Why In-House Teams Keep Running Into The Same Friction
In-house lawyers are swimming in best practices. Every vendor offers them. Every consultant references them. Every policy framework promises alignment with them. Yet in the daily work of partnering with product, engineering, risk, or operations, something doesn’t line up. The guidance that looks solid on paper often collapses when applied to real decisions inside a fast-moving business.
Most best practices were designed for an environment that moved slowly. They assume stable processes, predictable systems, quarterly release cycles, and long planning horizons. That world is gone. Today’s companies ship continuously. They integrate AI into everything from customer interactions to internal workflows. They operate in regulatory conditions that shift every few months. And they manage risks that don’t look anything like the static models we learned earlier in our careers.
This mismatch creates friction that no one talks about directly. Legal is asked to uphold standards that no longer map to how the business works. Product teams try to comply with guidance that feels both rigid and outdated. Leaders think they are aligning with norms, only to discover those norms were built for a different era.
How ‘Best Practices’ Quietly Become Legacy Practices
The trouble with best practices is that once they earn the label, organizations treat them as settled. They become permanent fixtures in policies, playbooks, and approval workflows. They stop evolving. And the more static they become, the more out of sync they get with what the company actually needs.
Even strong legal teams fall into this trap. They rely on best practices because they feel defensible. They simplify decisions. They reduce the burden of reinventing guidance when the environment changes. But over time, these practices harden into a kind of institutional muscle memory. Everyone follows them because they exist, not because they still make sense.
The result shows up in subtle ways. A template that once protected the company now slows teams down. A policy that once clarified accountability now hides it. A process built for a lower-risk era now introduces new risk because it blinds the organization to emerging signals.
No one intends this to happen. It happens because static guidance rarely survives a dynamic system.
Why Next Practices Offer A More Realistic Path Forward
Next practices are not the opposite of rigor. They are a recognition that rigor only works when it reflects reality. Instead of treating guidance as fixed, next practices treat it as living. They acknowledge that technology, markets, and behaviors shift faster than policy cycles. They aim to keep legal aligned with what the company is actually facing, not what it used to face.
For in-house lawyers, this is not an abstract concept. It is a practical one.
Next practices help you evaluate whether the assumptions under your current frameworks still fit. They help surface where your templates, intake forms, or decision paths reflect a world your business no longer operates in. And they help you spot where outdated “good standards” are creating risk instead of managing it.
This is work that happens quietly in the background of every modern in-house function. It is the work that keeps legal relevant.
Where Legal Teams Feel The Gap Most Strongly
The gap between best practices and next practices is easiest to see in places where the environment is changing fast. AI governance. Adaptive products. Global data flows. Rapid sales cycles. Third-party risk. User consent. Automated decision systems. The topics may differ, but they all share the same pattern.
The guidance that worked last year doesn’t quite fit anymore. The underlying assumptions have shifted. And the more tightly teams cling to “proven” standards, the more mismatched the work becomes.
This is not a failure of the team. It is a signal that the environment has evolved.
In-house lawyers feel this mismatch first because they bridge the gap between business ambition and operational reality. When the friction grows, it’s usually a cue that the team is relying on best practices that no longer reflect the company’s actual needs.
Why I Created A Next Practices Resource for Legal Leaders
I authored the resource “Next Practice Instead of Best Practice” because I kept seeing the same pattern across legal teams I advise, partner with, or lead. Smart, thoughtful lawyers were doing everything “right,” yet their frameworks did not hold up under the weight of modern product cycles or emerging tech shifts. They weren’t doing anything wrong. They were using guidance built for a different world.
The resource is meant to help in-house lawyers examine where their current materials may no longer reflect reality and where evolution is overdue. It is not about throwing out structure. It is about making sure the structure still maps to what the business needs today. If you want to explore it, you can find it here.
Next Practices Are Not Optional For The Modern GC
Whether you support product, privacy, operations, risk, or corporate strategy, your guidance will eventually drift out of alignment if it stays static. The pace of technology guarantees it. The only question is whether your frameworks evolve with the business or lag behind it.
Next practices help you stay in sync. They help you recognize when to update assumptions, when to revise templates, and when to retire norms that no longer serve the company. They help legal become a partner in navigating change rather than a steward of outdated advice.
And they strengthen the GC’s voice in executive conversations where the company needs clarity, not historical standards.
A Quiet but Powerful Shift In In-House Practice
The companies that navigate emerging technology well share a common trait. Their legal teams stay grounded in reality, not nostalgia. They align their guidance with what they are actually seeing, not with what was once predictable. They anchor decisions in judgment, not old frameworks. They build guidance that moves with the business.
This shift doesn’t require fanfare. It requires awareness.
If the idea of next practices helps you revisit where your guidance may have gone stale, it has already done its job. In-house leaders do not need more rules. They need frameworks that move with them.
Best practices were built for the world we had. Next practices are built for the world we are entering.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, where she builds legal systems that make contracts faster to understand, easier to operate, and more trustworthy in real business conditions. Her work focuses on how legal rules allocate power, manage risk, and shape decisions under uncertainty. A serial CEO and former General Counsel, Olga previously led a legal technology company through acquisition by LexisNexis. She teaches at Berkeley Law and is a Fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. She has authored several books on legal innovation and technology, delivered six TEDx talks, and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and Above the Law. Her work treats law as essential infrastructure, designed for how organizations actually operate.
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