When Best Practices Hold Legal Teams Back - Above the Law

"In-house lawyers are swimming in best practices. Every vendor offers them. Every consultant references them. Every policy framework promises alignment with them. Yet in the daily work of partnering with product, engineering, risk, or operations, something doesn't line up. The guidance that looks solid on paper often collapses when applied to real decisions inside a fast-moving business. Most best practices were designed for an environment that moved slowly."

"Most best practices were designed for an environment that moved slowly. They assume stable processes, predictable systems, quarterly release cycles, and long planning horizons. That world is gone. Today's companies ship continuously. They integrate AI into everything from customer interactions to internal workflows. They operate in regulatory conditions that shift every few months. And they manage risks that don't look anything like the static models we learned earlier in our careers."

"This mismatch creates friction that no one talks about directly. Legal is asked to uphold standards that no longer map to how the business works. Product teams try to comply with guidance that feels both rigid and outdated. Leaders think they are aligning with norms, only to discover those norms were built for a different era. The trouble with best practices is that once they earn the label, organizations treat them as settled. They become permanent fixtures in policies, playbooks, and approval workflows."

Best practices were created for slower environments with stable processes, predictable systems, and long planning horizons. Modern companies ship continuously, embed AI across products and workflows, face rapid regulatory shifts, and confront dynamic risks. Those realities create a persistent mismatch between settled guidance and operational needs. Legal teams rely on established practices for defensibility, which hardens institutional behavior and reduces adaptability. Product and engineering teams find such guidance rigid and impractical. Organizations therefore experience recurring friction and require flexible, context-aware decision frameworks instead of ossified, one-size-fits-all best practices.

Read at Above the Law