Guest post by Charlie Bromley-Griffiths, senior legal counsel at Conga
Bromley-Griffiths: Legal analysis embedded into systems
Across UK organisations, legal teams are now involved earlier in decision-making, often before proposals have taken a settled shape.
Ideas reach legal while they are still being worked through, when the question is less about drafting and more about whether something should proceed at all.
That earlier involvement reflects the market conditions in which in-house teams are operating. UK growth remains weak by historical standards, with the IMF projecting only modest expansion over the next two years.
In that environment, boards are cautious about how risk is taken on and how easily decisions can be reversed if circumstances change.
At the same time, expectations around data and AI continue to evolve faster than the legal and professional frameworks that govern their use. The Law Society has warned [1] that British lawyers are already using AI tools faster than guidance on how existing professional duties apply in practice.
Early legal input shapes how an initiative is structured, and which ideas never progress far enough to appear in a contract. By the time a document exists, much of the direction has already been set.
Judgement now lives inside systems
This shift is particularly obvious in organisations that manage large volumes of commercial contracts.
When legal has to support sales teams across regions, products and customer types, strategic legal analysis and risk allocation cannot sit only in individual reviews. It must be expressed in a way the business can rely on repeatedly.
Positions tested through negotiation are absorbed into templates and clause libraries. Playbooks reflect where there is room to move and where there is not. Approval routes determine how far colleagues can progress before legal needs to step in.
Over time, these structures do more to shape outcomes than any single negotiation.
When the same provisions repeatedly slow deals, or when sales teams return with the same points of friction, the issue is rarely the individual transaction. It usually sits in the process behind it.
Tools that surface contract data make this clearer by showing where negotiations consistently stall and which clauses are recurring pain points.
Where judgement meets constraint
This way of working has developed alongside a familiar pressure. Legal is still widely treated as a cost centre, even as expectations of responsiveness and coverage continue to rise. Teams are asked to support growth and move faster, often without any increase in resource.
Embedding legal analysis into systems via pre-approved workflows and custom clauses is, in part, a practical response to that pressure. Clear standards allow routine work to move without constant intervention. Guardrails give colleagues confidence to handle familiar issues themselves.
As a result, legal is no longer pulled into the same questions repeatedly. The matters that do reach legal tend to be the ones the framework cannot handle, where context matters and legal assessment needs to be applied. This is where in-house legal teams add the most value.
Responsibility in practice
For in-house teams, this is where the discussion around responsibility needs to stay grounded. Much of the current focus around AI is on reviewing outputs before they are relied on. That is important but it reflects only one point in a much longer chain of decisions.
Judgement is exercised when legal decide how far a deal can progress without escalation, or how a recurring issue should be handled. These choices shape how risk is managed and how technology is applied across the organisation.
As AI becomes a routine part of contract and workflow systems, those underlying decisions carry greater weight. They define why tools are configured in a specific way, how colleagues use them and where oversight remains necessary.
The task now is to ensure that the way legal work is described and evaluated keeps pace with how judgement is actually being exercised today.