breaches involve a third party, and the average cost of such breaches is $4.76 million. For legal teams, the stakes are high, and so is the workload.
The challenge isn’t just more responsibility, it’s the fragmented way compliance is managed. In many mid-market companies, policies live in Word docs, evidence in shared drives, audit logs in email chains, and vendor assessments in spreadsheets. This patchwork approach makes it nearly impossible to maintain real-time visibility, especially when audits or board reviews demand fast answers.
A Gartner report in 2023 highlighted that 68% of legal departments feel underprepared to meet evolving regulatory requirements, citing lack of automation and siloed tools as core obstacles.
All of this lands squarely on the shoulders of lean in-house teams. Many GCs report spending more time managing compliance operations than practicing law. Teams are overwhelmed, and burnout is a growing concern.
For companies with a small or single-person legal function, these pressures can become existential. A missed deadline or overlooked control isn’t just a compliance issue, it’s a business risk.
Rather than accepting this expanded remit as a permanent burden, forward-thinking legal teams are reimagining how GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) is handled internally.
Solutions like Continual are designed for legal and compliance leaders navigating this exact landscape. By consolidating compliance workflows, from policy tracking and audit evidence collection to vendor assessments and risk monitoring, Continual helps in-house teams stay ahead of their obligations without increasing headcount.
Unlike heavyweight GRC platforms built for enterprises, Continual is designed for lean teams that need agility and automation, not complexity. Legal teams can set up recurring compliance checks, manage third-party reviews, and generate board-ready reports, all from a single interface.
The evolution of in-house legal counsel into compliance architects is no longer hypothetical, it's reality. But while the scope of the role has grown, the support systems haven’t kept pace. GCs are being asked to do more, faster, and with fewer resources. Without the right processes and platforms, that’s a recipe for risk and burnout.
By embracing tools built for today’s compliance challenges, legal teams can reclaim their time, reduce friction, and focus on the strategic priorities that matter most.
Because compliance may be everyone's responsibility - but in most companies, it still starts with Legal.
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