State of In-house 2025

In this report we uncover the State of In-house in 2025, based on conversations with more than 150 lawyers. Over the next few weeks, we’ll reveal the findings and share expert commentary below.

‍Survey cohort: to prepare this report, the Juro community team asked 160 in-house lawyers more than 30 questions on a range of topics.

Respondents from more than 20 countries, including the UK, US and most of the EU participated. Job titles included CLO, GC, Head of Legal, Senior Legal Counsel and a range of others. 52% of respondents are the most senior lawyer at their company.

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1. Under pressure: stress, burnout & resourcing

Nobody pursued a legal career thinking it would be a stress-free walk in the park. But looking at the data gathered for the State of In-house 2025, we have to ask ourselves: is this what in-house legal was supposed to be?

Let’s remind ourselves of how the World Health Organization defines burnout:

Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
• reduced professional efficacy

When we asked our respondents, they told us:

• 23.3% have experienced burnout in the past year
• 15.1% are burned out right now

Traditionally, lawyers moved in-house partly to regain their work-life balance, having worked in the often stressful environment of a top-tier law firm. If lawyers are pursuing in-house careers, only to find a similar challenge to their wellbeing, what’s going wrong?

We asked Annmarie Carvalho ‍, lawyers' therapist and author of an upcoming book on lawyer psychology, for her take:

"While many lawyers seek out in-house roles in the hope that they will provide a better working environment than private practice, this report’s findings demonstrate that that isn’t necessarily the case," says Annmarie.

"For people with insecurities and who tend towards having an external locus of evaluation, like many lawyers, being the in-house lawyer in a climate of redundancies and layoffs is extremely tough. Although law firms can be hothouses for stress, the structures and being around many other lawyers, all who understand the pressures you’re under, may be protective in some cases against burnout. Whereas for the in-house lawyer, who may be isolated or one of only a few and who faces the pressure of being ‘the expert’ in the organisation, this is the not the case."

Although law firms can be hothouses for stress, the structures and being around many other lawyers, all who understand the pressures you’re under, may be protective in some cases against burnout

"Finally and though they might vary in degrees of effectiveness, law firms in recent years have been under pressure to bring in wellbeing measures. It’s possible such measures may not have filtered through so much to in-house roles."

It’s not just that legal teams are more likely to be flat, or shrinking, than growing. It’s also fallen to lawyers to shoulder much of the burden of the layoffs and reductions in force that have become an unfortunate reality across much of the tech industry in recent years. 

With the era of cheap money giving way to a period of inflationary pressures, in-house lawyers have been on the front lines of difficult decisions and processes related to teams beyond their own. Layoffs are a fact of life for almost all businesses, and the focus is rightly on those employees at risk of losing their jobs.

In these difficult moments, lawyers must empathise and communicate transparently with colleagues; but they also have a job to do, and a professional obligation to do it well and follow the right procedures.

Michael Haynes, General Counsel at Juro, has experienced force reductions at a range of companies. He advises that "As lawyers, our role here is critical."

"Sure, we need to make sure that the company does the layoff lawfully and that employees' rights are respected. But a high quality legal team can also make that process as smooth and as dignified as possible for everyone involved."

A high quality legal team can also make that process as smooth and as dignified as possible for everyone involved

When we add this all up, we see stress moving in the wrong direction:

• 32% of lawyers feel more stressed than a year ago, compared to 19% who feel less stressed
• Worse, those lawyers who are the most senior at their company are 3 times more likely to feel more stressed than less stressed

There are plenty of external events in recent years we can look to, when it comes to stress increasing for in-house lawyers: the COVID pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, inflationary downturns, and the shock to various business models of the AI revolution.

But there have also been advances in the profession that should have alleviated some of these pressures: the maturation of legal operations as a discipline; increased market understanding of best practices; and of course a proliferation of automation and AI solutions.

We must then ask ourselves the tough question: has automation failed? Or has it failed to be adopted to a degree that could materially change this picture? What is the true state of AI adoption amongst in-house legal teams?

Stay tuned for those findings next week.