Webinar

The State of In-House Legal Innovation in Europe 2026

Speakers

Moderator

Sarah Irwin

Community Builder & Founder, ITGC

Webinar Recap & Key Takeaways

In-house legal teams are under growing pressure to modernize, adopt AI, and deliver greater efficiency but the reality is that innovation often comes without dedicated resources, clear ownership, or additional budget.

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This webinar, hosted by ITGC and sponsored by SpotDraft, brought together senior legal and legal operations leaders to reveal findings from a four-month survey of 80+ professionals across 11 European countries. The discussion explored how in-house teams are approaching legal innovation, where the pressure to adopt AI is coming from, and the practical challenges teams face when trying to turn that pressure into meaningful change.

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The panel discussed who actually owns innovation within legal teams, why efficiency is the biggest driver for AI adoption, and how teams can make progress even when budgets are limited. They also explored why accuracy rather than job replacement emerged as the leading concern around AI, and how legal teams can build human review, verification, and appropriate-use boundaries into their workflows.

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The session closed with practical recommendations for moving from experimentation to a more structured approach to innovation, including assigning clear ownership, building competence around work that is already delivering value, treating accuracy as a design requirement, and making the business case for legal technology operational and data-driven.

Session highlights:

^01:08 Sarah Irwin introduces the report on in-house legal innovation in Europe, based on a four-month survey of 80+ professionals across 11 countries.

^07:38 The panel reveals that 63% said innovation decisions are driven by the GC, CLO, or Head of Legal, while 17% reported no clear owner.

^14:55 The discussion explores key drivers behind AI adoption, including efficiency, experimentation, competitiveness, executive pressure, and career development.

^24:00 Sarah Irwin highlights the gap between AI adoption pressure and funding, with 31% reporting a larger legal-tech budget and 22% having no budget at all.

^30:12 Helen Loots explains why teams should identify pain points and improve existing processes before adopting new technology.

^36:52 The panel reveals that accuracy is the top AI concern, with 70% of respondents identifying it as their biggest barrier.

^47:00 Sabrina Pervez explains how legal AI can save time on repetitive work while keeping humans in the review loop.

^57:58 Sarah Irwin shares practical recommendations for legal teams, including building competence around valuable work, treating accuracy as a design requirement, and making the business case for technology operational by considering integration, security, user experience, and implementation support.

Any legal AI that’s out there today is designed to save you time. It will speed up the repetitive processes that probably lawyers don’t enjoy doing very much, but it will not eradicate the need entirely for you as a human being to be in the loop.” — Sabrina Pervez, Regional Director, EMEA, SpotDraft

Speakers