In 2025, several leading corporations undertook significant transformations in their legal operations, leveraging digital tools, artificial intelligence (AI), and new management models to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. These efforts cut across in-house legal functions as well as external counsel management, marking a notable shift in how legal departments operate within large organizations.
Among the standout examples of operational transformation was the Spanish energy company Repsol. Its in-house legal team implemented a unified operating model to replace a previously fragmented system that relied heavily on spreadsheets, emails, and disparate workflows across ten countries. A dedicated “new law and digital” team of six professionals manages the centralized platform, which began with document, knowledge, and budget management, and has expanded to include intellectual property, vendor management, and investigations. The legal department credits these changes with halving its spending on legal tools during the year and noted that this centralization approach is now influencing other corporate functions from human resources to tax.
Carrefour Spain also advanced its digital transformation by incorporating AI agents to automate routine legal tasks. The legal team developed an internal self-service hub that allows employees to find answers to common legal questions without direct legal intervention. Additionally, they introduced a dashboard to manage real estate contracts over their 200 hypermarkets and 1,500 supermarkets, streamlining decisions related to renewals, terminations, and renegotiations.
Other notable initiatives include Erste Group Bank’s launch of a multi-faceted legal digitalization program featuring contract automation and AI adoption, which was facilitated by delegating leadership to offices outside its Austrian headquarters. The luxury goods conglomerate LVMH deployed a legal-specific version of its in-house AI platform, MalA, alongside a knowledge-sharing tool called Lexchange to promote greater AI usage across its global legal teams. Shell restructured its legal division, redistributing non-legal tasks back to respective business units and utilizing generative AI, which contributed to substantial cost reductions in legal operations.
Across the Atlantic, outside counsel management has also evolved through automation and performance-based selection systems. UK-based fintech and newly licensed bank Revolut replaced its traditional law firm panel with an AI-driven allocation model that matches legal mandates to firms based on relevant experience, pricing, and technology use. This system continuously updates law firm scores using feedback from in-house lawyers, also flagging billing irregularities and scope creep in work.
Switzerland’s UBS developed an AI auditing tool for law firm invoices, analyzing five years of billing data to ensure accurate time allocation by appropriately qualified lawyers, enhancing cost management. Spanish energy company Iberdrola implemented a four-part program to manage over 450 external legal advisers, focusing on data-driven contracts, collaborative policy research, knowledge sharing, and a joint pro bono effort. Similarly, IBM rationalized its legal spending by organizing 90% of matters under alternative fee arrangements and encouraging collaboration between law firms and alternative legal service providers.
Other commendable projects include ArcelorMittal’s collaboration with major law firms to pilot AI-based file-sharing and agent platforms, and National Grid Electricity Transmission’s joint development of a platform with law firm TLT to manage high volumes of land access legal requests critical to UK power grid upgrades.
These wide-ranging initiatives reflect an industry-wide trend toward integrating AI, data analytics, and centralized platforms in both internal legal teams and external counsel management, with the goals of improving efficiency, controlling costs, and better aligning legal functions with overall business strategy.