I recently attended a very interesting roundtable discussion at Allen & Overy organised by RSG Consulting, who run the annual Innovative Lawyers awards in the FT. The topic was ‘In-house legal: talent engagement and retention’. Various heavyweight luminaries of the in-house scene were there, and the debate was very interesting.

Inevitably, we covered the interaction between in-house legal teams and HR. There were a couple of comments in this section which deserve to be examined more closely, because they tell you a lot about why legal isn’t part of the mainstream in many companies.