As Vice President of Talent Success at Axiom, I've had the opportunity to witness firsthand how the legal profession is evolving. The traditional model of legal excellence, characterized by deep expertise in specific areas of law, is no longer sufficient in today's rapidly evolving business environment. I recently had a conversation with Peter Connor, who pioneered the concept of the "T-shaped lawyer" over a decade ago and brings over 25 years of experience from across the US, UK, Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia in various general counsel (GC) roles. His groundbreaking work has transformed how we think about legal talent and professional development in the corporate legal sphere.
The Evolution of Legal Excellence
The concept of the T-shaped lawyer represents a fundamental shift in how we view legal talent and excellence. While most legal professionals are "I-shaped," or possess deep expertise in specialized areas of law but limited capabilities beyond their core expertise, the modern business environment demands more. The T-shaped model maintains this crucial depth of legal knowledge while expanding horizontally into broader business capabilities and competencies.
What truly sets the T-shaped lawyer model apart isn't just about developing business acumen but also about fundamentally transforming how lawyers view their role within organizations. Being "business-minded" or providing "commercial legal advice" are now baseline expectations for in-house counsel. The real transformation happens when lawyers step outside their traditional lane and embrace a dual identity: wearing both the lawyer and business professional hats.
A T-shaped lawyer is fundamentally "a businessperson, not just a lawyer, who provides business input and advice, not just legal advice, and does business work, not just legal work for the benefit of the company as a whole, not just the legal department," Connor explains. This distinction is crucial for understanding the model's transformative potential. While the vertical bar of the "T" represents deep legal expertise, the horizontal bar encompasses two critical categories of work that extend beyond traditional legal responsibilities.
The Dual Dimensions of Business Work
Internal Business Work
This first category involves legal operations, the business of running an effective legal department. While dedicated legal ops professionals often handle these responsibilities, every in-house lawyer should understand and support these functions rather than disengage from them. This includes understanding legal budget management, resource allocation, technology implementation, and process optimization within the legal department.
Client Business Work
This more transformative category directly benefits business and functional executives, existing on a spectrum between two key activities:
Business Partnering: This goes beyond the nominal title of "business partner" to actively engage in providing business input and advice separate from legal counsel. It involves raising business questions, identifying problems and opportunities, and contributing to strategic discussions from a business perspective. Effective business partners don't just respond to legal issues; they proactively identify business opportunities and risks.
Business Leadership: This represents the highest form of business engagement, where lawyers take the initiative to identify business problems and opportunities, and then lead cross-functional teams to address them. This might involve leading strategic initiatives, driving innovation projects, or spearheading organizational change efforts.
The Transformation Challenge
One of the most significant obstacles lawyers face in this transformation is their own professional identity. The journey of becoming a lawyer is so intensive, from law school to establishing a career, that it becomes deeply intertwined with personal identity. The strong identification with being "just a lawyer" can become a barrier to adaptation and growth. Many lawyers struggle to see themselves as business professionals first and legal experts second.
The solution lies in developing what Connor calls the "business person mindset," or a fundamental shift from thinking like "just a lawyer" to thinking like a business professional who happens to have legal expertise. This isn't about adding random "soft skills." Instead, it's about developing specific capabilities that enable meaningful business work beyond legal responsibilities. These capabilities might include strategic thinking, financial acumen, project management, and leadership skills.
Navigating Common Challenges
One common concern among lawyers transitioning to this model is the potential for conflicts of interest when legal advisory work overlaps with business roles. However, experience suggests that such conflicts rarely materialize in practice. The key lies in understanding that business input should always align with the company's overall interests, not just individual stakeholders' short-term goals.
Another challenge is managing the transition while maintaining excellence in legal work. Success requires a strategic approach to professional development, including:
- Creating clear action plans with concrete milestones
- Taking a structured approach to identifying and developing specific business capabilities
- Leveraging external support when needed to create space for professional evolution
- Embracing the mindset shift as a continuous learning journey
Measuring Progress and Success
The T-shaped lawyer spectrum helps professionals understand their journey and measure progress. Early-stage lawyers focus primarily on traditional legal work and developing core legal skills, which is an appropriate starting point for junior professionals. As they mature, they increase engagement in business work, striking a balance between legal expertise and business capabilities, ultimately achieving greater strategic impact.
What's particularly striking is how the returns on investment shift over time. Early in a lawyer’s career, the returns on developing legal expertise are naturally higher. However, there's a crucial crossover point where investing in business capabilities begins to yield greater returns than purely legal skill development. This is especially true in-house, where the biggest differentiator isn't necessarily legal expertise but the ability to contribute meaningfully to business objectives.
The Future of Legal Excellence
In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) and technology increasingly handle routine legal tasks, business work becomes even more crucial. While AI might eventually manage many traditional legal tasks, the ability to identify business problems, lead cross-functional teams, and drive strategic initiatives remains uniquely human. Rather than seeing technology as a threat, T-shaped lawyers view it as an enabler that creates space for more meaningful business work.
For lawyers interested in beginning this transformation, several practical approaches stand out:
- Start with business partnering immediately; offer business insights alongside legal work.
- Seek out business projects to learn process improvement, project management, and design thinking.
- Focus on "doing less to do more" rather than trying to "do more with less."
- Leverage new technologies to handle routine tasks, creating space for higher-value business work.
- Build relationships across the organization, not just within legal circles.
- Develop expertise in areas that complement legal knowledge, such as data analytics or change management.
The ultimate measure of success isn't in traditional metrics but in how relationships with business partners evolve. Success comes when colleagues seek your input on business matters regardless of legal implications, and when you find yourself proactively engaging in business opportunities rather than waiting for legal issues to arise.
At Axiom, we've consistently observed that lawyers who embrace this broader vision of their role stand out significantly. While clients may not explicitly ask for T-shaped lawyers, they invariably recognize and value the additional dimensions these professionals bring to their organizations. The future of legal practice isn't just about legal excellence; it's about combining that expertise with business acumen and leadership to drive organizational success. As the legal profession continues to evolve, the T-shaped lawyer model provides a clear framework for remaining relevant and impactful in an increasingly complex business environment.
💡 Learn how you and your team can implement the T-shaped lawyer method to take your in-house legal work to the next level.
