Webinar report: Workloads in focus: BAU and the unplanned

Legal leaders face multiple pressures: broadening remits with reduced resources, the march of AI and the need to be a business advisor first and the lawyer second.

Add to that the possibility that lurks around every corner – the potential for an unexpected spike in the legal team’s workload.

In our second Legal Leaders webinar of 2026 with Thomson Reuters, Elizabeth Duffy, Thomson Reuters Institute’s Senior Director Client Engagement, was joined by two senior in-house lawyers who often walk the tightrope between business as usual and the unplanned.

Barry Matthews is Group Deputy General Counsel at environmental infrastructure company Pennon Group plc and Co Director of the Centre for Resilience in Environment, Water and Waste (CREWW).

Barry previously held in-house divisional and geographic GC roles at ITV plc and Meggitt plc. Barry also served as a board member of the SRA between January 2016 and December 2021. He is currently also Chair of a Skills England digital Employer Trailblazer Group and Founder of the registered charity, the Social Mobility Business Partnership, which helps c.1,000 students a year from low-income backgrounds find work experience and receive lifetime career coaching.

Fergus Speight is EVP and General Counsel at the AI-driven fintech ZILO.

Fergus’ career in financial services dates to 1994 when he joined Standard Life as a Solicitor before holding legal roles at Aviva and Nomura. He went on to become Legal Director at Resolution Group, then spent 11 years as GC and Company Secretary at Royal London before joining ZILO in 2022.

On the nature of BAU and the unplanned

Barry: We define BAU as the work legal is responsible for at the frequency budgeted for (in terms of FTEs) at the start of the financial year.

BAU can become unplanned work for us due to spikes caused by external unpredictable factors e.g. responses to the news cycle, ‘lastminute.com’ instructions from colleagues and acquisitions with an assumed legal services synergy saving.

I would class true ‘unplanned work’ as work arising from disputes, regulatory action and government consultations. Currently, our split between in BAU and unplanned is 75/25 respectively. We’d like it to be 90/10.

Fergus: As a business in the process of scaling up, our split between BAU and unplanned is 50/50. Protecting our assets and IP is paramount and being a small company, we’re vulnerable to attack from larger rivals.

We also hire remote workers from overseas and see domestic workers move abroad, so planning for staff to work in multiple jurisdictions presents us with unplanned work.

Also significant is that more people in the organisation are asking Claude and other AI platforms, ‘What should I ask the legal team?’ and coming to us with their questions.

On prioritising in the moment when the unplanned arises

Barry: If it’s a health and safety, pollution, fraud or similarly critical issue, it must be the top priority. For less urgent issues, it is key you have established legal team instruction process maps (usually timeline Gantt based) with colleagues which outline key dependencies which impact the delivery of advice; the most critical of which is timely and full instructions at the start of a matter.

This way you can objectively push back if colleagues have simply not thought about legal early enough which is usually the reason for most urgent requests.

Fergus: You quickly learn who the usual suspects are in terms of badly planned requests for legal services. Of course, lawyers have a high service ethic and naturally want to be as helpful as possible. We triage unexpected work, prioritising personal safety and cyber security.

We also identify influencers across the business who are not in the hierarchy yet know what’s going on. Through these people we can identify key movers in the business, get early warning of upcoming initiatives and plan legal’s involvement accordingly.

On tackling repeat offenders and the loudest voice

Barry: As lawyers, we’re affirmation junkies. We want to do a great job – and be recognised for it.

Part of my role is to protect my team from the harmful effects of trying to be too conscientious by nipping unworkable requests in the bud. This involves being objective about what was agreed upon and empowering the team to escalate things quickly when necessary. It’s also valuable to look for the bigger picture as there may well be pressures on the internal client that we in legal are unaware of.

Fergus: You have to stand up to the loudest voice, and this means having face-to-face conversations at the right level.

Within my team we often discuss whether the person shouting the loudest is doing so in alignment to their department’s priorities or simply being demanding for their own personal benefit. There’s usually more to it than meets the eye.

On keeping legal aligned to the wider business strategy

Fergus: Setting legal strategy is one thing but executing it can take up to two years. Another huge factor is the pace of technology, which drives upgrades in the tech stack more frequently than ever before. This means negotiating exits and new contracts with IT suppliers are ongoing legal responsibilities.

Add this to constant change in consumer expectations and a permanently evolving economic climate and the need to refresh legal strategy is almost a weekly thing these days.

On matter management tools

Barry: At Pennon, we’ve built a tool called The Bridge with a local Microsoft developer. It is a configuration of the E5 licence Microsoft suite (windowed through Teams) which enables matter intake (with matter approval and delegation functionality), matter management with a linked SharePoint email and document management capability (with automated email filing) and automated Power BI reports and MI dashboard.

That said, people can still come to us with verbal briefs if they prefer as the aim is to get the necessary information as early as possible – we simply ingest the information into The Bridge. The tool is cost effective and also provides me with valuable information to prove the value delivered by the team and provide an ‘early warning system’ for lawyer overload or colleagues making unreasonable turnaround demands.

On joining us again on 1 October

Business partner and in-house lawyer: making both work is the next webinar in this series. In it, we’ll be looking at what being commercially minded really means – and how it applies to strategic planning. Register here.