Unstainable Workloads and What GCs Can Do About It

LawyersWeekly’s editor Jerome Doraisamy invited our own David Pierce to join him on The Corporate Counsel Show Podcast for an in-depth look at issues facing in-house legal professionals today. They discussed Axiom’s General Counsel (GC) survey and its findings around the growing volume of work in light of lower budgets, hiring freezes, inadequate resourcing, and related challenges. Considering how closely connected GCs and their team's budgets are to the economic climate and the need to offer positive work/life balance, Pierce offers his insight into the most pressing issues GCs should address.

David Pierce is chief commercial officer at Axiom and a former general counsel at THX Ltd. He’s not surprised by the stress expressed in the GC survey results, but what does surprise him is the large number of GCs (85%) reporting increasing work, decreasing budgets, and headcount freezes. The result: everybody is understaffed.

Doraisamy reflects on what he referred to as an "apocalyptic" feeling expressed by 79% of survey respondents, who described their workload as fundamentally unmanageable, given the strained resources that they possess. But Pierce offers a silver lining with a wealth of new options and approaches that GCs can use today to manage the unmanageable without breaking the budget.

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