Keeping it in-house
In The RollOnFriday In-House Lawyer Survey 2025 so far, almost half of the respondents who predicted that their teams would grow, said this would be at the expense of their external lawyers, due to AI, and firms being “too pricey”.
“There’s better value hiring an in-house lawyer and combining this with AI,” opined a GC in the energy sector.
“AI will drive a move away from external advice I feel, with juniors able to lean on this to develop their knowledge which I can then review,” said an in-house lawyer in private equity.
A GC noted that their role as an adviser to the business was changing with technology: “In-house lawyers have to adapt and move away from summarising legal principles (which ChatGPT and Copilot can do) to adding value by explaining risks and identifying mitigations.”
Others suggested that work could be undertaken for less money in-house, and often with better results. “They’re too expensive and the advice is limited,” said a GC in healthcare about instructing external lawyers, “they also really struggle with commerciality and that can’t really be fixed.”
“Our lawyers are generally better than those at the firms we instruct, and they are far, far cheaper,” said a GC in financial services. While another said that expanding their in-house team was “more cost effective” and the people “a better understanding of the business” than instructing externally.
A head of legal in the energy sector said that the legal team was expanding to get “a better understanding” of the business, but also “because charge out rates" from firms "are becoming ridiculous”. While another respondent summed up their view: “Hiring is cheaper than outsourcing”.
“There is a push to spend less on external counsel, given how expensive they are - driven, in part, by these absurd junior salaries that they are paying,” said an in-house lawyer in insurance. “My GC said of one firm, who pushed up their rates significantly since our last review, that we simply will not use them anymore. I think there may be more of that to come.”
“It is not cost-effective to instruct lawyers at £600 per hour, when another solicitor can take a bit more time and research the topic and come to a reasonable answer for in-house salary,” said another respondent.
A GC in the transport sector believed there were tangible benefits in recruiting rather than instructing externally. “If the person has the right skillset, our experience shows that savings can be really high - we can reduce our external spend and therefore pressure on our budget.”
However, other in-house lawyers said that they would still rely on external lawyers for their distinct expertise, even if their teams were expanding.
“We will use generalists in-house, and use law firms for specialist work,” said an in-house lawyer in TMT. A GC in the energy sector said: “We still need a lot of external resource, and need to externalise some legal risk”.
“I only outsource for expertise, or for major strategic litigation,” said a GC in the travel sector. “I would continue to do that regardless of the size of my team.”
For others, growth in their business, meant that they required extra help from law firms. “We’ll need more private practice support as the nature of the work is volume,” said a GC in the energy sector.
Another GC said that while their aim “has always been to manage as much legal work in-house, independently, as possible, there will always be a need for external practice though, due to the wide range of topics and tasks that arise.”
If you're in-house, have your say below.
Comments
59
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Definitely sensible to recruit in house, rather than use private practice, if the volume is there.
As to using AI, its worth remembering Red Adair's quote, “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur”.
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AI is a fantastic tool that still requires someone with a human brain to interpret, check and apply. Autopilot on a passenger jet is great, but you still want a captain and first officer up there in the cockpit.
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"“AI will drive a move away from external advice I feel, with juniors able to lean on this to develop their knowledge which I can then review,” said an in-house lawyer in private equity."
I guess we'll check back in five years and see how it works out...
I for one can't see any potential downside to restricting your analysis of law and risk to a small team of individuals, with diminishing recent experience of the world outside your organisation, all learning from unverifiable machine generated outputs rather than experience in your industry / adjacent ones, and then having a single individual as the final point of review for their conclusions.
It's just so robust that I can't imagine it failing in response to unexpected external shocks.
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Yeah, good luck with that. As a disputes lawyer, I am really looking forward to increased volume of work that this will inevitably generate for me.
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I find it interesting even with the capabilities of the various legal AI products already available that private practice lawyers think they'll be able to continue advising and charging in the same way. The pace of AI technology improvements is terrifying and all lawyers should have concerns about what their careers are going to look like.
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They shouldn't instruct external solicitors for a lot of things. They should use direct access to instruct counsel for better advice and a cheaper rate.
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£600 per hour lol. What sort of bucket shop are they using? Try £1600 for an MC partner plus the various hangers on that seem to be on every call.
Irrelevant anyway as panel rates should be at a 40-50% discount.
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As an in house lawyer AI will be used to cut numbers.
Problem for in house lawyers is the business will always want an external view/signoff (and insurance)
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Wot Anon @ 11.48 said
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Useful for niche areas, cross-border, litigation, and outsourcing opinions. The firms that leverage AI and develop their own offerings to share with clients will eat the Luddite firms for breakfast.
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A lot of this will be sour grapes from lawyers who went in-house 5+ years ago before the US-led salary boom. I’d be annoyed too if my salary had stagnated while firms announced way-above-inflation pay rises year after year, leading to clueless NQs being paid more than me. Lots will have moved in-house when NQ salaries at magic circle firms were half of what they are today (which was only about 7 years ago).
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The guy who talked about externalising legal risk is spot on. Thats whats really going to keep some (not all) private practice lawyers in a job. If things go wrong, they need to ride on private practice's insurance policy.
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I'm an in house lawyer and I'm not convinced that any of these people saying 'use AI' really have any idea WTF that means/looks like in practice. They've just dicked about with CoPilot or ChatGPT and read some articles about the 'AI Revolution' and are slinging about buzzwords. Fifteen years ago the same type was damn near orgasmic over all the noise re. 'CLOUD COMPUTING' and how it would 'revolutionise' legal practice. So now we have Sharepoint and don't know where to find docs and legal practice has, in no way, been revolutionised.