Source: Lawyers Weekly
As 2026 unfolds, general counsel find themselves at a pivotal crossroads. The role has evolved beyond traditional legal oversight into something far more strategic and far more demanding. Three key challenges are defining what it means to lead a legal function in the year ahead.
AI: No Longer Optional
The conversation around artificial intelligence has fundamentally shifted. What was once an experimental tool is now a business imperative, and general counsel are caught in the middle.
“Our business landscape is quickly evolving with the use of AI,” says Keiko Minami, head of legal for APAC and ANZ at Darktrace. “As legal leaders, it’s important to ensure use of AI is coined with AI governance.”
The pressure isn’t just about adoption it’s about responsible implementation. Legal leaders can’t simply greenlight AI tools; they need to understand how they work, where they fail, and what risks they introduce. Minami’s advice? Stay ahead of AI governance, even if that means using AI itself to help manage the complexity.
A Regulatory Perfect Storm
While AI grabs headlines, regulatory change is creating equally significant disruption behind the scenes. New merger clearance regimes, evolving privacy laws, ESG requirements, and workplace relations reforms are converging all at once.
Nick Brown, general counsel at Airtree, points to merger clearance as the most immediate challenge. “It represents the biggest adjustment to how we do business in my five years at Airtree,” he says.
His solution? Collaboration. “Colleagues and industry peers are all going through the same thing, so working closely to share knowledge and experience is vital.”
The Volume Problem
Perhaps the most insidious challenge isn’t any single regulation it’s the sheer number of them.
Jessica Giampiccolo, managing director at JMLG Advisory, puts it bluntly: “The challenge is no longer understanding individual regimes, but integrating overlapping obligations across jurisdictions while maintaining operational agility.”
General counsel are expected to be experts in privacy, data governance, cybersecurity, ESG, workplace law, and emerging tech regulation often across multiple jurisdictions. And boards aren’t waiting around. They want innovation now, often before governance frameworks are in place.
“The defining challenge is balancing speed, commerciality, and innovation with robust legal and risk governance,” Giampiccolo explains.
From Gatekeeper to Enabler
To navigate these pressures, general counsel need a fundamental shift in approach. Giampiccolo advocates positioning the legal function as a “core enabler of the business” rather than a back-office function that just says no.
That means building crisis playbooks for regulatory investigations, data breaches, and workplace incidents before they happen. It means regular scenario testing. It means turning compliance from a checkbox exercise into a strategic advantage.
The challenges facing general counsel in 2026 are real, complex, and unavoidable. But they’re also an opportunity to redefine the role to move from reactive to proactive, from gatekeeper to strategic partner. The legal leaders who succeed will be those who embrace this evolution rather than resist it.
Read more: Lawyers Weekly
