By Kirstie Penk
You weren’t hired to practise law. But most days, it feels like that’s what you’re doing.
You’re reviewing contracts, fielding compliance questions, pushing back on supplier clauses, wondering if that NDA is watertight, being copied into legal queries with no clear ask, just a vague sense that “finance should probably take a look”.
It’s not in your job title but legal has somehow become part of your role.
And no one really knows how or when that happened. All you know is that it’s not sustainable and it’s definitely not where you add most value.
The silent creep of legal into finance
In most SMEs, legal work doesn’t arrive with a fanfare. It arrives with friction.
Perhaps it’s a contract your team can’t sign off, a policy that’s gone out of date, a supplier pushing for aggressive payment terms or an investor request you can’t answer without trawling your inbox.
At first, it seems manageable. You’re a commercial leader, used to complexity and the business needs someone to step in. So, you do.
But over time, you become the de facto legal filter. You’re not giving formal advice, but you’re reviewing documents, making judgment calls, and holding liability you never asked for.
It’s not just distracting. It’s dilutive. You’re spending hours each week on issues that are adjacent to your remit but not core to it. And because you’re not trained in law, every decision takes longer. Every clause comes with a question mark. You second-guess, escalate, stall.
That’s not caution. That’s exposure.
The real risk: time, certainty and strategic focus
Legal isn’t just landing on your desk. It’s taking up space in your mind. You can’t prioritise it, because you can’t see the whole picture. You can’t delegate it, because you don’t know who else can take it. So, you sit with it and try to make it work. But it slows you down.
And while the business still functions, you’re being pulled away from what you were actually hired to do: protect margins, manage risk, deliver clean reporting and support strategic decisions.
Instead, you’re rewriting indemnity clauses and firefighting HR disputes. You know it’s not the best use of your time. But what’s the alternative?
You need a system, not a legal team
At this stage, you probably don’t need a GC. And you’re not looking to build a full legal function. But you do need a system that stops legal landing back on your desk every time someone doesn’t know where else to send it.
That system starts with visibility. Look into what legal work exists in your business: contracts, policies, disputes, data issues, compliance checks? Ask yourself these questions:
- Where is it currently handled?
- Who’s touching it?
- What’s being missed?
When you can see that, you can manage it. When you can’t, you improvise and improvisation is a bad operating model.
A legal risk audit that actually helps the CFO
TLD’s Legal Free Desk audit exists for exactly this situation: when legal is showing up everywhere but owned by no one.
It’s a short, structured process that surfaces all your legal workload across teams, departments and leadership. It shows you what’s being handled well, what’s being fudged, and what’s falling through the gaps.
You get a prioritised action plan, a legal heatmap and a view of where time and risk are being wasted.
It’s not a legal health check. It’s a practical CFO tool because it doesn’t just tell you what’s broken, it shows you what to do about it.
Focus on what you were hired to do
You didn’t sign up to be a part-time lawyer. You signed up to protect and grow the business.
That means knowing where your risk is and knowing when to delegate it.
After the audit, most CFOs we work with don’t hire anyone new. They just reorganise, building better templates and changing workflows. They spend fewer hours on legal and more on finance. And when the next legal query arrives, it doesn’t end up in your inbox because it has somewhere better to go.
Book a Legal Free Desk audit
If legal is eating up your time and slowing down your week, this is your next move.
The audit gives you a clear picture of what legal work exists, where it lives and how to make it stop defaulting to you.
One session. A prioritised plan. And your inbox, cleared.
FAQs – for CFOs who are carrying legal
How is this different from a legal review by a law firm?
Law firms review documents. We review systems in light of your needs. We look at how legal work enters your business, who handles it and what risk it’s creating. The output is a heatmap and roadmap not a pile of redlines. It’s CFO-friendly and commercially focused.
Will this tell me if I need to hire a GC?
It might. But often, the answer is no. The audit is designed to show you what’s really required and what can be handled with better delegation, clearer workflows or smarter templates. If a hire is needed, you’ll know why, when and what to look for.
I’m not a lawyer. Am I even the right person to be thinking about this?
Yes. You’re likely the only person with enough visibility across finance, ops and contracts to see where legal risk lives. But you shouldn’t have to carry it alone. This process helps you map it, structure it and shift it to the right place.
I don’t think we’ve got major legal risk. Should I still do this?
Probably, yes. Major risk is rarely where the problem starts. Most issues come from low-grade legal work being mishandled -the wrong clause here, a missing policy there. The audit helps you prevent those risks before they escalate.
What happens after the audit?
You decide. You’ll have a prioritised plan, a legal heatmap and a clear explanation of what to do next. You can handle it in-house, get help externally or we can help with our fractional General Counsel service. There’s no catch, just clarity.
