ACC news release: “Corporate law departments are spending more on internal budgets than on law firms or other external legal service providers, and the percentage of general counsel (GCs) stating that their companies have designated legal operations staff has more than doubled, the ACC Chief Legal Officers (CLO) 2016 Survey reports. The study, released today by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), a global legal association representing more than 40,000 in-house lawyers in 85 countries, includes more than 30 benchmarks on the evolving role and priorities of the CLO/GC. The survey of 1,302 GCs/CLOs in 41 countries found that ethics and compliance remains the top concern of law department leaders, with regulatory issues/challenges one percentage point behind. Data breaches were GCs’ third most concerning issue this year, and the percentage of respondents who said their companies had experienced a breach dropped slightly, from 27 percent to 22 percent. CLOs based in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Latin America/the Caribbean had heightened regulatory concerns, as 44 and 41 percent of GCs, respectively, answered that their companies had been targeted by a regulator in the past two years, compared to 31 percent worldwide. Globally, CLOs in companies with large law departments were more likely to report being targeted, with 56 percent of respondents in departments with 50 or more employees saying they have been targeted, versus 29 percent of respondents in departments with fewer than 50 employees.”