2022 Law Department Management Benchmarking Report

At the beginning of 2022, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Major, Lindsey & Africa conducted the 2022 Law Department Benchmarking Survey. The survey had a total of 427 legal departments in 24 industries in 26 countries participate. The report provides a wealth of data for peer comparisons and benchmarking across a variety of metrics.

The report looks at legal department structure, work allocation, law firm usage, and staffing, spending, and diversity metrics. Some of the findings show:

• Departments’ internal/external legal spend distribution shifted from a near 50/50 split last year to majority internal spend (54 percent) this year.
• Compared to last year, more departments are shifting work in-house in the areas of due diligence (+ six percent), labor & employment (+ six percent), legal research (+ five percent) and intellectual property (+ four percent).
• This year there was a six-percentage point increase in the number of respondents who said they increased the number of law firms they engaged compared to 2021. The use of ALSPs has mostly remained the same overall and there is only widespread use among larger companies with a minimum outside spend of US$5 million annually.
• More departments are capturing diversity metrics of their outside counsel, are using a wider variety of specific metrics to do so and are establishing formal requirements to improve diversity with tangible consequences for success or failure.