The role of the General Counsel is changing quickly.
Once defined primarily by legal judgment, risk management, and responsiveness to the business, today’s GC is increasingly expected to operate as a strategic executive, technology decision-maker, transformation leader, and architect of a more efficient legal function.
Paula Pepin has seen that shift from both sides of the table. A former General Counsel and executive coach, Pepin brings more than two decades of experience leading legal and HR functions in global, high-growth organizations. Before founding The GC Collective, she served as Senior Vice-President, Head of Legal and Corporate Secretary at Hootsuite, where she was part of the executive team as the company scaled to more than 1,100 employees, expanded internationally, and completed eight acquisitions.
In 2023, Pepin launched The GC Collective to help General Counsel evolve from legal experts into strategic business executives. The community now supports legal leaders through peer connection, leadership development, operations programming, and practical conversations about how the GC role is evolving.
That evolution has become especially urgent as legal departments confront artificial intelligence, automation, legal operations, vendor selection, data-driven decision-making, and rising pressure to do more with less. For Pepin, technology is not a standalone solution. It is an enabler of a broader shift in how legal departments create value, provided GCs first rethink their operating models, workflows, priorities, and role inside the business.
LegalTech.ca spoke with Pepin about the rise of what she calls the “Operator GC,” why technology adoption is ultimately a change-management challenge, how AI is reshaping legal department strategy, and why peer communities are becoming increasingly important as General Counsel navigate a crowded and fast-moving legal technology market.
As the General Counsel role becomes more strategic, how important is legal technology in helping GCs move from reactive legal support to proactive business leadership?
PP: The conversation about legal technology has become much broader than technology itself. Legal departments are navigating one of the biggest shifts the profession has seen in decades. They are under increasing pressure to deliver legal services more efficiently, support faster business decisions, and demonstrate measurable value, all while managing growing complexity and, in many cases, without a corresponding increase in resources. Technology is certainly part of that evolution, but viewing it in isolation misses the much larger transformation underway.
For a long time, many legal departments operated in a reactive model. Work came in, lawyers responded, and success was often measured by how much the team could absorb. That model is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. The volume, speed, and complexity of business needs have changed, and legal teams are now expected to provide faster, more practical, and more strategic support, often without meaningful increases in headcount or budget
Technology is absolutely part of the answer, but it is not the answer on its own. A tool will not make a legal department proactive if the underlying operating model is unclear. It will not fix poor intake, unclear priorities, inconsistent processes, or a lack of alignment with the business. In many cases, technology simply exposes those weaknesses.
The shift from reactive legal support to proactive business leadership happens when GCs step back and ask deeper questions: how should legal be structured to support the business at scale, where do we need better systems, what work should be automated or self-served, and where should lawyers be spending their highest-value time?
Once those questions are answered, technology can become a powerful enabler. It can reduce friction, create visibility, improve decision-making, and give the legal team more capacity to focus on the work that truly requires legal judgment. But the leadership move is not buying the tool. The leadership move is redesigning how legal creates value for the business, with technology as one important part of that broader transformation.
Are today’s GCs expected to be technology leaders inside their organizations as well as legal leaders?
PP: The role of the General Counsel has expanded well beyond providing legal advice. As legal departments adopt AI, automation, and increasingly sophisticated technologies, GCs are being asked to lead a different kind of transformation. That doesn’t mean becoming technology experts. It means becoming leaders who understand how technology changes the way legal services are designed, delivered, and experienced by the business.
One of the biggest shifts I’m observing is the emergence of what I think of as the “Operator GC.” There was a time when a General Counsel could succeed by being an exceptional legal advisor and trusted business partner without giving much thought to how the legal department actually operated. Today, that is no longer enough. GCs are increasingly expected to think about operating models, service delivery, resource allocation, and continuous improvement in the same way other executive leaders do.
The challenge is that most lawyers were never trained for this. Legal education and years of practice develop exceptional analytical skills, sound judgment, and the ability to manage legal risk. They do not typically prepare lawyers to build scalable operating models, lead transformation initiatives, manage projects, or drive organizational change. Yet these are increasingly the capabilities the role demands.
The legal departments that will create the greatest value over the next decade will not necessarily be those with the most sophisticated technology. They will be the ones led by GCs who intentionally invest in developing these broader leadership capabilities and who build legal functions designed to evolve alongside the business. Operational leadership is what will ultimately determine their success..
This is one of the reasons leadership development for General Counsel has become so important, and that’s what we focus on at GC Collective. As the role continues to evolve, GCs need opportunities to develop skills that have traditionally sat outside the legal profession, including operational leadership, strategic planning, change management, and executive influence. Those capabilities are becoming just as important as legal expertise in determining the long-term impact of the modern General Counsel.
How has the rise of AI changed the conversations you’re hearing from General Counsel around risk, governance, productivity, and legal team strategy?
PP: The conversation has evolved remarkably quickly over the last year.
Early on, much of the discussion centred on risk. GCs were understandably cautious. Questions about confidentiality, privilege, hallucinations, regulatory uncertainty, and governance dominated almost every conversation. There was significant resistance to adoption, particularly within legal departments that have always been trained to identify and manage risk before embracing new ways of working.
What changed was the pace of innovation. AI evolved much faster than most organizations anticipated, and the business began adopting it regardless of legal’s level of comfort. In many organizations, legal found itself reacting to AI use across the business rather than directing it. Conversations shifted from whether AI should be used to how it could be governed responsibly while enabling the business to continue moving forward. Many GCs described feeling as though they were playing “whack-a-mole,” trying to respond to new use cases and new tools as quickly as they emerged.
Today, the conversation has shifted again. GCs are no longer being asked only to advise the business on AI adoption. Increasingly, they are expected to lead it within their own departments. Executive teams are asking legal to become more efficient, rethink how legal services are delivered, and demonstrate how AI can improve productivity. In some organizations, AI adoption has become an explicit strategic objective, with departments expected to incorporate AI into their annual plans or demonstrate measurable usage across their teams.
At the same time, the technology landscape has become significantly more complex. The emergence of increasingly capable foundation models such as Claude has created a new set of questions for legal leaders. Some organizations are beginning to wonder whether they need dedicated legal AI platforms at all, while others are trying to determine which work can be supported by a general-purpose model and which requires purpose-built legal technology. There is a growing perception that a foundation model can solve every problem, but the reality is more nuanced. Building reliable workflows around these tools requires thoughtful design, governance, and significant organizational effort. As a result, many legal teams are now spending considerable time trying to determine not simply how to adopt AI, but which technologies genuinely deserve their investment.
In many ways, that reflects the maturity of the conversation. The debate is no longer about whether AI will change legal. It is about helping legal departments make thoughtful decisions about where AI creates meaningful value and where human judgment continues to be indispensable.
What separates GCs who are successfully adopting legal technology from those who are still struggling to move beyond experimentation?
PP: The organizations making the greatest progress rarely distinguish themselves by the technology they purchase. They distinguish themselves by the discipline with which they approach implementation.
Successful GCs begin by understanding the problem they are trying to solve. They assess how work currently flows through the department, identify where friction exists, define what success should look like, and only then determine whether technology is the right solution. They also recognize that implementation is only the beginning. Lasting value depends on whether people actually adopt new ways of working.
This is where many transformation efforts begin to lose momentum. Legal departments often underestimate the importance of change management, communication, and leadership throughout the implementation process. Technology projects ultimately succeed or fail based on people, not platforms. The legal leaders who consistently move beyond experimentation are those who understand that technology adoption is fundamentally an exercise in leading organizational change.
For in-house legal teams, where do you see the biggest opportunities for technology to reduce friction: contract management, compliance, litigation, privacy, knowledge management, or somewhere else?
PP: One of the biggest misconceptions about legal technology is that every legal department should be solving the same problems. In reality, the most valuable technology investment depends entirely on the environment in which the legal team operates.
A legal department supporting a high-growth technology company faces very different operational challenges than the legal department of a bank or a real estate developer. Their workflows, regulatory obligations, business priorities are fundamentally different. Rather than asking which category of technology is most important, GCs should first ask where their own department experiences the greatest friction.
The most effective leaders take the time to understand how work moves through their department. They identify where delays occur, where lawyers spend disproportionate amounts of time, and where the business experiences unnecessary friction. Only once those questions have been answered does it make sense to determine whether technology can improve that part of the process.
There is also a tendency to try to solve every problem at once. In my experience, the legal departments that achieve the greatest success take a much more deliberate approach. They identify one meaningful opportunity, solve it well, build confidence across the team, and then use that momentum to tackle the next challenge. Starting small often produces far greater long-term transformation than attempting a complete overhaul from the outset.
How should GCs balance innovation with caution when evaluating AI tools and other legal technologies?
PP: Legal professionals have always been trained to identify and manage risk. That discipline remains essential, but the conversation around AI has reached a point where avoiding the technology altogether has become a risk in itself.
The legal departments that continue to wait for complete certainty before engaging with AI are likely to find themselves falling behind. AI is already reshaping the way legal work is performed, and the profession has reached a stage where learning through thoughtful experimentation is becoming a leadership responsibility rather than an optional exercise.
I often use the analogy of learning to ride a bike. No one becomes confident by reading about cycling or watching someone else ride. At some point, you have to get on the bike. You may start slowly, you may lose your balance a few times, but that is how confidence develops. The same principle applies to AI. Begin with lower-risk use cases, establish appropriate guardrails, and build familiarity through practical experience rather than waiting for perfect certainty.
One of the most effective ways to accelerate that learning is through conversations with peers. Hearing how other legal departments approached adoption, what concerns they encountered, what governance frameworks they established, and how they built confidence within their own teams often provides far more practical insight than any product demonstration or industry report. Learning collectively allows legal leaders to move forward with greater confidence while avoiding many of the mistakes others have already navigated.
Do peer communities like GC Collective play a role in helping legal leaders compare notes on technology vendors, implementation challenges, and AI governance?
PP: I believe trusted peer communities have become one of the most valuable resources available to GCs as they navigate the rapidly evolving legal technology landscape.
The pace of innovation is extraordinary. New AI platforms and legal technology solutions continue to emerge, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish meaningful innovation from marketing noise. One of the greatest advantages of a peer community is the ability to learn from real implementation experience rather than relying solely on vendor presentations or industry commentary.
At GC Collective, we’ve intentionally designed programming around that philosophy. Our Preferred Solutions Partner program begins by listening to our members. When we consistently hear members recommending the same solution because they have successfully implemented it and genuinely believe it delivers value, we then invite that provider into the community. The technology is effectively vetted by the community before it is ever showcased to other members.
We’re also expanding that approach through dedicated Demo Days. These sessions focus exclusively on solutions that have already been adopted and recommended by our members, allowing General Counsel to explore the technology, ask practical questions, and learn directly from peers who have implemented it. Our upcoming AI Demo Day on August 6 reflects exactly that approach. Rather than asking members to sift through hundreds of emerging AI products on their own, we’re creating an opportunity for them to learn from the collective experience of a trusted network.
Technology decisions have become too important, and the market is moving too quickly, for GCs to navigate them in isolation. Communities that facilitate practical, experience-based learning have become an important part of helping legal leaders make better decisions with greater confidence.
As legal departments become more data-driven, what new skills do you think future GCs will need to lead effectively?
PP: The legal profession has traditionally rewarded technical excellence. Today’s GCs still need exceptional legal judgment, but the capabilities that distinguish the strongest leaders are expanding well beyond legal expertise.
As legal departments become increasingly data-driven and technology-enabled, GCs are expected to think more like executives who design and lead high-performing organizations. That requires a broader set of leadership capabilities, including operational thinking, change management, project leadership, systems design, and the ability to use data to inform better decision-making.
Perhaps the most important capability will be the ability to lead through continuous change. The pace of transformation within legal departments is only increasing, and the most successful GCs will be those who can help their teams adapt while maintaining trust, engagement, and a clear sense of purpose.
Legal expertise will always provide the foundation for the role. Increasingly, however, it is operational leadership that will determine how much impact a GC is able to create for the business.