Paloma Luciáñez on building the In-House Circle for legal departments

GLTHcircles is a new GLTH initiative created for the conversations that rarely happen on a public stage. Through private and carefully curated communities, legal leaders can share real challenges, contrast experiences and learn from both successful and unsuccessful transformation projects. Its ambition is to turn individual experience into collective intelligence and collective intelligence into meaningful change across the legal ecosystem.

The initiative begins with two complementary communities: the In-House Circle, led by Paloma Luciáñez, and the Law Firms Circle, led by Santiago de la Osa.

Paloma Luciáñez practised law for more than thirteen years at leading law firms, advising companies on a wide range of legal matters. Following an entrepreneurial journey as the founder of her own startup, she transitioned into the legal technology sector. She currently works at DiliTrust, an international legaltech company whose mission is to help corporate legal departments accelerate their digital transformation through innovative technology. 

We spoke with her to know what her ambition is as leader of the In-House Circle and what legal departments can learn from one another according to their own stage of digital maturity. 

How does she explain GLTHcircles to someone hearing about the In-House Circle for legal departments for the first time?

GLTHcircles are peer-led practice communities within the Global Legaltech Hub ecosystem.

The starting point of the In-House Circle is the acknowledgment of a reality that is too often ignored: the maturity gaps in digital transformation between legal departments are enormous, and they have nothing to do with the size of the company or the sector it operates in.

Before joining the Circle, each participant goes through a maturity assessment that determines which of three groups they fit into: Explorer, Transformer or Innovator.

Within each group, the core purpose is to understand the real needs of General Counsel and in-house legal teams at each stage of maturity, and to create a space where the help on offer is concrete and grounded.

Why is now the right time to launch GLTHcircles?

The legal industry is at an inflection point. There is growing awareness that technology, AI, and process transformation are no longer optional for legal departments. But awareness is not the same as readiness.

The conversation in most legaltech forums has been led by early adopters and technology advocates, but it has created a gap: the majority of in-house legal professionals feel that the conversation is not speaking to them yet.

GLTHcircles are a direct response to that gap.

Who is the In-House Circle aimed at?

The In-House Circle is aimed at in-house lawyers and General Counsel who are living through digital transformation in their departments, from those just beginning to ask what tools exist, to those who have been managing change for years and want to keep learning and contributing.

The prior maturity assessment ensures that each person arrives in the group where their questions make the most sense and where the answers are most useful.

What we are looking for is not technical expertise: it is honesty.

The most valuable contributors are those who are willing to share where they actually are, not where they wish they were.

What are the biggest challenges facing in-house legal teams today?

After four years working specifically on digital transformation within in-house legal departments, the patterns are clear.

The most common challenges are justifying investment in technology without a clear ROI narrative, managing change internally, choosing the right tools in a saturated market, and building workflows that actually hold up when the team is small and resources are limited.

One of the most important insights I have gained over these years is that maturity gaps between legal departments are vast, and they do not correlate with company size or sector.

The Circle will dig into precisely this: what does transformation look like at different starting points, and how do you make progress from wherever you are?

How can the In-House Circle help legal departments become more strategic?

The shift from legal department as cost centre to legal department as strategic partner is real, but it is fragile.

It depends on the ability of legal professionals to speak the language of the business: data, speed, risk-adjusted decisions, and operational efficiency.

The In-House Circle can help by creating a space where legal professionals share not just tools and processes, but also the internal stories of how they have repositioned their departments.

How did you get a seat at the table? How did you make your value visible to the CFO? How did you build trust with the business when your answer had to be "no" but your approach had to be collaborative?

What will make this Circle different from a traditional networking group?

Traditional networking groups optimise for breadth. GLTHcircles optimise for depth and for relevance.

Participants are grouped by maturity level, which fundamentally changes the quality of the conversation: the problems are comparable, the vocabulary is shared, and the solutions that emerge are immediately applicable, not merely aspirational.

When someone in the Explorer group hears how a Transformer member solved exactly the problem they are facing today, that exchange has direct operational value. And when an Innovator acts as a mentor, they do so not from theory, but from experience lived in a similar context.

Over time, those conversations build a body of collective intelligence that can genuinely influence how legal departments approach technology adoption, how they frame conversations with law firms around efficiency and collaboration, and how they advocate internally for the resources they need.

Learn more about GLTHcircles: https://www.hublegaltech.com/circles