Transcript of Beyond Billable - Driving Conversations with Hans Albers

Pim Betist: Welcome Hans.

Hans Albers: Yeah, nice to be here. Good morning.

Pim Betist: Good morning. We’re in kind of a special studio today. This is a NIO, a fully electric car, and it’s quite special. We even have some water in the fridge. Would you like some?

Hans Albers: Sure, thank you.

Pim Betist: You know what I love about NIO?

Pim Betist: They’ve done something really innovative. With this car you don’t actually have to charge the battery. You can, but you don’t have to.

Hans Albers: You don’t?

Pim Betist: No, you can just swap it. That’s quite something, right?

Hans Albers: Ah, right.

Pim Betist: To pull off something like that you really need to be innovative and think outside of the box. It’s not just about having the idea, you also have to execute it properly. That combination is what makes it inspiring tome. And it’s exactly the kind of innovation I’d like our audience to hear about. Because they tend to be a little stuck in their thinking. Having you in this car is also very beneficial for our audience, because you have a lot of relevant experience. I’m glad you wanted to join me for this ride.

Pim Betist: So Hans, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Hans Albers: Sure, sure. My name is Hans Albers. I’m a director in legal management consulting at Deloitte, and I’m leading the practice in the Netherlands. Recently we started this brand new team, and we focus on legal function transformation, legal operations, and technology.

Hans Albers: Obviously, a lot of focus these days is around the application of AI for lawyers, which is an interesting but also challenging subject.

As for my background, before joining Deloitte I worked as an in-house lawyer. I was head of legal operations at Juniper Networks. I’ve also been very focused on the in-house community for a long time. For five or six years I was on the board of ACC, which we can talk about later. And I also spent a few years in the US as head of legal for Cisco there.

Pim Betist: Sounds like you’ve gathered a lot of experience with in-house legal functions. Can you talk a bit about what makes a good in-house counsel, and how the role of such a person is changing?

Hans Albers: The in-house counsel role is a very interesting one. In my view, it’s probably the most rewarding role you can have as a lawyer, because it puts you very close to the business. You’re not just advising from a distance, you’re right there, helping solve the issues that matter to the leadership team.

Those issues can be anything from regulatory challenges to contracting and corporate matters, but you’re always close to where decisions are actually being made. Of course, you still bring a different perspective, because as a lawyer you tend to look at risk, while for the CEO and the business leaders, taking risks is part of how they grow the business. So your job is to balance that tension.

That’s very different from being outside counsel, where you provide advice and then it’s up to the client whether they use it or not. As an in-house lawyer, you live with your advice. If you tell the business to go a certain way, you’re also there to face the consequences and find solutions if things don’t go as planned.

That’s why I always tell people moving from a law firm into an in-house role: you need to realize that it goes far beyond just giving advice. Your guidance has to be executed and implemented. And if it turns out to be wrong, you still have to live with the consequences and help fix the situation going forward.

It can be a very demanding role. The idea that being in-house is somehow more relaxed than working at a law firm is really outdated. That cliché no longer holds true. The roles are very different, but in many ways, I think the in-house counsel role is one of the most interesting a lawyer can have.

Pim Betist: And what are the most common challenges you hear from general counsel and senior lawyers in these in-house roles?

Hans Albers: There are a few challenges that come up again and again. The first one is the workload. For as long as I can remember, legal departments have had more work than they can handle. There’s always a shortage of people and too many matters to deal with.

The second challenge, which has become very visible in the last couple of years, is the sheer volume of new regulations. They come from everywhere: European rules, international trade laws, new digital regulations, and of course the AI Act. If you’re in a regulated industry like banking or insurance, there’s constantly something new to keep up with, and that makes the job very complex.

And then there’s a third, more recent challenge: how to deal with the arrival of AI for lawyers. What does it mean for the legal function? How will it change the way work gets done? Those questions are on top of the regular day-to-day pressure of keeping the business running safely and compliantly.

Pim Betist: So would you say that generative AI is actively changing the role of in-house lawyers?

Hans Albers: Absolutely. It’s already changing the role in many ways. Lawyers now have tools that let them work differently. Think about contract analysis, for example. Instead of reviewing one agreement at a time, you can now analyze hundreds or even thousands. You can extract information across all of them and give the business insights that were simply impossible before.

I remember about ten years ago my CFO asked me for a report on all the contracts where we had the right to change prices. We had over ten thousand agreements in our database, but I had no way to analyze them at scale. With today’s AI tools, you can. That fundamentally changes the way you support the business.

And it’s not just about efficiency, like getting through contract reviews in minutes instead of hours. The real opportunity is that you can spend more time with the business, understand their challenges, and provide a more strategic perspective. That’s where I see the role evolving.

Pim Betist: That’s quite a shift. Its sounds their role is becoming way more interesting. Do you see the right level of adoption when it comes to tools like document review? It seems like low-hanging fruit.


Hans Albers: To be honest, not yet. What I see in many organizations is that they’re running pilots. Usually a few enthusiastic people start tinkering with different tools. They try things out, but it often stays very limited. I talk to people who say, “Yeah, we’ve got this Copilot license and it’s great for reviewing my emails.” Fine, but to me that sounds like a glorified spell checker. Real adoption is about more than that. It’s about understanding what AI can really do to transform the way you work.

Buying the tool is only the first step. Adoption isn’t a one-time event where everyone goes through AI training, gets tool training, and that’s it. That’s actually just where it starts.

You need to think about the whole change process. The communication, the planning, the effort it takes to bring people along. I’m working on a project right now with colleagues from Deloitte’s human capital consulting team, who specialize in workforce transformation. Together we’re focusing on what workforce transformation looks like for the legal function, because that’s a different ballgame altogether.

For a general counsel, this is really important to understand. If you just buy a tool without planning the transformation, two years later you might find nobody is using it. And then the question becomes: why did you buy it in the first place?

One lesson I learned a long time ago is that if you give people a tool to do their work in a different way, you have to make sure they don’t have any alternative way of doing it.

If there’s an old system, take it away. If the old and new systems run side by side, people will always fall back on what they know. For example, if you roll out a document generation tool, don’t allow people to keep downloading templates from the hard drive. You need to redesign your processes to match the new way of working.

That’s why my advice is always: look at your processes first, before you buy a tool. If you don’t fix your processes, all you end up with is a broken process that’s been automated. And that doesn’t necessarily make it any better.

Pim Betist: How about legal operations? That must be booming at the moment.

Hans Albers: It is. Legal operations is moving from a niche function to a more strategic role within the legal department. We saw this shift in the US already about ten years ago, then in the UK, and now it’s happening in Europe too.

In the last twelve to eighteen months I’ve noticed it really picking up in the Netherlands. Many organizations are setting up their first legal operations role, or redefining it, because they understand it’s a core competency. You can’t just have someone do it on the side anymore, like spending ten percent of their time. You need people with the right skill set, and often they don’t even come from a legal background. They might come from finance, IT, or both.

Of course, it helps if legal operations professionals understand how lawyers work, but they don’t necessarily need to be lawyers themselves. What really matters is that they know how to implement technology and manage change.

A big part of the role is about picking and choosing the right tools for the department, building the business case, securing the budget, and then actually implementing those tools. That’s not a typical lawyer’s skill set. Most lawyers aren’t natural project managers, and they’re not usually experienced in building a financial case for buying technology.

Pim Betist: It also seems to me that legal operations sits on a huge amount of data. They need that data to prove their value to the organization. Am I right?

Hans Albers: Absolutely. But that’s also still an area where many legal functions are trying to find their way.

The big question is: what kind of data do legal teams have, and how can they use it effectively? Do you need specialized tools to make sense of it, or can you work with more generic platforms?

That’s where AI is becoming really interesting. Tools like Harvey or Legora let you use the data already sitting in your organization, even if it’s not perfectly structured. It could be contracts, litigation files, outside counsel reports, budgets, or spend data. With AI you can search across it and generate insights.

Of course, the data still needs to be secure, and certain requirements need to be met. But compared to a contract lifecycle management system, where your contracts have to be in good shape before the tool can use them, AI is less picky. That flexibility is a big shift.

I was talking recently with the CIO and the general counsel of a client about a CLM tool. The CIO said, “I don’t necessarily want a separate system. I just want to be able to use data as data, in a data lake, and then have tools that can work with it without being too rigid.”

That’s a development I didn’t really foresee, but with AI it’s becoming reality. It reminds me how much things have changed. Twenty-five years ago people were still debating electronic signatures or whether you could have a corporate database for documents. Now we’re talking about AI assistants that can draft, search, and analyze for lawyers.

It’s impressive, but it also raises the question: what’s the future of the legal role in all of this?

Pim Betist: Exactly. And I know the ACC recently published a report that touched on that. But first, for people who don’t know, can you explain what the ACC is and what it does?

Hans Albers: The ACC is the Association of Corporate Counsel, a US-based organization for in-house lawyers. In the US it’s huge, but in Europe it’s also quite strong. Globally they have about 45,000 members, and in the Netherlands there are around three to four hundred active members.

It’s really a networking community, focused on sharing experiences, knowledge, and professional development. They organize events, conferences, and publish reports on how the legal function is evolving.

In recent years the ACC has been pushing two main themes. First, making sure legal has a seat at the table and that general counsel report directly to the CEO. Second, lobbying for legal privilege for in-house counsel in Europe, which still isn’t recognized everywhere the way it is in common law countries.

Pim Betist: That’s interesting. I read their report with a lot of joy, especially the part about skyrocketing adoption of new tools. But you also wrote on LinkedIn that adoption is not the same as transformation. Can you elaborate on that?

Hans Albers: Adoption means people have access to a tool and maybe they’re using it, but that doesn’t mean their way of working has changed. Transformation is much bigger. It’s about asking: how do we deliver legal support in a new way?


That requires analyzing how people actually work. Where do they spend their time? What tasks could be reshaped with technology? Only then can you move from simple adoption to real change. Transformation takes more effort, more planning, and more communication. Adoption is something you can measure at one point in time. Transformation is a longer journey.

Pim Betist: Another thing that stood out to me in that ACC report was that legal departments are becoming more self-sufficient. They’re outsourcing less to law firms.

Hans Albers: That makes sense. With better tools, legal departments are becoming smarter and more capable in-house.

Pim Betist: So what’s your advice to law firms that risk losing business because of this shift?

Hans Albers: It’s an important challenge. For a long time, law firms looked at AI mainly as an efficiency tool for their own lawyers. But now they’re starting to realize it’s also impacting them because their clients have these tools too.

Think about it: if a lawyer used to need two hours to deliver a piece of advice, how do you justify charging the same when AI lets you do it in minutes? That’s already forcing law firms to rethink their models.

But the bigger shift is that clients now have AI at their fingertips. I’ve seen general counsel draft legal opinions with nothing but an AI assistant. That means law firms need to get closer to their clients, really understand how and where they make money, and tailor their advice to areas where AI can’t easily compete.

In other words, law firms need to move up the value chain, providing work that is higher quality, more strategic, and less replicable by AI.

For some firms, this is starting to feel transformational — even existential. If they don’t adapt, they risk losing a significant share of their business. And there isn’t a magic bullet. Nobody has the perfect solution yet.

But these discussions are now happening inside law firms: what kind of organization do we need to be? Do we still need hundreds of junior lawyers doing routine work, or do we need a different workforce structure to serve clients best?

That naturally raises questions about the job market for lawyers. What roles will remain, and which ones will change or even disappear?

I just read a Goldman Sachs report this morning. It said that over the next two years only about 1.7% of legal jobs are at risk from AI. Honestly, that number struck me as very low. Earlier estimates were closer to 40%. I haven’t dug into the full report yet, but I find 1.7% hard to believe. There are so many lower-level legal jobs that can be automated by AI agents. [Editors note: the author of this 1,7% was Artificial Lawyer and updated the article admitting he made a calculation error and the figure should be 17%.]

Pim Betist: Did you see the NRC article about universities advising to ban the use of tools like ChatGPT?

Hans Albers: Yes, I did. I wasn’t really surprised, but I was disappointed. Banning never works — history shows that. I understand the struggle universities face, but banning AI is futile. The same applies to law firms and businesses. Everyone is asking: how do we train young people properly when they already have access to tools that didn’t even exist a few years ago?

For me, the solution isn’t banning but adapting. I see it with my own team of young professionals. Most of them are just a few years out of university, and they’re already using AI very effectively in their work. It doesn’t make them dumber, it makes them smarter — just different. The role of a lawyer will change, no doubt, but banning AI is not the way forward.

Pim Betist: Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic, recently warned about a white-collar bloodbath. What’s your take on that?

Hans Albers: I think the risk is real. If your job is mostly repetitive, AI will eventually take over parts of it. We shouldn’t underestimate that. But at the same time, AI is still in its early stages. It’s not finished, it still makes mistakes. People sometimes dismiss it because of that, but the pace of improvement is astonishing.

Just the other day I saw an AI agent reviewing incoming contracts against a playbook standard, approving them, and sending them for signature. Clients still want human supervision for now, but it already feels like the human is there just to watch the machine do the work.

Pim Betist: I was reading The Economist the other week. They argued AI could drive GDP growth of up to 20% — something that’s never happened before. Their point was that the real income gains would come from people who can work alongside AI, stepping in where the tools still need human control. To me that sounded like lawyers with strong strategic skills could be in a very good position, making more money in the future. Did I understand that correctly?

Hans Albers: Maybe a little too optimistic. Yes, there’s definitely opportunity for lawyers who can combine judgment and strategic thinking with AI. But the bigger share of money may well flow to the companies building these AI tools, not just to those using them. And while judgment will remain important, purely legal tasks are going to shift more and more into systems. So the profession will need to adapt quickly.

Pim Betist: That makes sense. So if purely legal work is increasingly handled by systems, what do you see as the future skill set for lawyers?

Hans Albers: What I’m seeing already is that lawyers are adding new skills to stay relevant. It’s not just about being a good lawyer anymore. They’re learning more about technology, about processes, about operations. Those are the skills that will help them support their organizations in different ways.

If you only stick to traditional legal skills, that part of the work is increasingly going to be automated. Unfortunately, that means it will lose value. The differentiator will be what else you bring to the table.

Pim Betist: My last question to you then — who should I be interviewing next?

Hans Albers: Well, since we’ve been talking about startups and AI agents, I recently came across a company called Flank AI. It’s a German-American company, primarily based in Germany, and they’ve developed a generative AI solution that impressed me.

Hans Albers: The co-founder is Lilian Breidenbach. When I first met her, she started her demo by saying, “I’m not going to show you a tool that will make you more efficient, I’m going to show you a tool that will take your job away.” That immediately caught my attention. She’s a fun character, but also a real visionary in this space. I think she’d make for a great interview.

Pim Betist: That sounds great. Hans, thank you so much for joining me on this ride and for sharing your insights.

Hans Albers: You’re welcome, Pim. It was a real pleasure to have this conversation.