Legal resourcing redefined: In-House legal doing more with less

If you’re leading an in-house legal team today, you know the story… demand keeps rising, while budgets and headcount don’t, in fact, they often move in the opposite direction.

The result? – a persistent squeeze: more work, higher expectations and fewer hands on deck to meet them.

Over the past year, we’ve spoken extensively with in-house lawyers, both clients and non-clients, about this pressure.

One consistent theme has emerged: the legal function is being asked to deliver more value with the same, or even reduced, resources.

To understand how teams are responding, we explored the strategies and approaches being used across the organisations we support, as well as those we don’t. This article brings together the insights from those conversations alongside our own observations.

Standardise your contracts

Time is tight, but standardisation is a lifesaver. Standardisation remains one of the most effective ways to save time when resources are tight. We appreciate time is a luxury, but standardising contracts is more important than ever.

Well-structured playbooks and tiered templates, aligned to risk, value and complexity, can materially reduce negotiation cycles. Limiting what’s negotiable, and clearly defining what isn’t, together with a straightforward deviation framework, provides certainty for both counterparties and internal teams.

When parties understand the boundaries and your stakeholders have clear guidance, you reduce variance, minimise drafting effort and accelerate approvals. The goal isn’t a single template for every scenario, but a coherent suite of standards with defined deviations and pre-approved fallbacks. Building and maintaining those core documents—along with agreed variations—is a hallmark of the most effective in-house legal teams.

When counterparties know the boundaries and your internal teams have clear guidelines, you cut variance, minimise drafting time and speed up approvals. The aim isn’t one template for every scenario, but a coherent family of standards with defined deviations and pre-approved fallbacks. Building out those standard documents, together with agreed variations documents, is at the forefront of the most effective in-house legal teams.

Define what legal does (and doesn’t) do

When workloads spike, it’s essential to clarify the scope of the in-house legal function to protect capacity. Establish parameters around the matters legal handles and where it adds real value, while clearly identifying areas the business can self-serve.

Set limits for review and approval that align with the organisation’s risk appetite. Practical triage rules, based on contract value, counterparty profile, and issue complexity, help ensure legal focus is reserved for higher-risk, higher-impact work, while routine matters are streamlined or redirected.

This approach isn’t about saying “no”; it’s about enabling the business to say “yes” to the right opportunities.

Prioritise by risk and value

Not all work carries the same risk or impact. By assessing both risk and contract value, legal teams can avoid over-lawyering low-impact matters while ensuring appropriate scrutiny where it matters most.

For example, empower teams such as procurement to operate under agreed limits with minimal legal involvement, while applying enhanced diligence to strategic suppliers or revenue-critical deals. Standardisation plays a key role here, helping to empower other parts of the business without compromising risk management.

Leverage tech as a tool

When used effectively, legal tech can transform the in-house function, especially when teams are under pressure from reduced headcount.

Our top tip: start small, focus on clear bottlenecks, and keep human judgment where it matters most. Some areas where we’ve supported in-house teams include:

• Template automation: AI can help generate standard contracts and pre-approved clauses in minutes.
• Contract review acceleration: AI-powered comparison and deviation flagging against templates or playbooks can significantly speed up counterparty contract review.

Use flexible resourcing to manage spikes and build capability

Even with robust processes and sophisticated tech, recruitment delays, project spikes, absences, and specialist gaps are inevitable.

When used effectively, flexible legal resourcing does more than plug immediate gaps, it can help create and embed processes that enhance performance long after the surge has passed.

Interim support doesn’t need to be a long, drawn-out process. It should be something you can activate quickly and seamlessly. Our flexible legal resourcing model, HCR Flex, gives you access to experienced HCR Law commercial lawyers, onsite or remotely and can be mobilised within days, with clear, predictable pricing and no minimum commitment.

It’s not just the quality of advice that sets this apart, it’s the total flexibility, HCR Flex offers, that can make this a game changer for in-house legal teams. Our lawyers integrate directly into your internal team, working within existing governance and processes. They address immediate workload needs while contributing to long-term improvements, whether building playbooks, refining templates, or tightening triage.

This dual focus, capacity now, capability for the future, turns flexible resourcing from a stopgap into a lever for a stronger, more resilient legal function.

And the best part? You can use it as much or as little as you need, for as long or short a period that suits you.

Final thoughts

A combination of disciplined contract standardisation, clearly defined role parameters, risk-based prioritisation, and smart use of technology keeps the core engine of your legal team running efficiently.

Augmenting that engine with targeted, flexible resourcing, used only when and where needed, adds both capacity and capability without permanent cost.

Done well, this approach protects your team’s time for the highest-value matters today, while building the structures that make tomorrow’s workload more manageable.