How to make your legal team “commercial” without sacrificing integrity

Most legal teams have been told to “be commercial” but get little clarity on what that really means. Adrian Moffatt, Executive General Manager, Legal & Corporate at Ausco Modular Group breaks down what business leaders actually want from legal, and how to deliver it without lowering standards.

A $47 million acquisition stalls in a Sydney boardroom. Legal flagged gaps in IP ownership. The business unit, eyeing a competitor’s approach, pushes to close within 48 hours. The CEO asks, “Why is legal slowing this down? Can’t they just be more commercial?”

Six months later, the target company faced patent litigation that could have wiped out 60% of the deal’s value. Legal’s “delay” had saved $28 million, but no one gave legal credit for what didn’t happen.

This scenario plays out in boardrooms around the world. Yet most organisations struggle to define what “be commercial” actually means for legal. General Counsel hear the demand constantly: be faster, more flexible, less of a blocker. But they receive little guidance on how to deliver that without compromising their duty to protect the company.

Being commercial doesn’t mean doing less law or lowering standards. It means doing law differently. The best legal leaders don’t choose between protecting the company and enabling business. They build systems that deliver both.

What “Be Commercial” Actually Means

Stripping away the vague frustration, executives aren’t asking legal to lower standards. They want three concrete things from legal.

First, they want risk translated into business consequences.
“This indemnity clause is problematic” means nothing to someone managing a P&L. “This clause costs us $2 million in insurance premiums and disqualifies us from $50+ million in government contracts” is a business decision they can make. The legal risk is identical, but only one connects legal analysis to business outcomes.

Second, they want structured options, not binary approvals.
When legal says “we can’t do this,” the business hears “no.” When legal says, “here are three ways to structure this: Option A is fastest but exposes us to X risk; Option B takes two weeks longer but eliminates that exposure; Option C requires board approval but protects us completely,” the business hears partnership.

Third, they want predictable timelines, not variable review cycles.
The frustration isn’t that legal review takes ten days. It’s that identical contracts take three days or thirty, with no clear reason. Unpredictability is worse than slowness. If business units know legal review takes two weeks, they can plan for it. If turnaround time is always uncertain, they will pad their timelines or bypass legal altogether.

These aren’t requests to compromise quality. They are requests for legal to operate systematically, building capabilities that deliver speed and risk management together.

“Being commercial doesn’t mean doing less law or lowering standards. It means doing law differently.”

The Three Systems That Enable Commercial Legal Work

You can’t hire your way to being commercial. When contract volume doubles, headcount doesn’t. The solution isn’t working harder or developing “better business judgment.” It’s building systems that scale your judgment and make your expertise accessible without creating bottlenecks.

System 1: Decision-Making Frameworks That Scale Without You
The best legal teams make themselves optional for routine decisions. This isn’t delegation, it’s systematisation. Playbooks define when business units can approve standard terms. Templates embed pre-negotiated positions. Risk-tiered workflows route low-risk contracts through streamlined paths while flagging unusual provisions for legal review.

You’re not replacing judgment. You’re encoding it into frameworks that business teams can apply independently for 70 to 80 per cent of matters, while ensuring the 20 to 30 per cent that truly need legal review get your focus. Expertise stays focused where it adds the most value, while routine matters move at business speed.

System 2: Business Model Fluency That Transforms How You Communicate Risk
You can’t give commercial advice without understanding how your business makes money, not just the general industry model but your company’s specific unit economics, margin structure, and strategic priorities.

The best General Counsel attend quarterly business reviews, understand P&Ls at the product level, track risk and opportunity against forecasts, and know which deals matter strategically versus those that only look big.

This fluency transforms how you communicate risk:

• Legal-speak: “This data residency clause creates compliance issues.“
• Business-speak: “This clause blocks us from 40% of our European pipeline, roughly €18 million annually, and requires €3 million to rearchitect our infrastructure.“

The issue is identical. The impact is visible, actionable, and prioritised.

System 3: Early Involvement Protocols That Prevent Structural Problems
Legal brought in late at the contract review stage has two options: approve or delay. Every “delay,” even when legitimate, reinforces the “blocker” perception. While legal involved at deal conception has a third option: shape the structure so it works commercially, operationally, and legally from the start.

Early involvement isn’t about giving legal veto power sooner. It’s about designing deals that move faster because they’re built correctly. When legal understands commercial objectives early, it can architect solutions that enable approvals in days, not weeks.

By the time you’re drafting contracts, most options are gone. In the strategy phase, everything is still negotiable.

Executives must change their behaviour too. Legal should be at the same early meetings where finance, operations, and product discuss strategy. The marginal cost is one more person in the room. The benefit is that deals don’t need to be rebuilt later.

When You Build These Systems and Still Get Called “Uncommercial”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: some organisations say they want commercial legal teams but structurally prevent them from becoming one. You’ll know you’re in this situation when:

• Legal is measured by cost per contract, not business outcomes.
• Legal is excluded from strategy meetings but blamed when deals stall.
• Business units celebrate “getting something past legal.“

If your organisation works this way, no amount of better playbooks will fix it. The problem isn’t your capability. It’s whether leadership actually wants legal as a strategic partner or just a faster rubber stamp.

The best General Counsel tackle this directly with one conversation: What does success look like for legal? What authority does legal need to deliver it? How will we measure if it’s working?

If you can’t get clear answers, you’re optimising for a goal your organisation hasn’t committed to.

From Bottleneck to Business Velocity

The demand to “be more commercial” often feels like criticism because it’s usually delivered that way. But underneath the frustration is a legitimate request: help us move faster while keeping risk manageable.

You can’t deliver that by working harder, saying yes more often, or relying on instinctive “business judgment.” You deliver it by building systems that scale expertise, translate analysis into business terms, and solve problems before they require heroic fixes.

General Counsel who lead this transformation aren’t celebrated for preventing disasters. They’re recognised for enabling growth. Deals close faster. Products launch confidently. Partnerships execute efficiently. Legal becomes a source of clarity, speed, and strategic insight.

This isn’t weaker lawyering. It’s not “business judgment” replacing legal judgment. Its legal expertise delivered through systems that make it accessible, scalable, and connected to business outcomes.

The best legal teams don’t get asked to “be more commercial.” They’ve built systems that make the question obsolete.

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