One session at Scaleup GC 2026 presented to delegates a mock contract negotiation and a stack of red flags. Raise one when you spot a problem. It was one of the most entertaining moments of the day. But stepping back, it was also a neat metaphor for the broader conversation: in a business environment this volatile, this fast-moving, the red flags don’t stay in the room. They’re everywhere you look.
I was at County Hall last week for Scaleup GC 2026, a full-day conference for General Counsels and legal teams at scaling businesses, organised by Juro . There were three particular highlights from the day.
Cyber Risk Sits With The Board. Boards Often Aren’t Equipped For It
Cyber threats are moving faster than defences. For scaleup legal teams running lean, that creates acute pressure. For boards, the problem is different. They hold ultimate accountability for risk oversight. Many lack the technical fluency to interrogate cyber exposure in any meaningful way.
What came out of those sessions wasn’t a call for boards to become security specialists. It was more specific: ask harder questions. Seek independent assurance. Treat cyber as a permanent item in the risk framework, reviewed alongside other material risks.
A board that nods through the annual cyber briefing is doing paperwork, not risk oversight.
AI Is Producing Legal Analysis. The Question Is Whether Anyone Is Checking It
GCs are past the “should we use AI?” debate. The question now is about accountability. When AI drafts a contract or flags a regulatory risk, who owns the output?
AI-generated errors don’t always look like errors. A subtly wrong clause. A missed jurisdiction requirement. An outdated regulatory reference. These don’t announce themselves. They need someone with expertise to catch them.
Boards and audit committees need to ask how AI is being used in the professional services they buy. Ask in specifics. What human review sits above it? Where does the liability fall if something is wrong?
At Law Debenture, we are actively working with AI tools and helping boards think through what AI governance looks like in practice. The human judgement doesn’t sit instead of that; it sits on top of it. As AI embeds itself in professional services, the ability to interrogate its outputs, not just produce them, is where accountability actually lives.
The Pace Of Change Has Overtaken Most Predictions
Eighteen months ago, some legal practitioners expected AI adoption to be a gradual shift. The reality has been faster. Timelines are compressing. Resourcing models are changing. What legal work looks like, and who does it, is shifting faster than governance structures can keep up with.
For scaling businesses, that creates a specific bind. Growth is the priority. Legal and compliance requirements multiply alongside it. The teams responsible for them often can’t grow at the same rate. Entity management, compliance filing, governance administration: these are areas where the operational burden lands hardest, and where outsourced solutions increasingly make practical sense.
The question of independent oversight came up more than once during the day. Whether that’s a corporate services provider, an independent trustee, or a non-exec with the right background, having someone objective and experienced in the room, as the nature of legal work changes around them, is something GCs are actively thinking about.
The red flag exercise was the most entertaining session of the day. It was also, quietly, the most instructive one.
The Law Debenture Group provides board advisory and corporate secretarial services to clients that include some of the UK’s largest PLCs. To discuss how we support boards and governance teams, please do reach out to paul.tenconi@lawdeb.com