Resource Library

Savings is not a strategy. Imagine a CEO opening an earnings call by celebrating the money the company “saved” on deal counsel and due diligence by not moving forward with an otherwise strategically vital acquisition. The stock would crater because leadership would rightly be judged as majoring in the minors.

As a line item, legal spend is a minor consideration. Rather, legal spend is better characterized as a relatively small investment that enables the business to execute on what matters.

Legal spend should be dictated by business needs. Those business needs are only escalating with the explosion in legal complexity. The increasingly law-thick environment in which businesses operate is having a profound impact on corporate top lines, bottom lines, valuations, and strategic opportunities. Trying to save money on legal is myopic—and excruciatingly common.

What compensation do your in-house peers get? Check out the 2023 Law Department Compensation benchmarking survey results. 

ACC's annual survey of global chief legal officers and general counsel.

How to make a strong positive impact when starting a new job as general counsel? Find practical tips and strategies shared by experienced in-house counsel and condensed by ACC in this toolkit. Nine checklists that distill insight from general counsel, from acing your first 90 days to developing your leadership and business skills and retaining talent on your team.

ACC and Everlaw conducted a survey of 373 in-house legal professionals in the United States to better understand the extent to which corporate legal departments are collaborating with other business units, how legal teams are collaborating with their law firms and other vendors, and how technology plays a role in enabling collaboration. The results reveal that although legal staff desire greater collaboration and there is a clear recognition of the benefits of doing so, there are impediments preventing legal teams from realizing that full potential.

Key survey insights on legal transformation initiatives with respect to litigation and internal investigations.

ACC's annual survey of global chief legal officers and general counsel

This survey report aims to better understand the outside counsel selection process for litigation matters, the tools that departments are using for litigation workflows, the most common cost containment strategies, and how litigation needs are expected to change over time.

It can be costly to hold on to information that is obsolete, expired, either legal, regulatory, and not needed for or business reasons.  An organization must determine what needs to be saved (meaning, it can identify what can be disposed). Policies can be developed that include both the business justification and process for deleting electronic documents, and establish consistent, repeatable, defensible processes that allow for the routine deletion of data not under a legal hold.

This research report discusses ways companies can optimize contract lifecycle management technology.