Julie Duvivier (above left) is GC for France and Belgium at Klépierre, one of Europe’s leading retail real estate companies. Before joining in 2021, she also held senior legal roles at CDC Investissement Immobilier and Twenty Two Real Estate Group, after starting her legal career in private practice at Jones Day and Freshfields. Cassandre Mariton (above right) founded NextGenLegal Advisory to help in-house legal leaders to to build high-performing, efficient and influential teams. Her career spans both in-house and private practice, with spells at Aviva, Skadden and Cleary.

Over the past decade, what has most fundamentally changed in the role of in-house counsel?

Julie Duvivier: The centre of gravity has moved. Ten years ago, we were seen primarily as risk managers – often the people who slowed things down. Today, the expectation is different: help the business move, safely, and faster.

At Klépierre, legal isn’t only about protection. It’s about unlocking value, in lease negotiations and tenant relationships, the lifeblood of our business, as well as in transactions, partnerships, development projects, sustainability commitments, and innovation. Our role is to find the path that maximises opportunity while keeping risk within acceptable parameters.

Cassandre Mariton: I agree, and I would add that it is not only about what in-house lawyers do; it is about how legal departments position themselves within the organisation. If you want others to see you differently, you have to act differently.

Legal expertise is table stakes. The best in-house counsel do not stop at legal advice: they make it decision-ready: clear, contextualised, and executable. Advice becomes strategic when it becomes usable.

What did ‘transformation’ mean in practice for your team?

Julie: It started with a simple but uncomfortable question: why do we exist as a legal department beyond compliance? Not our tasks, our purpose. Working with Cassandre, we articulated that purpose clearly. And once your ‘why’ is explicit, you stop behaving like a reactive service and start operating like a strategic function. The team could name what they truly do: enabling Klépierre’s ambitions with pragmatic, business-oriented counsel.

‘What gets measured gets valued. What doesn’t becomes invisible’

Cassandre: And that is the key: Julie’s team did not stop at the ‘why’. Purpose without execution is philosophy. Purpose with operating discipline becomes performance. Transformation is not an org chart. It is an operating model: decision rights, governance, ways of working, tools, and the culture that makes them stick.

In 2026, this is non-negotiable: more regulation, higher expectations, and flat or shrinking teams. Transformation is not a nice-to-have; it is how you protect the business, and keep creating value. Julie and her team shaped their ‘why’; we brought the method and the pace. We simply helped reveal what was already there and turn it into something executable.

What’s the most challenging part of managing an in-house legal team compared to private practice?

Julie: Stakeholder complexity. In private practice, feedback loops are clearer: an external client, defined deliverables, a partner structure. In-house, you are embedded in a business ecosystem with competing priorities everywhere. Commercial wants speed. Development wants ingenuity. Finance wants predictability. Compliance wants control. And you need to help all of them succeed, simultaneously.

Cassandre: That’s the in-house reality: you’re surrounded by people who think in different languages – ROI, delivery, customer experience, timing. That’s why context is the human edge. Legal judgement becomes valuable when it is anchored in business reality: the economics, the operational constraints, the market dynamics. Law without context is correct, and sometimes irrelevant.

Julie: You can redesign processes, deploy tools, change the structure, but if you don’t bring the team along, you get compliance, not transformation.

One concrete example: instead of dense legal memos, we create visual one-pagers that tell a story – here’s the opportunity, here’s the risk landscape, here’s our recommended path, and here’s the business impact.

What made the real difference is that legal design wasn’t a one-shot workshop. We built it over time. Cassandre and her team come back regularly to run refresh sessions, bring new tips and techniques, and challenge us with new questions, so the learning curve stays steep, and the quality level keeps moving upward as our business needs evolve.

‘Purpose without execution is philosophy. Purpose with discipline becomes performance’

Internally, we also created a legal design committee within the legal team. It acts as a quality gate: it validates the clarity and usability of our outputs before they go to the business. That governance is what helps us maintain a consistent standard, at scale.

This committee also drives the continuous improvement of our knowledge library. Beyond validating individual documents, it identifies recurring needs and commissions new resources: a reminder memo on a frequently asked question, a new standard clause, a visual explainer for a regulatory change. The library grows because the demand grows, and that demand is itself a signal that the team has internalised the logic of producing clear, reusable outputs.

Cassandre: That’s exactly how transformation sticks: not by producing a few great documents, but by building a capability with rhythm, standards, and ownership. Refresh cycles plus internal peer validation turn legal design from an initiative into an operating standard. And once it becomes a standard, business partnering changes level: you’re not just clearer, you’re reliably useful.

What do you expect from external counsel today, and what do you no longer want?

Julie: I want partners who understand my business, not just the law. Don’t send me thirty pages unless it is truly necessary. Give me three options, the trade-offs, and a recommendation I can take to decision-makers. I value counsel who can say: ‘Given your objectives, here are three approaches, each with a different risk-reward profile, and here’s what it means operationally.’

What I no longer want is advice that is technically flawless but disconnected from how decisions are made and executed in real life. The pace is higher, the stakes are broader – ESG, governance, reputation, stakeholder pressure – and legal teams are expected to be both guardians and enablers. External counsel is at its best when it brings perspective: benchmark, pattern recognition across sectors, and the ability to anticipate what will matter tomorrow, not only what is true today.

‘If it cannot be adopted, it is not a solution, it is a document’

I would add one dimension that is becoming increasingly rare: I value counsel who genuinely give their opinion. Not a hedge, not a structured disclaimer — an actual view. When you consult a lawyer, you are not just buying legal analysis. You are buying judgement. The fear of liability has made many external lawyers cautious to the point of silence on the very question clients are asking: what would you do?

In practice, the risk of giving a clear, well-reasoned recommendation is far lower than the commercial risk of being perceived as unhelpful. The best counsel I work with know this.

That’s the counsel we need: decision-ready, not just legally sound. But I also need something that legal advice alone does not guarantee: implementation support that ensures adoption, ownership, and measurable impact across the organisation. Great advice is one thing. Implementing it across a complex organisation, driving adoption, clarifying ownership, embedding the right governance, and measuring impact is another discipline entirely.

Cassandre: And that is exactly where the profession is shifting, and where the market is expanding. Traditional external counsel remains indispensable, particularly for high-stakes litigation, complex transactions, and specialised regulatory interpretation. But in-house teams increasingly need something adjacent: a partner who helps turn advice into operating reality, what happens after ‘the answer’: how you operationalise it, scale it, and make it stick.

What in-house teams increasingly reject is elegant analysis with no landing gear. If it cannot be adopted, it is not a solution, it is a document. Adoption fails for cultural and operational reasons, not because the legal analysis is wrong.
That is why starting with purpose, then operating model, then measurement is so powerful: it creates the conditions where tools, processes and technology actually deliver.

Why is demonstrating value such a critical topic for legal teams?

Cassandre: Because every function is now measured in business terms. Finance shows ROI. Operations shows efficiency. Marketing shows acquisition and retention. Legal often struggles because its value is framed defensively –  ‘we kept you out of trouble’. That can position legal as a cost centre, and cost centres get squeezed.

Legal teams are not only protectors, but functions that influence strategy, drive transformation and support business growth. What gets measured gets valued. What doesn’t get measured becomes invisible.

Julie: At Klépierre, we are considered core business, and we communicate impact accordingly. Positioning matters as much as structure. At Klépierre France, my direct line to the head of France and my seat on the French management committee are not formalities, they are operational levers.

When legal is represented at that level, the conversations are different: earlier, more complete, more strategic. It means I can shape decisions before they are made, not just manage consequences after. That proximity to leadership is what transforms legal from a support function into a true business partner. That is why we don’t measure volume for its own sake, we measure what drives business outcomes.

And we did the exercise properly: we put our existing indicators on the table, rationalised them, refocused them, and turned them into a proactive decision tool.

We track lead times from drafting to signature (and key procedural timelines), because speed, when controlled, creates value. We monitor adoption metrics such as automation usage in leasing and the share of procurement contracts signed autonomously through standardised pathways. We also track digitalisation fundamentals, dematerialisation rates across leasing, real estate and transactions, and digital archiving, because scale requires traceability and disciplined data.

Finally, we connect legal to business-facing impact through indicators such as signed disposals value and annual external counsel fees, to steer resource allocation and performance, not just report activity.

Cassandre: And it changes internally too. Teams want to know their work matters. Measuring impact strengthens morale, attracts talent, and builds credibility for innovation. Metrics are not control; when chosen well, they are recognition.

If you had to give a blueprint, how should an in-house legal department organise itself?

Cassandre: Align with the business, geography, business lines, product lines. Structure reduces friction. But structure alone is not the answer. Performance comes from the operating model: governance, decision rights, workflows, and culture. You can have a beautiful org chart and still fail.

Julie: Clarity of roles is essential: no duplication, no gaps. We have deliberately worked to break down silos and foster genuine collaboration across the organisation. One concrete illustration: our team members are now invited to asset review meetings as full business partners, not just as validators at the end of the chain. That presence changed the quality of the conversations, and frankly, the quality of the decisions.

We’ve reinforced business partnering with clear ownership by value chain. Our business partners don’t just provide support, they own outcomes: intake, playbooks, templates, stakeholder rhythm, and continuous improvement. That’s how you build consistency and trust with the business.

‘The counsel we need is decision-ready, not just legally sound’

We have also made a deliberate choice to dismantle the ‘guardians of the temple’ reflex. Legal knowledge is not a competitive advantage when it is hoarded, it becomes one when it is shared. We also give teams meaningful autonomy on well-scoped legal questions. The goal is not to make everyone a lawyer: it is to make legal intelligence pervasive in the organisation.

Cassandre: That’s where business partnering becomes an operating model, not a title: clear ownership, standard ways of working, and continuous improvement. It also creates the right basis to deploy technology intelligently, not tools for tools’ sake, but automation where it reduces friction and frees time for judgement.

But the deepest lever is cultural. Tools and processes can be copied. A legal team that has genuinely internalised a business mindset: one that asks ‘how does this create value?’ before ‘what does the law say?’ cannot be replicated overnight. That cultural shift doesn’t happen by decree. It happens through repeated exposure: joint working sessions, shared language, feedback loops with the business, and leaders who model the behaviour they want to see.

Many legal leaders know they need to transform, but don’t know where to begin. Your advice?

Julie: Start with why. Define your purpose beyond compliance. Once that’s clear, everything flows: structure, processes, KPIs, and technology.

One practical piece of advice I would add: take the time to co-create the framework before you scale it. There is a temptation to move fast and speed matters but the teams that build sustainable transformation are those who invest upfront in genuine buy-in. Co-creation takes longer at the start. But a framework that people have shaped together is adopted, not just tolerated. That early investment in collective design pays back many times over in execution speed and team ownership.

And don’t do it alone. Transformation is demanding. It requires an external perspective and internal ownership, and a leadership posture that brings the team along.

There is also something leaders rarely say out loud, but which I have learned to name: one of the most underestimated barriers to transformation is the leader’s own unconscious doubt about the team’s capacity to change. If you do not genuinely believe your team can adapt, that hesitation shapes every decision: how you communicate, what you delegate, how much you invest in upskilling. Building confidence in the team’s capacity for change is not a soft skill. It is a strategic posture. And it starts by saying, explicitly: I believe you can do this.

Cassandre: And that confidence Julie describes, it is also what transformation ultimately produces. When a team sees its work matter, when legal becomes a language the whole organisation speaks, something shifts permanently.
So: start small but think in systems. Choose one high-impact area: a recurring transaction type, a critical business interface, a pain point everyone feels. Redesign it end-to-end, measure the impact, learn fast, then scale. And remember: if it can’t be adopted, it’s not a solution, it’s a document.

The next generation of lawyers expects purpose, growth, and continuous learning. When you upgrade the operating model, you upgrade the employee experience and that becomes your most powerful retention lever. Transformation is not just about performance. It is about meaning.

The legal profession is at an inflection point. The leaders who will define it are those who combine rigour with clarity, performance with meaning, and who have the courage to act before they are asked to.