What is a lawyer’s role in keeping a company competitive? Rules, risk management, and ethics still matter. But it will not surprise anyone that box-ticking is not enough. Competitiveness now depends on an open culture. Policies and audits alone do not create openness. Catch-all terms, one-sided contracts, and even the shiniest ESG report cannot deliver it. Openness is a daily practice. It makes it safe to ask hard questions, surfaces uncomfortable facts early, and turns stakeholders into contributors rather than spectators. This is where today’s lawyer steps up. Not only as a guardian of the rulebook, but as a culture-builder. Through legal design, lawyers make commitments clear, decisions faster and behaviour more consistent. They establish simple guardrails, allowing teams to move quickly while still doing the right thing. They design ways of working that encourage collaboration rather than defensiveness. They keep honest dialogue flowing between teams, customers, regulators and investors. In a world of constant change and growing complexity, quarterly updates and annual reports cannot keep up. Lawyers who work closely with the business and weave legal thinking into products, governance, incentives, and communication help the company move faster while staying true to its values. This article shows, with concrete examples, what that means in practice for lawyers.
Polyakova et al. (Sat,) studied this question.