The legal department has a reputation problem. The team that says no, the bottleneck between an idea and its execution, and the function that adds time, cost, and friction to deals that would have moved faster without it. That reputation is earned in organizations where legal operates as a gatekeeper, brought in late, asked to review what commercial teams have already agreed to, and treated as a necessary obstacle rather than a strategic asset.
Peter Steckelman, most recently Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Tennis Channel, has spent more than two decades proving that model wrong. Across Warner Bros., Fox, Konami, and Tennis Channel, he has led legal strategy for complex licensing, media rights, sponsorship, and distribution deals in global sports, entertainment, and media. “When legal is integrated right, it becomes the engine that helps a business move faster, scale smarter, and grow with confidence,” Steckelman states.
Legal Belongs at the Table From Day One
The cost of bringing legal in late is normally higher than the cost of involving it early. When counsel reviews a deal after the commercial terms have been negotiated and the relationship expectations have been set, the options are limited. The deal either proceeds with avoidable risk embedded in it, or legal raises issues that require renegotiation, which damages momentum, strains relationships, and consumes far more time than early involvement would have required.
When legal is aligned with commercial goals from the start, something different happens. Deals get structured to move the business forward rather than simply to protect it. Risk is designed out rather than identified after the fact. The shift from gatekeeper to growth partner changes what legal can contribute, and what the business can accomplish. The organizations where legal consistently operates this way are not slower. They are faster because they are not spending cycles on problems that strategic involvement would have prevented.
Scalable Systems Outperform One-Off Solutions
Speed in legal operations does not come from working harder on individual deals. It comes from building the systems that make every deal faster. Contract lifecycle management, clear playbooks, and consistent templates across deal types are the operational foundation that allows a legal function to scale without a proportional increase in headcount or review time. When the right frameworks are in place, negotiations move faster because the starting positions are clear, the standard positions are defensible, and the energy goes into the material issues rather than re-litigating terms that should have been settled policy.
The downstream effect is significant. Reduced risk exposure, faster deal velocity, and leadership bandwidth freed from legal firefighting and redirected toward strategy and growth. A legal function built on scalable systems does not just support the business; it multiplies its capacity to move.
Embedded Legal Is a Competitive Advantage
The most efficient organizations do not have legal sitting separately from the business, waiting to be consulted. They have counsel embedded across product, marketing, finance, and operations, close enough to the work to catch issues early, informed enough about the business to understand what is actually at stake, and trusted enough to be part of the decision rather than a reviewer.
Cross-functional presence is what transforms legal from a reactive function into a partner. Issues are resolved at the level where they originate rather than escalating into problems that consume executive attention and derail timelines. When legal operates this way, the economics shift entirely. A cost center becomes a competitive advantage, one that enables bolder decisions, faster execution, and growth built on a foundation solid enough to scale. Organizations building something ambitious cannot afford to treat legal as an afterthought. The legal strategy has to be built to scale with the business from the beginning.
Follow Peter Steckelman on LinkedIn for more insights on legal affairs, business strategy, and building the legal functions that drive enterprise growth rather than constrain it.
