Resource Library

The ACC-Smarter Law Solutions free benchmarking and consultation service (acc.com/smarterlaw) has proven to be a hit since its launch in 2019. While we are thrilled at the positive feedback we’ve received from our clients, we thought that it would be interesting to respond directly to a few widely held hesitancies expressed by those considering a basic benchmarking or performance improvement process. We gathered some of these questions and sent them to Smarter Law Solutions CEO, Trevor Faure for his candid counsel. We were particularly interested in his perspective on concerns about taking on a consultant agreement in these turbulent times for legal operations.

This is a sample employee handbook.

This is an Outside Counsel Master Services Agreement.

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

Are you an in-house professional interested in teaching a law school course? You may wonder how peers who teach law school designed their syllabus. Take a look at the syllabus developed by Veta T. Richardson, ACC President and CEO, and Justin Connor, Executive Director, Center for Industry Self-Regulation.

Teaching law school is an exciting opportunity for in-house counsel to share their practical knowledge and help develop the next generation of lawyers. View a compilation of course proposals, syllabi, and exams, that have been created and used by members of the in-house community who have taught or are teaching a class in law school.

This is a sample briefing by law school professors to their students regarding graded assignments. This material was created by Veta T. Richardson, President and CEO of the Association of Corporate Counsel, and Justin Connor, Executive Director of the Center for Industry Self-Regulation, as part of their law school course titled "In-house Counsel: Law and Practice."

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.

Legal Operations professionals know that a significant key to their success is rooted in stakeholder buy-in. Conference after conference, seminar after seminar, we speak *around* what it means to be in-house legal connected to the broader enterprise. We avoid topical change management and stakeholder engagement but never truly get to the underlying subject that takes this from influencer jargon theory to actionable tactics. We cannot all rely solely on our dynamic personalities and winning smiles to woo our coworkers: How do we turn the abstract of interpersonal influence into a real, functional relationship that benefits all involved? Read this article to find out.

This article discusses how President Biden's executive order on artificial intelligence impacts employers.