Ask a dozen general counsel how they built their legal teams, and most will talk about design more than headcount. Building a team well means deciding which work it owns, who fills each seat, how it’s structured, and what kind of culture keeps good lawyers around. The leaders who treat those as deliberate choices end up with teams that scale with the business instead of straining against it.
Paragon’s research on how senior legal leaders are rethinking efficiency, technology, and talent shows teams doing more with the same resources, leaning on flexible legal talent and automation to cover gaps a permanent hire can’t. Below, 12 general counsel break down how they actually build their teams, from structure and roles to hiring, culture, and the resourcing mix, so you can build one that fits your business and the work in front of it.
For an established department, building a team doesn’t mean starting from zero. It means shaping four things at once: how the function is structured, which work it owns, who fills each role, and the culture that holds it together. Get those right, and legal becomes a partner the business plans around instead of a service desk it calls in an emergency.
Jennifer Miller, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Grammarly, frames the job through that wider lens:
| “I view myself as a business executive with a legal lens.”— Jennifer Miller, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Grammarly |
That view changes who you hire and how you organize them. A team that exists to move the business forward looks different from one that only fields legal questions, and the sections ahead walk through the decisions that separate the two: structure, roles, build versus route, hiring, culture, technology, and how you measure the result.
Structure is the first decision because it shapes every hire after it. Most in-house teams organize one of three ways. A functional structure groups lawyers by specialty, such as commercial, employment, or privacy, and routes work to the relevant expert. A client-focused structure embeds lawyers inside business units or regions so they own a relationship end to end. A hybrid blends the two, keeping specialists central while assigning business partners to the units that need steady coverage.
Jenn Wall, General Counsel at Intrinsic, describes the mindset the choice calls for:
| “You have to see yourself as an architect. You’re building something, and you have to think about the structure, the flow, and whether the team is set up to work well together.”— Jenn Wall, General Counsel, Intrinsic |
The right answer depends on team size, how specialized the work is, and how close the business wants its lawyers. The table below shows where each structure tends to fit.
| Types of Legal Team Structures | ||
|---|---|---|
| Legal team structure | Best fit | Trade-off to manage |
| Functional | Teams with enough volume to justify dedicated specialists | Business units can feel they lack a single point of contact |
| Client-focused | Companies that want lawyers embedded in units or regions | Generalists can stretch thin across unrelated matters |
| Hybrid | Mid-to-large teams balancing depth with business coverage | Requires clear rules on who owns what to avoid overlap |
Once the structure is set, the roles follow. A modern in-house team usually spans a general counsel or chief legal officer, one or more deputy or associate GCs, practice specialists in areas like commercial, intellectual property, employment, and data privacy, legal operations, paralegals, and flexible or contract attorneys who scale capacity up and down. The goal isn’t to fill an org chart; it’s to match capability to the work.
Rishi Varma, Chief Legal and Ethics & Compliance Officer at Cargill, keeps the emphasis on capability over tenure:
| “You need the right talent structure. You need people in the right roles, and you need to create pathways for growth based on capability, not just tenure.”— Rishi Varma, Chief Legal and Ethics & Compliance Officer, Cargill |
| Who Makes Up a Legal Team | ||
| Role | What they own | When to add one |
| General counsel or chief legal officer | Strategy, board and executive counsel, final judgment calls | The first senior hire that gives legal a seat at the table |
| Deputy or associate general counsel | Runs a practice area or region and manages other lawyers | When the GC can no longer own the day-to-day alone |
| Practice specialists | Deep expertise in commercial, IP, employment, or privacy | When a domain generates steady, complex work |
| Legal operations | Process, technology, budgets, and vendor management | When the team is large enough that coordination becomes the bottleneck |
| Paralegals | Contract intake, document management, and process support | To free lawyers from work that doesn’t need a law degree |
| Flexible or contract attorneys | Overflow, specialized projects, and interim coverage | When the need is real but temporary or hard to forecast |
No in-house team should do everything itself. The build-versus-route decision sorts each matter by how much judgment and business context it needs, then sends it to the resource that fits: the in-house team for work that depends on institutional knowledge, an outside law firm for bet-the-company matters, alternative legal service providers and flexible legal talent for overflow and specialized projects, and automation for high-volume routine tasks. It’s worth drawing an early line here, because many leaders still hear “outsourcing” and picture offshore, commoditized work; flexible legal talent works the opposite way, embedding experienced attorneys directly in your team and workflows.
Lisa Gorman, Chief Legal Officer at Eventbrite, draws the dividing line around judgment:
| “Work that requires context, trust, and decision-making under ambiguity stays in-house. We use flexible talent for volume and specialization.”— Lisa Gorman, Chief Legal Officer, Eventbrite |
Outside counsel and flexible talent work together. Firms stay essential for high-stakes, high-judgment work, while the rest can be handled faster and closer to the business. Luis Machado, General Counsel at TopBuild, keeps both options on the table:
| “We use outside counsel, which is useful for specific expertise and specialized advice. But we’ve also used temporary hiring. There are excellent paralegals and flexible legal resources who can come in and do a lot of work very quickly.”— Luis Machado, General Counsel, TopBuild |
Mapping your work this way is the core of making the business case for each resourcing option, and it tends to line up like this.
| Matching Legal Work to the Right Resource | ||
| Type of work | Best-fit resource | Why it fits |
| High-volume, repeatable tasks like NDAs and first-pass review | AI and automation | Standardized work clears fast and frees lawyers for judgment |
| Overflow and short-term surges | Flexible legal talent | Adds embedded capacity without a permanent seat |
| Specialized, time-bound expertise | Flexible talent or a firm | Matches a niche skill to a defined need |
| Sustained, business-critical work | In-house hire | Rewards long-term context and relationships |
| Bet-the-company, high-judgment matters | Outside law firm | Buys senior judgment, accountability, and credibility |
The clearest hiring test most general counsel use is whether the work will last. Sustained, predictable work rewards a permanent hire who accumulates context over years. A spike, a leave, or a niche project rarely justifies a new seat, and that’s where flexible legal talent fits: not as a stopgap, but as a standing option you can reach for whenever the workload calls for it. Timing is only part of the decision; the profile matters just as much. Sarah Wilson, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Circle, screens for adaptability:
| “Hire agile attorneys who are able to pivot and advise on various areas of the changing law.”— Sarah Wilson, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Circle |
Adding capacity thoughtfully also protects the team you already have. When overflow routinely lands on the same people, burnout follows, so pairing new hires with flexible support is often how leaders reduce their in-house team’s workload without overbuilding headcount they’ll have to justify later.
Structure and staffing decide what a team can do; culture decides whether good lawyers stay to do it. The leaders who build teams people want to work on tend to invest in development, trust, and exposure to the business rather than hoarding the interesting work. Alisha Cieslak, former Chief Legal and Risk Officer at Gordon Food Service, made that shift explicit:
| “I stopped just leading lawyers and started building leaders. I intentionally invested in developing my team and creating opportunities for them to gain visibility and build trust with leadership.”— Alisha Cieslak, former Chief Legal and Risk Officer, Gordon Food Service |
Part of building leaders is resisting the urge to do the work for them. Fabio Bertoni, General Counsel at The New Yorker, names a habit most lawyers share:
| “Finding talented people and letting them do their jobs is key. Lawyers often have a tendency to micromanage, and I’m no exception. But good management means trusting people and not slowing them down.”— Fabio Bertoni, General Counsel, The New Yorker |
The payoff shows up in retention. Eunice Buhler, General Counsel at G2, points to a track record most teams would envy:
| “I built my team when I first got to G2 three and a half years ago, and we have had no turnover.”— Eunice Buhler, General Counsel, G2 |
How a team is perceived inside the company shapes who wants to join it and what the business lets it touch. The strongest legal functions have moved from a reactive posture toward a strategic one. Eric Greenberg, EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary at Cox Media Group, describes the change:
| “We’re moving away from a model where someone calls legal only when there’s a legal issue, and toward one where the GC is at the table, helping map company strategy.”— Eric Greenberg, EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Cox Media Group |
Getting there means giving the team room to act, not just to advise. Ji-Hyun Park, Global Head of Legal at Intercom, sees that as the leader’s job:
| “It’s my job to empower my teams and trusting them to make those pragmatic decisions that align with the business priorities.”— Ji-Hyun Park, Global Head of Legal, Intercom |
Technology now enters the resourcing conversation before people do. Used well, AI absorbs repeatable tasks so attorneys spend more of their day on judgment, which is why it belongs in any plan for building a team rather than bolted on afterward. Andrew Epstein, General Counsel at Demandbase, pushes his team to find that work:
| “I’m really pushing the team on what is a repeatable process you do all the time that you’d like to not be doing, that you think you can use new technology for.”— Andrew Epstein, General Counsel, Demandbase |
Legal operations makes the gains stick. A dedicated ops function owns the tools, matter management, and metrics that keep a growing team coordinated, turning individual efficiency into a system the whole department runs on. The point isn’t to replace lawyers with software; it’s to clear routine work off their desks so the team’s judgment goes where it counts.
A team you can’t measure is a team you can’t defend at budget time. Most in-house leaders track performance across three areas: operational efficiency, budget management, and staffing and capacity. Clear metrics turn legal from a cost center into a function that can show its value in the same language the rest of the business uses.
| What to Measure on a Legal Team | |
| Focus area | Example metrics |
| Operational efficiency | Matter turnaround time, contract cycle time, self-service adoption |
| Budget management | Inside versus outside spend, cost per matter, flexible talent versus firm rates |
| Staffing and capacity | Workload per lawyer, overflow routed to flex, retention and time to hire |
Turning these decisions into a routine takes a few deliberate moves. Start small, let the results build the case for a bigger change, and revisit the plan as the business grows.
Building a legal team has grown into something bigger than filling seats. The general counsel setting the pace treat structure, roles, resourcing, and culture as one connected design, keep firms for the work that demands senior judgment, and lean on in-house hires, automation, and flexible talent for everything else. The result is a team that scales with demand instead of straining against it, and one people want to work on.
If you’re ready to build that balance, see where Paragon’s flexible legal talent fits into your resourcing mix.
Start with structure, then match roles and resourcing to the actual work. Strong teams pair permanent hires for sustained, high-judgment work with flexible legal talent, outside counsel, and automation for everything else, and they invest in a culture of trust and development so good lawyers stay.
A typical in-house team includes a general counsel or chief legal officer, deputy or associate GCs, practice specialists in areas like commercial and privacy, legal operations, paralegals, and flexible or contract attorneys who scale capacity as needs change.
Use flexible legal talent when the need is real but temporary or hard to forecast, such as overflow, leaves, or specialized projects. Hire when the work is sustained and business-critical, and use outside counsel for bet-the-company, high-judgment matters.
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