This article is one of a four-part series based on a webinar delivered by Helen Hannan Evans and Paul Clarke of The Listening People for The Centre for Legal Leadership.

You can have the best legal function strategy in the world. If it lives only in your head or in a 30-page deck no one opens, you may as well have no strategy at all.

Communication is where strategy becomes real. It’s how you help people understand what legal stands for, how you add value, and what needs to be different.

Own the narrative, or others will

As Ciarán Fenton (who has worked with dozens of GCs) points out, legal teams can’t define themselves in isolation and then hope the business “gets it”. If you don’t tell your story, others will fill in the gaps – and their version may not be accurate or flattering.

Communicating your strategy is not about spin. It’s about:

• Explaining the choices you’ve made
• Showing how they align with the organisation’s goals
• Making it easy for people to work with you in the right way

One strategy, different audiences

Your strategy is singular. The way you talk about it isn’t. The core content stays the same, but the emphasis shifts depending on who you’re speaking to.
Here’s how you might tailor your message.

1. The Board

What they care about: Governance, risk, long-term value, reputation.

The focus of your communication:

• How legal protects the enterprise while enabling strategic moves
• How your priorities link to the board’s risk appetite and strategic themes
• Clear evidence of impact (e.g. major regulatory programmes, crisis readiness, key risk mitigations)

Keep it high-level, outcome-focused and tightly linked to their agenda.

2. The Executive Team

What they care about: Delivery of the corporate strategy; performance of their business units; speed vs risk.

The focus of your communication:

• How legal will partner with them to deliver their plans
• The trade-offs you’re helping them manage (e.g. speed vs certainty, cost vs protection)
• Concrete examples of how legal involvement early changes outcomes (faster deals, smoother launches, fewer escalations)

Make it specific: “Here is how our strategy supports your priority to expand into X market / digitise Y offering.”

3. Your own team

What they care about: Purpose, clarity, workload, development, impact.

The focus of your communication:

• Why the strategy matters – for them and for the business
• How their work connects to something bigger than “task lists”
• What you will stop doing, not just what you’ll start
• What success looks like and how it will be recognised

Spend time here. This is the audience that will make or break implementation.

4. Business units and internal clients

What they care about: Getting things done, not being surprised, knowing “how to use legal”.

The focus of your communication:

• What services you provide and how to access them
• How and when you want to be involved (e.g. “Call us at idea stage, not after signing the term sheet”)
• Changes to ways of working (e.g. standard playbooks, self-serve tools, escalation routes)
• How your priorities will make their lives easier (fewer delays, clearer advice, more predictable timelines)

Use concrete stories and examples. “This is how we helped X business unit reduce contract cycle time while managing risk” is far more powerful than a bullet reading “We enable faster deals”.

Bring your strategy to life with simple assets

You don’t need a glossy internal campaign. A few well-designed, consistently used tools can make a huge difference:

• Strategy on a page – the single most important artifact; use it everywhere
• A short explainer deck – tailored versions for the board, exec and team meetings
• A strategy document, or blueprint – a reference guide with more detail on initiatives for those who need it
• A simple scorecard – 4–6 indicators that show progress on outcomes, not just activity

Make these visual and accessible. Your goal is for anyone to be able to explain the essence of your strategy in a couple of minutes.

Make it visible, measurable and routine

Communication is not a launch event; it’s a drumbeat. Strategy only becomes real when it shows up repeatedly in conversations and decisions.

Visible

• Share your strategy page in team spaces, onboarding packs, intranet pages
• Open team meetings with: “Which strategic priority does today’s agenda support?”
• Refer to it explicitly when you say yes – or no – to work

Measurable

You don’t need a complex dashboard, but you do need some proof points. For example:

• Stakeholder feedback (“How has your experience of legal changed in the last 6–12 months?”)
• Time allocation (percentage of time on truly strategic work vs firefighting)
• Business metrics you’ve influenced (time-to-contract, successful market entries, regulatory milestones)
• Team engagement and retention data

Use these to tell a story: “Here’s what we said we would prioritise. Here’s what’s changed already. Here’s what we’re tackling next.”

Routine

Bake the strategy into your rhythms:

• Monthly team check-ins against priorities
• Quarterly reviews with key stakeholders
• Annual refresh in line with the business planning cycle

Strategy is not static. As the organisation evolves, so should your legal function strategy, and your narrative about it.

Avoiding the “beautiful deck that gathers dust”

In our consulting work, we’ve seen every pitfall:

• The beautifully designed strategy full of generic phrases (“to be a trusted advisor”)
• The list of 15 “priorities” – which means nothing is truly prioritised
• The strategy launched once and never referenced again

All of these share the same underlying issues: lack of choice, lack of ownership, lack of communication.

The alternative is straightforward, even if it requires commitment and consistency.

1. Listen first to understand the perception gap and what the business really needs.
2. Co-create with your team so that the corporate strategy is translated into a clear legal purpose, priorities and behaviours.
3. Communicate relentlessly by tailoring messages to different audiences, making the strategy visible and using it to guide everyday decisions.

When you do this, the strategy stops being a document and becomes something much more powerful. It becomes a shared story about how the legal function helps the organisation succeed. It also becomes a source of clarity that gives the legal team confidence in the decisions they make and gives the business confidence in the work the legal team delivers.

When your board, executives, team and internal clients can repeat that story in their own words, consistently and accurately, that is when you know your strategy has not only been communicated. It has truly landed.

A strategy only has value when people can remember it, repeat it and act on it. Clear, consistent communication is what makes that possible. When you tailor the message for different audiences, make the strategy visible and use it in everyday conversations, it becomes part of how the team operates rather than something that sits on a page.

If you want your legal strategy to make a meaningful difference, focus on communication. Use it to create alignment, reinforce priorities and show the business how legal contributes to its success.

This is the final article in our four part series on articulating and communicating legal strategy. If you have not yet read the earlier articles, you can find them on our website. They cover the importance of a well-articulated strategy, the role of listening and the benefits of engaging your team in co-creation.

Other articles in this series include:

• Why a well-articulated strategy for your legal function is no longer a “nice to have”
• Listening: The strategic superpower legal teams often overlook
• From corporate strategy to legal function strategy: How to engage your team in the translation

To help you put these ideas into practice, you can download the accompanying handout which includes templates, listening questions and the one-page strategy framework. If you would like further support in communicating or embedding your strategy, please get in touch with us. We would be very happy to help.

FAQs

1. How often should we communicate our strategy?
Much more often than you think. Strategy should be referenced in team meetings, stakeholder updates, performance conversations and decision-making. Repetition and discussion builds clarity.

2. Should we tailor the message for different audiences?
Absolutely.

• Board: governance, risk, strategic enablement
• Exec: commercial partnership and speed
• Team: purpose, clarity, expectations
• Business units: how to work with legal and where you add value

3. What communication assets do we need?
At minimum:

• A strategy-on-a-page
• A simple, adaptable slide deck
• A strategy document / reference guide for the team
• A scorecard to show progress

4. How do we keep the strategy alive after launch?
Make it operational:

• Open team meetings with “Which priority does this support?”
• Use it to triage request
• Embed it into goal-setting and performance reviews

5. How do we know if our strategy is landing?
Look for signs such as:

• Stakeholders repeating your priorities back to you
• Fewer escalations and clearer expectations
• Improved speed to decision
• Better alignment between requests and priorities
• Team members using the strategy language unprompted
• Leaders advocating for your function on budget / resources