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From boardroom to borderline: Geopolitics on every GC’s agenda

Adam D Synnott
Adam Synnott

Partner, Head of Corporate, M&A and Structuring, EY Law Ireland

3 minute read 15 Oct 2025
Related topics
Law

Geopolitics is reshaping legal strategies. GCs must lead in navigating risks and driving business resilience.

In brief

  • Geopolitical issues are now central to the role of general counsel, influencing contracts and corporate strategy.
  • GCs must collaborate with external experts to effectively monitor and respond to rapid geopolitical changes.
  • Embracing this challenge allows GCs to position themselves as strategic enablers of resilience within their organisations.

How EY can help

The past decade has reshaped the context in which business leaders operate. Trade wars, sanctions regimes, climate obligations, global conflicts and sweeping technology regulation are no longer abstract issues discussed at summits, they are front-line realities reshaping contracts, supply chains and boardroom priorities. For many businesses, the velocity of change is dizzying, and, for general counsel (GCs), geopolitics has become a key agenda item.

 

The recent EY Law General Counsel Survey confirmed this: geopolitics has overtaken almost every other challenge facing today’s in-house lawyers. Issues like AI regulation, data privacy, sustainability and compliance remain critical, but all are increasingly driven, shaped or constrained by geopolitics.

 

The legal profession at the intersection of global change

Geopolitics is often equated with diplomacy or military conflict, but for businesses its impacts are more subtle and systemic. They show up in rules, frameworks and reporting obligations: tariffs on imports, restrictions on cross-border data transfers, evolving sustainability standards, or sanctions on counterparties. Each requires legal interpretation, rapid adaptation, and clear guidance for senior management.

 

This makes the GC a uniquely important actor. Unlike other executives, the GC sits at the intersection of law, regulation, and corporate strategy. They are tasked with interpreting volatility through a legal lens and translating that into actionable business choices.

The evolving role of the GC

Over the past two decades, the in-house legal function has already evolved, from providing pure legal advice to overseeing monitoring and compliance in a complex and rapidly changing regulatory environment. Today, it is expanding again into a more strategic decision-making role, reflecting the GC’s role as a trusted business adviser.

The new frontier is geopolitical risk navigation. Boards and CEOs are increasingly relying on GCs to monitor global developments, educate leadership teams, and forecast implications for strategy and operations. Remaining compliant isn’t enough anymore, it’s about ensuring that the business can anticipate disruption before it strikes.

In practice, that means helping companies re-engineer contracts to withstand sanctions shocks, restructure operations to comply with new ESG directives, or deploy AI responsibly under emerging regulatory frameworks in the EU and elsewhere. It is a role that requires agility, foresight, and authority.

Why GCs cannot do it alone

The challenge, however, is scale. The breadth of geopolitical impacts is too wide for many in-house legal teams to cover comprehensively. Sanctions update in Washington may ripple into a procurement contract in Dublin; a new EU sustainability rule may change disclosure requirements in New York; an AI regulation could alter governance practices globally.

Developments that once took years now arrive in months. Even the most capable and well-resourced GCs will find it challenging to track, assess, and operationalise all of these developments in real time.

This makes collaboration essential. Increasingly, GCs are working closely with external specialists who can bring insight and expertise across multiple domains and geographies. The challenge for the GC is to integrate those insights into the business, providing the board with clear and actionable guidance.

Looking ahead: from challenge to action

Geopolitical change will remain a defining context for business. Legal leaders cannot afford to treat it as background noise. They must be at the centre of the response, shaping strategy as much as compliance.

So what does this mean in practice? A few priorities stand out for GCs and the wider C-suite:

  • Build early warning systems: Put structured processes in place to monitor regulatory and geopolitical developments in real time and translate these quickly for the board.
  • Invest in multidisciplinary collaboration: Recognise that no single legal team can track everything; draw on external expertise and cross-functional input across compliance, tax, technology and ESG.
  • Elevate the GC’s voice in strategy: Ensure the GC is not just a legal or compliance gatekeeper, or seen as a barrier to the business, but a regular and positive contributor to board discussions on risk, strategy, growth and resilience.
  • Plan for agility, not just compliance: Design contracts, supply chains and governance frameworks that can flex as global rules shift.

For GCs, this is both a challenge and an opportunity: to step up as interpreters of global change and position the legal function as a strategic enabler of resilience. For CEOs and boards, it means leaning on their GCs, not just to keep them out of trouble, but to help them anticipate the future.

Summary

Geopolitical change is not an occasional disruption; it is the defining context in which modern businesses operate. Legal leaders must be at the centre of the response, shaping strategy as much as compliance.

GCs who wish to embrace this as both a challenge and an opportunity must elevate their role as the interpreters of global change and be the bridge between law and business strategy. With the right collaboration, they can help their organisations not just survive volatility but thrive on it.

About this article

Adam D Synnott
Adam Synnott
Partner, Head of Corporate, M&A and Structuring, EY Law Ireland
Passionate about teamwork, in business and leisure. Husband and father of three. Enjoys music (singing, playing, and listening). Loves sport.
Related topics
Law

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