The Role of a Chief Legal Counsel

The role of the Chief Legal Counsel (CLC) is central to a company’s legal and business strategy.  

As the senior-most legal executive, they oversee compliance, manage risk, and provide guidance on corporate governance, contracts, and regulatory matters. Beyond protecting the company from legal risks, they also play a key role in shaping business decisions and aligning legal operations with organizational goals.

As legal demands grow, technology is transforming how CLCs operate. Legal department software, AI-powered matter management, and legal dashboards are making workflows more efficient and improving visibility.

Let’s dive into the responsibilities of a CLC, the challenges they face, and how AI and automation are shaping the future of legal leadership.  

What is the Role of a Chief Legal Counsel?

The Chief Legal Counsel (CLC), also known as the Chief Legal Officer (CLO), is the highest-ranking legal executive in a company. Their primary role is to oversee all legal matters, ensuring the organization operates within the law while supporting business objectives.

More than just legal advisors, CLCs are strategic partners to the executive team. They help navigate regulatory complexities, mitigate risks, and provide guidance on contracts, governance, and compliance. As businesses scale, the CLC’s role expands to include legal operations, external stakeholder management, and proving legal’s value to leadership.

With increasing workloads and evolving regulations, many CLCs are turning to legal department software and AI-powered matter management to enhance efficiency, improve visibility, and support decision-making.

What Are Their Key Responsibilities?

The Chief Legal Counsel (CLC) oversees a broad range of legal and strategic functions, ensuring the company operates within legal boundaries while driving business success. Their key responsibilities include:

• Managing Legal Risk: Identifying, assessing, and mitigating potential legal threats across the organization.

• Ensuring Regulatory Compliance: Keeping the company aligned with evolving laws and industry regulations.

• Overseeing Corporate Governance: Advising executives and the board on governance matters, ethics, and best practices.

• Supervising Legal Operations: Managing the legal department’s structure, workload, and resource allocation.

• Handling Contracts and Negotiations: Reviewing and negotiating contracts to minimize risks and protect company interests.

• Managing Disputes and Litigation: Overseeing legal proceedings, working with external counsel, and resolving disputes efficiently.

• Communicating Legal’s Value: Using legal dashboards and reporting tools to provide data-driven insights to leadership.

What Challenges Do They Face?

As businesses grow and regulations evolve, CLCs must navigate an increasingly complex legal landscape. Some of the biggest challenges they face include:

• Increasing Regulatory Complexity: Keeping up with ever-changing laws across multiple jurisdictions while ensuring company-wide compliance.

• Fragmented Legal Work: Managing matters across emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems, leading to inefficiencies and lack of visibility.

• Scaling Legal Operations: Balancing rising workloads with limited resources, requiring legal teams to do more with less.

• Proving Legal’s Value: Demonstrating legal’s impact to leadership through clear metrics and reporting.

• Managing Legal Data: Accessing real-time insights from multiple sources without a centralized legal dashboard.

How Can Technology Help In This Role?

With increasing workloads and growing complexity, technology is becoming essential for Chief Legal Counsels to manage legal operations effectively. Modern legal department software provides the tools needed to improve efficiency, enhance visibility, and support strategic decision-making.  

Key ways technology helps include:

• Centralized In-House Matter Management: Consolidates all legal requests, documents, and workflows in one place for better organization and tracking.

• AI-Powered Legal Intake and Triage: Automates request handling, ensuring the right matters go to the right team members without delays.

• Legal Dashboards for Real-Time Insights: Provides a clear view of workload, matter status, and team performance to help legal leaders make informed decisions.

• Workflow Automation: Reduces manual tasks, such as approvals and document generation, freeing up legal teams for higher-value work.

• Reporting and Analytics: Generates data-driven insights to measure legal’s impact and communicate value to leadership.

By leveraging these tools, CLCs can streamline operations, reduce risk, and scale legal support efficiently, ensuring their team remains a strategic partner to the business.

How Will AI and Automation Shape Their Future?

As legal teams face increasing pressure to be more efficient and strategic, AI and automation are transforming how Chief Legal Counsels operate. These technologies are not just about reducing manual work—they enable legal teams to be more proactive, data-driven, and aligned with business objectives.

Key ways AI and automation are shaping the future of legal leadership:

• Predictive Analytics for Risk Management: AI can analyze legal data to identify potential risks before they become major issues.

• Automated Legal Workflows: Routine tasks, such as contract approvals and compliance checks, can be handled through automation, freeing up legal teams for high-value work.

• AI-powered Contract Review: Machine learning can quickly analyze and flag risks in contracts, speeding up negotiations while ensuring compliance.

• Regulatory Monitoring and Compliance Tracking: AI-driven tools can track evolving regulations and alert legal teams to necessary changes.

• Enhanced Legal Dashboards and Reporting: Automation ensures that legal leaders always have up-to-date insights into workloads, matter progress, and team performance.

As these technologies continue to evolve, CLCs will be able to focus more on strategic leadership rather than operational bottlenecks.

How Can Checkbox Empower Chief Legal Counsel?

Managing legal operations effectively requires the right tools, and Checkbox provides a powerful solution for Chief Legal Counsels looking to streamline their workflows and gain better visibility into legal matters.

With AI-powered intake and in-house matter management, Checkbox ensures that legal requests are automatically triaged and routed to the right team members, eliminating bottlenecks. A centralized legal dashboard provides real-time insights into workloads, matter progress, and team performance, helping CLCs make data-driven decisions.

Checkbox also enables workflow automation, reducing manual tasks like approvals and document generation so legal teams can focus on higher-value work.  

By consolidating legal operations into a single source of truth, Checkbox helps Chief Legal Counsels scale their impact, demonstrate legal’s value, and drive greater efficiency across the business.

Want to learn more? Book a call with one of our technology consultants today to see how our legal department software can streamline operations and help CLCs make more informed legal decisions.