86% of GCs say legal contributes significantly. Only 17% of the C-suite agrees. A new TRI video series unpacks the gap and what GCs are doing about it.
Ask a general counsel how much their legal department contributes to the wider business, and most will tell you: a lot. Ask the rest of the C-suite the same question, and you’ll get a very different answer.
That gap is the starting point for a new video series from the Thomson Reuters Institute, breaking down the findings from the 2026 State of the Corporate Law Department report. In the introduction below, Mike Abbott, head of the Institute, walks through what the report actually measures and why the disconnect matters more than it might first appear.
The numbers are hard to ignore. 86% of GCs surveyed said they view legal as a significant contributor to the business. Only 17% of other C-suite executives agreed, and 42% said legal contributes little or not at all. It’s not that legal departments are standing still — technology adoption as a strategic priority doubled year over year, and many departments are already seeing real efficiency gains. The problem is that efficiency alone isn’t translating into a story the rest of the business believes.
That’s the thread this series will pull on. Over the next few videos, we’ll dig into how GCs are trying to close that gap: tying legal advice to business objectives, presenting spend in terms the C-suite already understands, and treating risk management as something that serves the business rather than just protects it.
Catch the rest of the videos in this series here.
2026 State of the Corporate Law Department Report
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