Rory Sutherland tells a story I love about Eurostar.
The company spent on 2007 roughly £6 billion improving the London-Paris route.
Result?
About 20 minutes saved.
Perfectly rational.
Faster is better.
Excel approves.
Everyone goes home after the closing dinner.
Sutherland had another idea.
Spend a tiny fraction of that money on great Wi-Fi.
Better food.
Better service.
He even joked that for 10% of the budget you could have supermodels walking through the train serving Château Pétrus.
A little excessive.
But memorable.
His point was not really about trains.
It was about solving the wrong problem beautifully.
Passengers do not only hate long journeys.
They hate wasted time.
Uncertainty.
Boredom.
Bad coffee.
The feeling that nothing useful is happening.
Legal does this too.
“We need to reduce contract turnaround from 7 days to 5.”
Maybe.
Or maybe Sales needs to know on day one which issues really matter.
“We need more headcount.”
Maybe.
Or maybe your best lawyer is spending 40% of her week on work she should never touch.
“We need AI to draft faster.”
Maybe.
Or maybe the bottleneck is that nobody trusts the first draft.
The best GCs are very good at asking one annoying question:
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
At Ambar, we often help with the answer before adding more machinery.
A fractional lawyer to remove certain work from your A-team.
A niche specialist so Legal does not learn a new business line by trial and error.
A senior intermediate layer so the law firm is used only where the law firm actually adds value.
Because sometimes Legal does not need a faster train.
It needs a better journey.
Before you go: how Ambar can help
We help GCs access senior independent legal talent when their teams need more range, more speed or more specialist judgment.
1) Fractional counsel for capacity gaps
When a key lawyer moves role, goes on leave, or gets pulled into a strategic project, we help cover the gap without adding permanent structure.
2) Specialist expertise for new areas
Privacy, AI, technology contracts, payments, cybersecurity, energy, regulatory or new jurisdictions — senior lawyers who bring knowledge into the team, not just hours.
3) The layer between in-house and traditional firms
For work that is too senior for junior execution, too close to the business for a law firm machine, and too temporary for a permanent hire.
4) Legal AI that learns your standard
We help legal teams turn senior judgment into playbooks, model answers, red flags, evals and error-analysis frameworks for the AI tools their teams already use.
Not generic AI. Your legal standard.
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Stay cool,
Dr. No
