Webinar report: Combining legal expertise with strategic business impact

You qualified as a lawyer and joined your organisation to lead its in-house legal team. But did your training and previous legal experience prepare you for the strategic and commercial elements of your current role?

For many in-house lawyers, the answer’s no. So, in our third webinar of the 2026 Legal Leaders webinar series with Thomson Reuters, moderator, Elizabeth Duffy, Thomson Reuters Institute’s Senior Director Client Engagement, put the big questions to two experienced in-house lawyers who have confronted the issue head on. 

As Director of Legal and Audit Services at the Environment Agency (EA), Laura Milton leads a nationwide team. Previously, Laura worked at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the Department for Transport, Cabinet Office and the Department for Business. Laura is a trustee of the Shenley Park Trust.

Sam Plant held legal leadership roles at Müller, PZ Cussons Plc, Princes Foods, MyTravel Group Plc and API Group plc. He was a non-executive at the University of Salford for nine years, chairing its Governance, Nominations and Ethics Committee. Today, Sam supports in-house teams, writes on ethics, equality and the law and coaches emerging legal leaders.

On embracing the business partner role as part of the in-house remit

Laura: As a junior lawyer in a city law firm my focus was narrow. Project goals were very defined and you didn’t need to think too much about the client’s wider business. When I became a government lawyer, giving ministers legal advice in the wider context of the politics and the government's agenda was crucial. However, it wasn’t until I joined the CAA and later the EA that I felt truly integrated into the whole organisation.

Embracing the business advisor role requires a load of new learning but brings with it a new source of job satisfaction. For example, as part of the team that developed our five-year strategy, I frame my legal advice around our organisational goals. And my training as a lawyer equips me to be the analytical thinker around the meeting table and call out anything that doesn’t seem right. This evolution of the role also means that in executive and governance meetings, about 90-95% of my input is non-legal.

Sam: I’d had no training for the in-house role so came in with no concept of what the term ‘business partner’ meant. My peers in other departments had been well trained on life in a business environment so had awareness of the world beyond legal’s narrow area of focus. It took me a long time to evolve my private practice mindset into an in-house one. I thought people were coming to me because they wanted legal advice but, in most cases, they had no interest in the law at all. They just wanted to move something from A to B or had a problem and thought I would be able to solve it.

So being a business partner is about getting under the skin of the organisation, understanding its strategy and then stepping back and working out how to support it. Dial down references to the legal element of your advice and show that you’re looking to make the big wins achieved by sales, marketing and other teams profitable and sustainable.

On judging risk

Sam: This is about learning to ask the right people the right questions and listening to their answers. We as lawyers won’t always know what’s risky or not. Nor are we necessarily the shrewdest people in the room. Giving others the opportunity to provide answers is a key skill.

On the turning point in the shift from lawyer to business partner

Laura: Attending executive meetings in person made a big difference, both to my understanding of the organisation and its perception of the legal function. I was in government when the Brexit vote happened, impacting forty odd years of enmeshed law.

I couldn't sit back and wait for others to work it all out so had to be part of the wider solution. Being in the executive team meetings and part of a group with a strategic, rather than a merely legal, remit really helped in that regard.

On balancing the strategic with the day-to-day

Sam: Setting a strategy and reviewing it once a year isn’t enough. Get your team fully involved and track your progress against your strategy as an ongoing process. That way everyone stays mindful of the legal function’s framework, making it easier to decide what requests are important and which ones you should be saying no to.

On being expected to have all the answers

Sam: Be comfortable with not knowing the answer to everything. Saying “I don't know but I’ll find out and come back to you,” has never damaged my credibility. If anything, it makes you more approachable than the smartass who comes up with a dubious answer on the fly.

Laura: At senior level it’s more about giving a steer than detailed legal answers. With a great team behind you, you can bring a subject matter expert into the room and overlay their answers with the broader legal context.

On building trust and delivering hard messages

Sam: Spending time with people and understanding their challenges goes a long way to building trust. When it comes to tough advice, don’t sugar coat it. Be straight while showing you’re on their side and want to achieve the same outcomes as they do.

On distinguishing legal advice from business advice

Laura: It’s important not to blur the boundaries between your opinion and legal fact. If necessary, I’ll say “I’m now putting on my legal hat” to signal that this is the law speaking, as opposed to me more broadly. If something unlawful is part of a conversation, it’s helpful to have the authority of the legal profession behind you.

On 3 December 2026

The last webinar of this year’s series is Change management and business transformation: The in-house legal perspective. Register now and we’ll see you then.