From function to intelligence

Driven by AI, rising business expectations, and the demand for speed at scale.

For Bill Deckelman, CLO of Andersen, the shift is not about efficiency alone. It is about redefining what the future of in-house legal looks like – a function that delivers insight, not just advice.

Drawing on decades of experience – from early in-house leadership to leading large-scale transformation at DXC – Deckelman offers a clear view of what comes next. The future will not be defined by how quickly lawyers respond, but by how effectively legal teams anticipate risk, generate intelligence, and shape business outcomes.

As other leaders in this series – including Bjarne Tellmann, Paula Pépin, Mark Smolik, and Sterling Miller – have emphasized, the role of legal is expanding. Deckelman pushes that idea further. The real shift is structural: from legal as a service provider to legal as a data-driven decision engine embedded within the business.

Every generation of legal leaders believes they are living through change. This moment is different.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Deckelman says of AI and its implications for legal. The pace, scope, and uncertainty are unlike anything before. Unlike prior waves – digitization, globalization, outsourcing – AI is not just another layer. It is a force multiplier that compresses time and rewrites how work gets done.

When Deckelman was at DXC, he led a full transformation of the legal function that took nearly seven years. He estimates that the same work today could be done in 18 to 24 months.

That compression changes the equation. Legal teams no longer have the luxury of gradual evolution. The window to adapt is narrowing – and with it, the margin for error.

This reinforces a broader theme across the Future of In-House Legal series. As Bjarne Tellmann argues, legal is being pulled into the core of enterprise transformation. To this, Deckelman adds urgency: this shift will not wait for legal to catch up.

For years, the ambition for in-house legal has been to become a “trusted advisor”. Deckelman’s early career reflects that evolution.

I learned to be embedded with the business working alongside the C-suite. The goal was simple: legal should help the business move forward, not hold it back.

Today, that expectation has moved again. It is no longer enough to be trusted. Legal must be indispensable to outcomes.

This builds on Paula Pépin’s perspective that legal must be embedded in decision-making, not operating as a downstream checkpoint. Mark Smolik similarly emphasizes legal’s role in enabling the business, not just protecting it.

Deckelman sharpens the point. The future of in-house legal will be defined by contribution to value creation. “We want the client to say: we love our lawyers because they help us build value.”

That shift changes how legal is measured. Not by risk avoided alone, but by growth enabled, speed unlocked, and decisions improved.

One of Deckelman’s clearest lessons is the rejection of incrementalism.

During the DXC merger, his team faced a familiar mandate: reduce costs while integrating two large organizations. The expected path was gradual reduction – headcount cuts, offshoring, and incremental efficiency.

They chose differently.

“We’re not going to slowly cut ourselves out of business,” he recalls. “We’re going to rebuild and transform.”

That distinction matters. Optimization improves the existing system. Transformation redesigns it.

Too many legal teams are still operating in a project mindset – layering tools onto legacy processes, making marginal gains without changing the underlying model. As Deckelman puts it, “otherwise you’re just doing projects – and they never really take.”

This echoes Sterling Miller’s emphasis on operational discipline. Transformation is not about adopting more tools. It is about redesigning how legal work flows through the organization.

Legal is no longer being asked to keep up with the business. It is being asked to operate at the same speed – and with the same data.

The conversation around AI often centers on replacement. Deckelman sees something more fundamental. The opportunity is not to do the same work faster. It is to eliminate unnecessary work altogether.

If you want to accelerate the business, you have to figure out how not to give work to lawyers that shouldn’t be done in the first place.

For decades, legal has scaled by adding lawyers. That model breaks under the weight of modern business demands.

Instead, legal must become a designed system – where work is triaged, not absorbed, processes are standardized before they are automated, and human effort is reserved for judgment, not repetition.

Technology enables this shift by creating scale. It is also what makes continuous improvement possible – the expectation that costs decrease even as the business grows.

Legal cannot meet that expectation through headcount alone. It must redesign the work itself.

Much of the transformation conversation focuses on speed – faster contracts, quicker turnaround. Deckelman sees that only as the beginning.

"More importantly it’s about analytics and insights."

This is where legal’s role begins to fundamentally change.

With AI, legal can analyze vast datasets – contracts, disputes, regulatory exposure – and surface patterns that were previously invisible. It can connect thousands of data points across geographies and business units in ways humans simply cannot.

The implication is clear. Legal shifts from reactive risk management to proactive risk intelligence. Instead of reporting on known risks, legal can identify emerging patterns, anticipate exposure, and provide real-time guidance to leadership.

Deckelman is blunt about the current state. 

Don’t show me another risk matrix with bubbles on a heat map. We’ve known those risks for years.

What the business needs now is not static reporting. It demands dynamic, data-driven insight.

This mirrors the evolution seen in finance and marketing, where analytics has moved those functions from reporting to prediction. Legal is now entering that same phase.

Despite the promise of AI, Deckelman offers a clear warning: most organizations will still get this wrong.

Not because of the technology, but because of the fundamentals. “You can’t just flip the switch,” he says.

Transformation still depends on the work many teams avoid. Cleaning and structuring data. Defining processes clearly. Building consistent workflows.

Without that foundation, even the most advanced tools will underdeliver.

This is where many legal teams struggle. The appeal of AI creates the illusion of speed, but the underlying work remains disciplined and often unglamorous.

AI does not remove the need for operational rigor. It amplifies whatever foundation exists.

As the function evolves, so must the people within it.

If you cannot relate to the business - you’re going to struggle. And if you cannot relate to technology - you’re going to struggle.

The future legal professional is no longer defined by legal expertise alone.

Across this series, a consistent picture has emerged. Pépin emphasizes trust and integration. Smolik focuses on enablement. Miller highlights execution and discipline.

Deckelman brings these threads together: the modern lawyer must operate across domains.

That means understanding how the business creates value, being fluent in technology and data, maintaining strong legal judgment, and navigating across functions with credibility.

This is not an expansion of the role. It is a redefinition of it.

Technology enables transformation. Leadership determines whether it happens.

Deckelman recalls a moment early in his transformation journey when a team member challenged him directly: “Tell me again why we’re doing this.”

It is a simple question. It is also the most important one. Transformation requires more than a roadmap. It requires a vision that people believe in.

“The vision has to come before the plan.”

Without it, initiatives stall. With it, teams move – even through uncertainty. For legal leaders, this is the real shift. The role is no longer just functional. It is enterprise leadership.

The future of in-house legal will not be defined by speed alone, or even efficiency. It will be defined by a change in role.

Legal will become a function that surfaces insight, not just advice. That anticipates risk, not just reacts to it. That shapes decisions, not just reviews them.

AI will accelerate this shift. But it will not drive it.

That responsibility sits with legal leaders – in how they redesign their functions, develop their teams, and align with the business.

The future of in-house legal will not be won by the teams that work harder – but by the ones that redesign how legal work happens.

Across this series, one idea continues to sharpen. The future of in-house legal is not about doing legal work faster. It is about changing what legal work is. And the leaders who move first will not just keep pace with that future.

They will define what the future of in-house legal becomes.