A Practical Way to Prioritise Legal Work (When Demand Keeps Growing)

Legal teams everywhere are being asked to deliver more.

More contracts.
More regulatory awareness.
More support for the business.

But headcount and budgets rarely grow at the same pace.

So how do legal teams respond without simply working longer hours?

That was the focus of Radiant Law’s recent webinar with Lorna Curry, a former General Counsel with more than 35 years of experience, including 20 years at GE. Now working as a consultant, Lorna helps organisations rethink how their legal teams operate and where their time really goes.

In conversation with Radiant’s Ian Teague, Lorna shared a practical way for legal teams to prioritise work, improve efficiency, and focus on the areas where legal adds the most value.

Here are some key insights from the discussion.

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**1. The real problem is often the mix of legal work**

Legal teams often say they are overwhelmed by the volume of work.

But the real issue is often the mix.

A team might still be handling “contracts”, but the nature of those contracts may have changed. They may now be more complex, more bespoke, or more business-critical.

Without visibility into that change, it becomes difficult to explain why the team feels stretched or to make a compelling case for improving the operating model.

Understanding what work actually looks like today is the first step to improving how legal operates.

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2. The MoSCoW framework helps legal teams prioritise

One of the most practical tools Lorna shared was the MoSCoW prioritisation framework, which divides work into four categories:

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Must – the work where legal brings unique and essential value
Should – activities that keep the team effective and sustainable
Could – tasks that legal often helps with but may not need to own
Won’t – low-value activities the team should consciously stop doing

The goal is not to judge the work. It is to create clarity.

Because when everything feels urgent, legal teams often default to simply doing everything.

That is rarely sustainable.

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3. The biggest problem often sits in the “Could” category

Many lawyers assume their workload is dominated by critical legal tasks.

In reality, a surprising amount of time often sits in the “Could” category.

These might include:

attending meetings where legal input is limited
reviewing documents that do not require legal judgment
stepping in to fix operational gaps in other teams

Lawyers are naturally accountable professionals. If something might go wrong, they step in.

But over time that behaviour pulls legal away from its highest-value work.

Recognising the difference between important work and appropriate work for legal is key.

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4. Start with an honest inventory of the work

Lorna’s advice for teams starting this exercise was simple:

List everything you do.

Some teams track their activities for a couple of weeks. Others run workshops where everyone brings examples of the work they handle.

This inventory should include:

the work currently taking up time
the tasks that repeatedly cause friction
the things the team should be doing but never gets time for

Once that work is visible, teams can start categorising it and having more productive conversations about where legal effort should really go.

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5. Legal teams need better operational visibility

A key theme in the webinar was that legal often operates in what Lorna described as a “data-free environment.”

Lawyers rely on instinct and experience to understand workload pressures. But instinct alone rarely supports operational improvement.

Legal teams benefit from asking simple questions such as:

What types of work come in most often?
Which tasks are repetitive?
Which matters create the biggest bottlenecks?
Where does the team experience the most frustration?

Even basic tracking can reveal useful patterns.

Once those patterns are visible, it becomes much easier to improve processes, allocate resources more effectively, and have more meaningful conversations with the business.

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