Key Takeaway: Legal teams that continue to operate without understanding their maturity risk are losing influence before they realise it. The difference between control and reaction lies in knowing where your operating model breaks, and how to address it. Spot the fractures limiting legal’s impact, and what must change before they define the function. The outcome is a team with control, influence, and clarity.

Continental corporate legal departments, sidelined as an underappreciated component of business organisations, confront a stark choice between stasis and evolution. In too many European organisations, legal departments are perceived as secondary and reactive. Rather than commanding a seat at the table, you bring the legal team in after the “real” work to create value is complete. It is highly unlikely that business leaders will automatically bring legal leadership into the inner circle to make a decision, unless the topic relates to compliance.

Change requires legal department leaders who charge ahead with “rebellious transformation,” overhauling workflows, structure, and governance to deliver and demonstrate business and strategic impact.

The Root of the Problem: Legal on Autopilot

The issue stems from a maturity gap: a disconnect between a legal team’s current operating reality and the level of structure, governance, and capability it needs to deliver consistent, increasing business value. 

Most legal departments are not operating under a deliberately designed model. They run on autopilot with a model that has emerged over time through years of trial and error, shifting habits, and tools that have come and gone. The resulting model is a patchwork of past fixes rather than a system built for modern demands.

The real question today is: why not hit pause and be intentional about the operating model you choose, one built to deliver real, meaningful value?

The Cost of Staying Reactive

According to Gartner’s Legal Risk and Compliance Practice, legal teams now take three times longer to manage business disruption than before the pandemic. But, especially with stagnant budgets and ever-increasing pressure to “do more with less,” legal can no longer afford to react to disruption. Organisations that persist in a reactive approach miss business value, delay deployments, and risk exhausting teams. Adaptation to this new reality is crucial.

And yet, this new reality is also an opportunity. The fact that disruptions are multiplying in rapid succession plays directly to legal’s strengths. As the control tower at the front-line monitoring risk and security, legal departments are uniquely able to seize the moment, provided they invest in their own capabilities and learn to delegate or eliminate tasks that add no value. In other words, they must work on their operating model to secure the capacity to navigate an environment that is only growing in demand and complexity. They have the means to do so: a lawyer is, by nature, trained to analyse a situation and choose the best course of action. This is the one thing that will allow legal to preserve, and even expand, its strategic role within the organisation.

The Three Steps of an Effective Legal Operating Model 

Low-value tasks and risk avoidance do not define value. What determines performance is the operating model behind the work. This includes how legal sets direction, allocates responsibility, and governs execution.

That model does not emerge on its own. It must be built deliberately, starting with three foundational steps:

1. A Clear Mission Statement: A mission statement aligned to company strategy defines what legal is accountable for and what it is not. Without that boundary, teams default to reacting to demand rather than shaping it.
2. Organisational Design: Roles, ownership, and workflows must reflect the mission. Decisions about what stays in-house, what is standardised, and where expertise sits determine how well work moves through the function.
3. Governance: Clear decision rights, intake processes, and prioritisation mechanisms ensure that demand is controlled rather than absorbed indiscriminately. Governance is what turns intent into consistent execution.

Without these elements in place, legal organisations may over-invest in tools, layer on disconnected processes, and struggle to absorb change. With them, the operating model becomes a defined system that delivers value.

Using Maturity Models To Guide Legal Transformation

To move from insight to execution, legal teams need a shared language for progress. Maturity frameworks and assessment models provide that structure. Among several assessment tools the market offers, the EDHEC Augmented Law Institute offers a specific legal ops transformation radar tool that supports this practice. By mapping capabilities across dimensions such as strategy, service delivery, data, and technology, gaps and priorities become clear.

Importantly, these assessments are not about scoring for its own sake. They are designed to spark informed conversations inside the legal function and with business stakeholders. When leaders can point to where the organisation sits on a maturity curve, discussions about investment, staffing, and change become more concrete and less subjective.

Reimagining the Future of Legal Service Delivery

What is emerging in continental Europe is not a single model for legal operations, but a grounded approach to change. Legal departments are aligning ambition with maturity, focusing on operating models before tools, and using structured assessments to guide decisions.

The result is transformation that feels achievable rather than overwhelming. By building clarity first, legal teams position themselves to reduce operational cost, respond faster to the business, and remain competitive in a legal landscape that continues to develop. These are the crucial prerequisites to demanding and then gaining a seat at the table, with legal taking its rightful place as a key contributor to business and strategic success.

Learn more about Epiq Legal Department Advisory.


François Marchal, Director, Epiq Advisory
François advises general counsel and legal leadership on complex transformation initiatives and improving the operations of enterprise legal departments. He enables organisations to clarify their legal operations vision, design fit for purpose operating models, and implement people, process, and technology frameworks that support scale, improve governance, and achieve measurable results. 

His over 15 years of experience spans legal operations, regulatory compliance, governance, change management, and legal technology.