9 April 2025
To inform your decision-making around technology, talent, budgets, and more, it’s crucial to have an up-to-date overview of trends, opportunities, and challenges across your sector.
Introduction & download 01. Optimism and ambition 02. Managing complexity 03. The tech-empowered GC 04. The talent imperative
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General Counsel Outlook Report 2024 (PDF, 2.3MB)
In this inaugural KPMG Law General Counsel (GC) Outlook report, we deep dive into the key issues affecting GCs and senior in-house legal advisors, from the rise of AI and the battle for talent to the challenges of managing extraordinary complexity and work that crosses jurisdictions.
Having surveyed in-house counsel across Ireland and discussed the issues in depth with a focus group, we have been able to paint a picture of how GCs see their work as legal professionals. The results are illuminating, encompassing everything from job satisfaction to cybersecurity risks and more.
The traditional legal sector is changing fast as technology and hybrid working make for a more vibrant and dynamic environment. With their responses, our participants show how they believe this changing landscape can best be safeguarded, encouraged, and developed.
Some of the key findings of our research:
We hope this report offers you fresh insights to take into the year ahead. As we move through 2025, the landscape looks to be one of positive growth and development, while also bringing potentially significant challenges, given the international geopolitical and macroeconomic context.
Most importantly, we want to thank all the GCs and senior in-house legal advisors who shared their insights with us. Their remarkable ambition for their people, and the businesses they advise and lead, continues to be admirable and encouraging.
Introduction & download 01. Optimism and ambition 02. Managing complexity 03. The tech-empowered GC 04. The talent imperative
Dynamic, committed, and keen to make progress, the in-house counsel sector in Ireland is a force to be reckoned with.
This is a dedicated and involved cohort – a remarkable 93% say their roles as legal professionals are personally and professionally satisfying. Not only that, about the same proportion of these senior lawyers would recommend their role to a friend. It’s rare to find a profession in which those working are this content and engaged.
This is despite or perhaps because of the challenging nature of their work. The role of in-house counsel can involve unravelling knotty issues, managing competing demands and weighing up evidence across an extraordinary breadth of topics. Section 2 of this report (Navigating complexity) explores this and its consequences in more detail.
Introduction & download 01. Optimism and ambition 02. Managing complexity 03. The tech-empowered GC 04. The talent imperative
If one feature of the role of the GC sets it apart and renders it acutely challenging at times, it is the absence of peers. Unlike senior lawyers in private practice firms, GCs don’t usually have the option of consulting other lawyers at their level of seniority on challenges, ideas and approaches.
Much rests on a GC's shoulders – 65% of respondents consider their roles extremely or very complex and 34% say they are somewhat complex.
The range of issues they must cover, such as meeting the demands of multiple stakeholders, and the volume and complexity of requests they get were the main factors driving this complexity. These were cited by well over half of respondents, pointing to the finely detailed tapestry of work in which they engage.
It’s critical that GCs can trust their team (see more on this in Section 4 The talent imperative) to assume responsibilities. To avoid a siloed approach to legal issues developing in their organisation, they must also build strong cross-functional relationships with other senior colleagues.
Introduction & download 01. Optimism and ambition 02. Managing complexity 03. The tech-empowered GC 04. The talent imperative
As the world contends with extraordinarily rapid technological change and the increased embedding of AI in business processes, so too must the legal profession.
We’re seeing an unprecedented shift that will irreversibly redefine not just how lawyers perform their roles, but also the work entrusted to them. Through rapid data analysis and the automation of routine operations, AI can offer increased efficiency and productivity, reduced human error, lower costs, improved regulatory compliance, and better databased decision-making.
At the same time, data sovereignty and intellectual property rights are valid worries because Gen AI can trawl huge databases, which may include information that is protected by copyright or other domestic and international laws.
Gen AI generates new content from patterns in data without an understanding of all the underlying facts. It can only be as good as the information fed into the LLMs that generates the content. That means there is a risk the output created is biased or incorrect. This presents considerable risks for organisations relying on Gen AI.
Introduction & download 01. Optimism and ambition 02. Managing complexity 03. The tech-empowered GC 04. The talent imperative
Attracting and retaining the brightest legal talent to their team is vital in ensuring a GC can mitigate organisational risk, ensure exceptional compliance levels, and offer informed and valuable advice.
The boards and senior management of large corporate and government organisations both value and need legal expertise as they set and enact strategy, contend with challenges both expected and unexpected, and seek to ensure they capitalise on valuable opportunities.
Almost three quarters of those surveyed (74%) said they interact regularly with the board or board equivalent. It’s clear that a critical part of a modern GC’s role is to be that trusted advisor to leadership.
This demanding proximity to the C-suite tends to mean the GC must rely on other lawyers on their team to take responsibility for delegated tasks. That in turn informs the talent requirements for high-performing in-house legal teams and means attrition can be felt more acutely than in private practice. Half of those surveyed said losing key staff would be one of their most complex challenges if it happened.
GCs are optimistic they can handle recruitment and attrition, however. Close to half (45%) said they plan to increase the size of their team over the next three years with the same proportion saying they will maintain the current number of staff.
At KPMG Law LLP we’re committed to working with you to help you achieve your business objectives. To find out more please get in touch with any of our team. We look forward to hearing from you.
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