The identity gap: why technical excellence isn’t enough for legal leadership

Most in-house lawyers climb the ranks to legal leadership because they are excellent lawyers, not necessarily great leaders.  

“There’s a gap between the title and capability,” explains legal leadership coach Marija Dukadinovska. “Lawyers move into senior positions requiring more influence, judgment, and strategic thinking, but many keep operating with the same technically focused identity that defined their early career.”  

Dukadinovska believes that the mismatch between title and capability is the reason why so many legal departments become siloed, sidelined, and misunderstood by the businesses they’re meant to serve.  

Stuck in proving mode  

Lawyers are innately cautious; it’s their job to deal in risk and consequence, and seeing the worst case scenario is what makes them good at it. But when that instinct collides with a business’s growth mindset, friction is inevitable.  

“The legal mindset begins with conditioning at law school,” says Dukadinovska. Law is one of the oldest professions, steeped in tradition, and it demands lawyers who are detail-oriented, technically rigorous, and held to exceptionally high standards. Dukadinovska believes these expectations create a mindset where lawyers feel a constant need to prove their value. 

This expectation then carries over into private practice (where most in-house counsel begin their careers), as junior lawyers must justify their billable hours by providing the client with lengthy, technical, and often complicated answers laden with legalese.  

Dukadinovska calls this way of working “proving mode,” where counsel “feel the need to prove themselves by spending hours in the weeds of the work, refining contract clauses.” She says the problem is “they are never taking a step back and thinking about what the business wants to achieve.” 

Creating roadblocks creates risk  

When legal operates in proving mode, they are playing into the seemingly self-fulfilling prophecy of legal being the department of no. The business doesn’t want a detailed report of why they shouldn’t do something; rather, they want solutions and clear, concise answers. Legal teams often overlook this crucial distinction and create a dynamic where the business works around legal to avoid roadblocks.    

Ironically, this creates more risk in the long run. Firstly, because it results in more decisions being made without legal’s oversight, and secondly, because it creates a boy who cried wolf narrative. “If you are always that no person, then it’s more likely the business won’t listen to you when there is a genuine risk,” says Dukaninovska. 

“The reality is that there’s always going to be risk in business, because it’s risky by nature. When lawyers start to see themselves as a strategic partner, the conversations shift to how do we achieve this outcome in a way that manages risk, rather than we need to avoid this because it’s too risky.” 

Redefining the GC role beyond technical oversight  

Changing the way the legal team operates requires leadership to demonstrate the behavior they want to see. Through her coaching, Dukadinovska has observed that many general counsel and CLOs still see themselves as technical experts, when really, they should be working toward achieving the vision of the business.  

Achieving this requires the GC/CLO to focus their time on high-value work such as the strategic direction of the team and aligning legal work with the business’s objectives. This can be hard for legal leaders who are still stuck in proving mode and feel that their worth is tied to their technical legal expertise.  

Dukadinovska encourages legal leaders to redefine their role beyond one of technical oversight. But doing this is no mean feat. “It requires asking yourself deep questions around what work you are holding on to that you don’t need to, so you can delegate with intention,” she says. Legal leaders need to learn to trust their team members with the finer details of contract minutiae and understand that their value lies in the big-picture work. 

Nurturing the next generation of leaders  

Leadership is what truly sets a great GC/CLO apart from the run-of-the-mill. The role requires far more than just legal expertise; it requires strategic thinking, business acumen, change management, communication, and emotional intelligence.  

Dukadinovska says creating clarity around roles and responsibilities within the team is also crucial. “When people have ownership over their roles, they know what they’re doing, the team will move faster, and they make better decisions.”  

Delegating work has positive flow-on effects regarding career development for younger lawyers, which should be a priority for every great leader.  

“I’ve been in teams where the GC hoards information. They don’t delegate or tell the team what they’re working on, which effectively blocks their progression,” reflects Dukadinovska. “That’s an ineffective leader, and an ineffective GC. Bringing junior lawyers to higher-level conversations with business leaders allows them to see how decisions are made, which in turn allows them to formulate their decisions as strategic advisors.” 

The payoff  

Dukadinovska isn’t advising legal leaders to be less rigorous. Rather, she’s suggesting they redirect that rigor toward what the business actually needs, and in doing so rebuilding the trust that a risk-averse approach quietly erodes.  

When legal leaders can genuinely bridge legal and business thinking, the effect is immediate: fewer bottlenecks, fewer workarounds, and a legal team that’s brought into the room early, not looped in last.  

The real measure of legal leadership should not be about how much risk is avoided, but how effectively the business can move through risk because legal is in the conversation from the start.