High-Agency Legal Leaders Must Drive Strategy and Innovation

“High agency” is when a person feels in control, owns responsibility and decisions, and believes they can shape their destiny. For legal leaders, it means proactively driving outcomes and influencing business strategy, not simply reacting to issues. In-house legal leaders with high agency don’t just flag risks; they find solutions, navigate complexity, and position themselves as indispensable partners.

The definition of high agency suggests an attitude of proactivity, problem ownership, and persistence—usually accompanied by some impatience. The lawyer’s role entails facing an issue or problem, interpreting it, and providing advice, often to relatively commercial stakeholders. What separates good lawyers from great lawyers is handling problems with purpose and authority, and decisiveness is key.

Lawyers are good at asking questions, defining problems further, and looking at long-term possibilities. But they aren’t always so good at providing actual answers. Great lawyers understand the problem, internalize it, and then give action-orientated advice.

Legal teams historically have been considered blockers, the guardians of controlling risk—and they should be. They need to see around corners and head off issues before they turn into problems.

This can be jarring to those in commercial roles with shorter-term motivation, whether that means immediate commissions or a partnership they want signed fast because it benefits business now. This scenario results in constant friction between short-term commercial gains and priorities versus long-term potential risk and mitigation.

The following five tips can help high-agency legal leaders become strategic enablers while maintaining a critical focus on risk.

Follow the Money

If we assume legal leaders are great for asking the right questions to ascertain future risk, then high-agency ones must first understand how their revenue model and products work. By doing so, they’ll be able to follow the money, understand their organization’s true potential, and weigh it against risk.

They should pull in data about product litigation and customer refunds—there’s a slew of possible inputs. And a high-agency leader will consider all variables and make informed decisions about what to avoid and pursue.

Build C-Suite Relationships

Many legal leaders want to be considered business executives. That requires having a voice in strategic decision-making and accountability for outcomes.

High-agency legal leaders will embrace this, but the only way to get into the room where those decisions are being made is to be invited. To that end, high-agency leaders must cultivate close relationships with the C-suite—particularly the CEO, chief financial officer, and other revenue leaders. From there, they’ll need to make decisions and show accountability for outcomes.

Create the Culture

High-agency legal leaders should foster a problem-solving culture across their organizations. Identifying issues comes naturally to lawyers, and many don’t shy away from being business “fortune tellers.” That’s what we’re trained to do.

To achieve the right culture, you must understand the business and how stakeholders are incentivized. You must also provide some type of score that shows the likelihood and severity of outcomes, followed by a specific recommendation. If you can embed this in legal pros on the junior end, empowering them and encouraging ownership, a problem-solving culture will take root and flourish.

Measure Success

High-agency leaders are solution-oriented and want to own outcomes, so they must be able to measure results. The net promoter score is an excellent metric. It gauges customer satisfaction and loyalty by finding out how likely customers are to recommend a company or product to others.

It sounds basic, but it’s much easier and more effective than chasing a range of key performance indicators. The trick is to phrase net-promoter-score questions around specific traits that are more focused on pinpointing solutions rather than identifying issues.

Introduce Innovation

“Publish or perish,” a phrase in the academic world, means scholars must get their work in the public eye to advance their careers, particularly when it comes to research roles. The same thing applies to innovation and high-agency legal leaders. They can either usher in new developments or take the safer route of avoiding decision-making and focusing more on risk.

Before Microsoft Excel, accountants were valued for their arithmetic skills. When using Excel, they became invaluable for their strategic insights based on numbers. Excel may enable accountants to perform better, but we still need basic accounting.

Similarly, people think an effective lawyer is one who tells you what the law is, identifies problems, and assesses risk. High-agency leaders still must perform this function, but they must be more strategic about why a deal makes sense and what needs to happen to get it done. When they introduce something innovative, adoption will be much faster.

High-agency legal leaders transcend traditional risk management by actively shaping business strategy and taking accountability for outcomes. By understanding financial models, fostering executive relationships, embedding a problem-solving culture, and embracing innovation, they become indispensable business partners rather than mere gatekeepers.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

Author Information

Tom Dunlop is founder and CEO of Summize, a contract lifecycle management company with headquarters in Boston and Manchester, England.

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