In-house lawyers: best examples in legal work

Read the other FT Innovative Lawyers Europe ‘Best practice case studies’, which showcase the standout innovations made for and by people working in the legal sector:

Practice of law
Business of law

Standout

Greenpeace International: Winner
Originality: 6; Leadership: 9; Impact: 10;
Total: 25
Greenpeace International’s legal unit looks for cases to litigate that focus on groups harmed by climate change and environmental damage. At the European Court of Human Rights in April Greenpeace lawyers supported a group of senior Swiss women who won their case against the country’s government for its failure to tackle climate change. The Swiss parliament voted to reject the decision but the government is expected to implement the ECHR’s ruling. Greenpeace continues to support the group.

Iberdrola
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
In November 2023, the energy group’s legal team launched a pro-bono programme to deliver legal training and help to charities and campaign groups across Spain. The effort builds on its previous move to join the Fundación Pro Bono España network of legal professionals.

Highly commended

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
O: 8; L: 7; I: 8: Total: 23
The UN agency’s legal affairs service developed a mechanism to fund a switch from diesel to solar power at some refugee camps. The structure guarantees future revenues for the power provider even if the camp offices close. Work started this year in three locations in Kenya and Uganda.

Ilunion
O: 8; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 22
The legal team at the group — a commercial enterprise spanning a hotel chain and call centres, and also a leading employer of people with disabilities — launched a programme in 2023 to make legal career paths more accessible to lawyers with disabilities in Spain. The scheme involves a collaboration with law firms and four top law schools. Members of Ilunion’s legal team, 70 per cent of whom have a disability, are also working with the Spanish courts to introduce translators for deaf-blind people.

Wartsila
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The Finnish marine engine-maker’s legal team created a commercial-risk assessment questionnaire for business colleagues to complete when contracting around more sustainable but less familiar technologies and fuels, such as engines powered by ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen.

Commended

UBS
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
In 2023, the bank’s legal team started an annual award of four paid internships to students from Frederick Bremer School in north-east London. The students already participate in law firm Simmons & Simmons’s Young Talent Programme, one of several social initiatives by the firm that partner with specific schools.

Capgemini
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
The French IT services provider’s legal team formed a group focused on sustainability topics in 2023. It also created an online hub to share knowledge from internal experts and law firms it works with on the subject.

Standout

HSBC: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 8; Total: 24
The bank’s in-house team has established a new panel of alternative legal service providers, which advises the bank across areas including commercial contracting, branch queries, and competition law. The bank pays for defined units of legal work instead of time spent on it — for example, the bank has a “cost per unit” agreement with one provider where it pays per contract amendment. In 2023, the team increased the work completed under these arrangements from below 20 per cent to 80 per cent, saving an estimated $3mn.

Highly commended

Transport UK
O: 9; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 23
The group, which runs services such as Greater Anglia and West Midlands Trains, has a legal team made up wholly of hourly paid flexible workers. TransportLegal is a separate business within the group’s consulting division, potentially allowing it to work for other companies.

Sky
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
The broadcaster’s legal team has taken steps to reduce its external spending over the past 18 months. All external training is now delivered for free by law firms the team works with, reducing these costs to zero. The team has also increased the work done by alternative legal services provider Dentons Helix and brought in technology to help it track spending. These initiatives helped cut spending by a fifth last year.

Mercer Global Investments Management
O: 7; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 22
The asset manager’s legal team worked with law firm William Fry to improve how it manages offering documents for institutional investors. The company has also set up a new fee structure, paying the firm for advice on a fund-by-fund basis instead of hourly rates.

Zurich Insurance Group
O: 7; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 22
Working with a software company, the in-house team developed a system to help curb legal costs in litigated claims. The system analyses the performance of law firms in resolving cases and matches assignments to the most cost-effective lawyer. The tool is estimated to have reduced the insurer’s overall claim cost by up to 4 per cent.

Commended

Aviva
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
The UK insurer’s legal team has standardised metrics to compare and rank panel law firms in areas such as diversity and sustainability. The firms can access these measurements and see how they compare with their competitors.

Standout

Unilever: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 10; Impact: 9; Total: 27
The 600-strong legal team at the consumer goods group is using generative artificial intelligence to complete more work in-house, saving time and costs. Recently established delivery centres in Mexico City, Bengaluru and Barcelona also help handle more routine legal tasks, as Unilever faces pressure to boost growth and productivity.

ASML and Philips
O: 9; L: 9; I: 7; Total: 25
The legal teams at Dutch chipmaking equipment supplier ASML, and at Philips, the Dutch health tech company, ran a test to draft and sign what they believe to be, in effect, the world’s first 100 per cent AI-generated contract between two companies. The businesses publicly shared their lessons from the experience.

Microsoft
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
Staff at the global software group are applying its own generative AI-powered Copilot assistant to their own specific legal work.

Wise
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
The digital payments platform’s legal team developed a generative AI bot to review draft contracts and automate responses to routine legal queries from the rest of the company. The team says an initial contract review, which used to take two to three hours, can now be done in seconds.

Highly commended

Accenture
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
The consultancy’s legal team has trained its in-house AI assistant on its corporate governance policies to automate responses and points of action to employee compliance queries. The tool has been rolled out to all 750,000 employees globally.

Repsol
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
Lawyers at the Spanish energy group have access to a generative AI tool specialising in legal tasks such as contract review. The team estimates that using the technology saves three hours per lawyer a week.

TravelPerk
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
The travel management platform’s eight-person legal team has customised an AI tool to help staff deal with routine legal queries, particularly around privacy questions or sales contracts.

NatWest
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The UK bank’s legal team collaborated with tech company IBM to develop an AI-powered risk review tool for supply agreements. The system also scores documents for readability and tracks revised versions. The improvements have saved the team covering technology, outsourcing and intellectual property about 30 per cent of time reviewing supplier terms, NatWest estimates.

Commended

Zurich Insurance Group
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
Around 100 lawyers in the insurer’s legal team across Europe, out of 700, used its AI-powered assistant in the two months following its launch in March. The tool assists with document review and translation and the team is working on additional functionality.

Standout

Iberdrola: Winner
Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 9;
Total: 25
The Spanish utility group’s legal team created a hub for storing, drafting, negotiating and signing contracts. Launched in 2023, it contains 25,000 contracts and has 5,000 users. The hub allows the team and the rest of the business to work on contracts together, to assess their legal risks and opportunities. Generative artificial intelligence will soon be used for searches and to draft new contracts.

Repsol
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
In 2023, the legal department of the Spanish oil and petrochemical group launched a drive to improve performance and staff development. It has set up a new division focused on legal technology and knowledge management, and introduced a scheme whereby lawyers can spend up to 20 per cent of their time working in other areas and developing ideas.

Highly commended

European Commission
O: 8; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 23
The legal service at the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has been developing a searchable litigation management system that allows it to track the status and progress of the 1,000 or so new litigation cases it works on annually. The system has become a reference source for legal teams across the EU, including the European Council.

Ilunion
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
The legal team of the Spanish group — which operates a hotel chain, security and call centres and is a leading employer of people with disabilities — has developed software that allows staff to complete legal tasks on their own. The system includes a litigation management tool and gives access to all Ilunion governance policies. Some 70 per cent of the legal team and 43 per cent of those working across the business have disabilities, so the platform is designed to be accessible to all.

Delivery Hero
O: 7; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 22
The German online food delivery group’s legal team created an online resource to manage its share-based pay scheme, in which 25,000 of its qualifying employees receive stock instead of cash. The resource updates and prepares legal documents for departing employees’ entitlements. It provides answers to simple staff questions and directs more complex inquiries to the legal team.

Sandoz
O: 6; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 22
The legal team at generic drugmaker Sandoz organised a new department following last year’s spin-off of the business from Novartis, its Swiss parent. Since then, the team has installed new systems to manage contracts and intellectual property.

Commended

Ferring Pharmaceuticals
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
Since 2023, the Swiss drug company’s legal team has improved contracting processes and created several new roles, including a data scientist and two innovation positions.

Review and negotiation are now outsourced to outside counsel and, internally, documents have been standardised to speed up turnaround times.

GSK
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
The UK drugmaker’s legal team has created a programme to improve how it monitors risks of data breaches. It has simplified and automated assessment questionnaires in a drive to make staff in different departments follow the same procedures.

Starbucks
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
In partnership with law firm Osborne Clarke, Starbucks’s legal team in Europe created a tool for monitoring packaging regulations across 42 jurisdictions. The tool provides information to the coffee chain’s staff and store licensees on what they must do to remain compliant as regulations change.

Standout

Cariad (VW): Winner
Originality: 9; Leadership: 8; Impact: 9;
Total: 26
The legal team of VW’s struggling in-house software developer, which has suffered from delays and budget misses, created a tool to streamline regulatory compliance checks for new services, in partnership with law firm Freshfields. The system can provide a preliminary risk assessment within minutes by drawing on a database of previous legal analysis and other information on global laws and regulations. The team says this has significantly reduced the time and cost of assessment as the company attempts to get its product development back on track.

Highly commended

Vodafone
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
Since last year, the UK-based telecoms group has implemented a new intellectual property strategy to increase its registered patents and generate new product ideas, such as healthcare, outside its core activities. Working with the technology team, lawyers developed a system that lets staff in different areas propose and work on new ideas, resulting in a an increase in invention proposals.

Yemeksepeti
O: 7; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 23
The legal team at the Turkish food delivery group, part of Delivery Hero, created a vendor verification platform in 2023, after laws were changed in Turkey to ensure competition and prevent unfair practices in the ecommerce sector. The system compares retailers’ email and mobile phone information against data held by the trade ministry.

Dentsu
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The legal team at the Japanese advertising giant analysed the terms of service from 32 artificial intelligence-enabled services to compare positions on issues such as ownership of data and copyright. This research helps Dentsu’s client teams work out which product best fits particular projects.

UBS
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The Swiss bank’s legal team includes a unit with expertise in new digital products. This year, the team helped increase the number of customers using these services, reducing queries by simplifying their presentation.

Commended

Axa
O: 6; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 21
The insurer has been targeting products across Europe at lower-income customers, small businesses, and other underinsured groups. The legal team worked to ensure that these groups understood policy terms.

MF Brands
O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20
The fashion group’s lawyers created a website where consumers can verify that an online retailer is an authorised seller of its Lacoste brand. The brand protection team investigates unrecognised web addresses.

Standout

Vodafone: Winner
Originality: 7; Leadership: 9; Impact: 9; Total: 25
In October 2023, the legal team at the telecoms group simplified its risk approval framework by standardising the process across all jurisdictions where it operates. This has speeded up deals by cutting the time to contract with business customers, the team reports.

MF Brands
O: 8; L: 9; I: 7; Total: 24
The legal team at the fashion group, which owns brands such as Lacoste, built a tool that provides oversight of the company’s actions against counterfeit suppliers — both online and offline. It feeds this information back to the business, allowing the creation of a geographic “heat map” that monitors levels of infringement by location. The group’s external law firms also have access to the platform.

Highly commended

Cambridge University Press
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
The publisher’s legal team created a specialist brand protection unit to provide guidance on protocols for infringements of its intellectual property online, with innovations including employee guides for use across all operating jurisdictions. In 2023, these developments led to the removal of almost 1.3mn infringing listings on Google search results.

Trainline
O: 7; L: 7; I: 8 Total: 22
The legal team at the UK-based online train ticket service assisted the Bundeskartellamt, Germany’s competition watchdog, in proceedings against Deutsche Bahn, the country’s national rail provider. Over eight years, the legal team has worked with German authorities, providing information and briefs to bolster the authority’s case against DB. Last year’s ruling requires DB to share real-time data on rail traffic and lift marketing and discounting restrictions on third-party ticket providers.

Yemeksepeti
O: 7; L: 8; L: 7; Total: 22
Lawyers at the Turkish food delivery group, owned by Delivery Hero, worked with marketing colleagues to take a lead on increasing the number of “premium partnerships” set up with restaurants on the platform, allowing them to advertise special deals through the site.

Commended

Greenpeace International
O: 7; L: 8; I: 6 Total: 21
The campaign group’s legal team led the Coalition Against Slapps in Europe. Slapps — or strategic lawsuits against public participation — are suits without merit designed to censor critics by burdening them with defence costs. The team contributed a number of the ideas in the EU’s anti-Slapp directive, which was adopted in February 2024. This new directive sets the minimum standards for member states to protect organisations against Slapps.

Sandoz
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
The legal team of the generic drugmaker handled the complex untangling of intellectual property rights required for last October’s spin-off of the business from its Swiss parent Novartis. The deal saw investors in Novartis’s residual pharma group granted shares in the new business, which debuted on the Swiss stock exchange with a market capitalisation of nearly 11bn Swiss francs ($12bn).

Sitecore
O: 6; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 21
The ecommerce software provider’s legal team has created an online resource where its standard contract terms are available for customers to access directly. Contractual terms are also clearer, which has cut time spent on negotiation.

Heineken
O: 6; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 20
The Spanish legal team at the global brewer redesigned its contracts — of which it signs around 4,000 a year — for a wide range of customers. Notable features of the redesign include an executive summary of six or seven key points, with images to make the agreement more immediately understandable.

Eon UK
O: 6; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 19
The power company’s UK legal team helped to secure a 15-year partnership with Coventry city council to encourage local green energy projects and create new jobs in the area. The team focused on the principles of how the energy company would work with the council rather than on specific contractual terms.

Standout

Zurich Insurance Group: Winner
O: 8; L: 9; I: 8; Total: 25
The insurer’s legal team collaborated with other in-house legal departments to share knowledge and provide new opportunities for its lawyers. Examples include running digital upskilling workshops to improve Zurich’s lawyers’ understanding of artificial intelligence.

The team also runs a secondment programme with UBS Bank, whereby two to three employees swap places annually, in order to develop better understanding of the financial markets.

Microsoft
Originality: 8; Leadership: 8; Impact: 8; Total: 24
Microsoft’s Emea legal team set up schemes to encourage greater use of generative AI tools, including the technology giant’s own Copilot, and to boost efficiency. The resulting experiments, such as comparing laws across jurisdictions, showed significant time savings were possible. Team members also released online videos to show publicly how AI can help with legal tasks.

HSBC
O: 8; L: 8; I: 8; Total: 24
Disappointing feedback on employee morale prompted four members of the bank’s legal team to initiate schemes that would lead to improvements, such as better connections between colleagues and new career development opportunities. After 25 or so initiatives, organised by nearly 90 volunteers, engagement scores in employee surveys have increased substantially.

Highly commended

GSK
O: 7; L: 7; I: 8; Total: 22
In 2021, the UK drugmaker’s legal team created a six-month programme to nurture its future leaders. The team updates the course’s content each year to stay ahead of relevant trends in leadership training. Since its inception, 85 team members drawn from about 700 legal and compliance staff have completed the programme.

Booking.com
O: 7; L: 8; I: 7; Total: 22
Lawyers at the online travel company set up a group of eight representatives from different practice areas tasked with gathering and sharing information on the latest developments in AI. The group has advised the business on developing an updated chatbot for customers.

UBS
O: 8; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 22
A group of 30 of the bank’s lawyers, led by Fiona Phillips, worked with a mental health company on a series of emotional intelligence workshops. These focused on encouraging creative and entrepreneurial thinking, and the legal team plans to extend them more widely.

Commended

Banco Santander
O: 7; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 21
The bank’s Madrid-based legal team has launched a series of initiatives to improve team engagement. In one example, it established an annual essay writing competition, offering winners a trip to Harvard Law School. Leaders say these initiatives have helped retain talent and ensure its 130-plus lawyers stay connected.

ASML
O: 7; L: 8; I: 6; Total: 21
The legal team at the Dutch manufacturer of chipmaking equipment created an AI-generated computer-illiterate lawyer, dubbed “Joe”, to encourage better operations practices. Joe is used to encourage lawyers in the team to engage with technological change and share tips.

Unilever
O: 7; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 21
The consumer goods group’s legal team has run several training sessions to encourage adoption of new AI-powered systems. Some 90 per cent of the company’s 600 lawyers have attended at least one of the classes.

BAE Systems
O: 7; L: 7; I: 6; Total: 20
Two members of the British defence contractor’s 120-strong legal team created an internal network to provide 20 junior lawyers with opportunities to engage with senior staff across the business, and to engage in strategic conversations earlier in their careers.

Johnson Matthey
O: 6; L: 7; I: 7; Total: 20
The UK manufacturer’s legal team has introduced several volunteer groups to encourage wider involvement in decision-making and leadership within the department.