In-house attorneys are turning away from outside counsel and becoming increasingly self-reliant when it comes to serving their corporations, a new survey from legal consulting firm Altman Weil reveals.

The “Altman Weil Chief Legal Officer Survey” [PDF], which the firm has conducted annually since 2000, collected feedback from more than 200 CLOs heading up law departments of various sizes, with most falling in the two to 15 lawyer range. Most CLOs responding worked at public companies with at least some attorneys based outside the U.S. The survey this year showed that CLOs are keeping more work in-house and embracing technology, outsourcing, and other tools to keep costs under control. This drive towards increasing efficiency appears to have shifted the balance of work away from outside firms.

Daniel DiLucchio, principal at Altman Weil and author of the survey, told CorpCounsel.com that the trend of departments trying to control outside spend is hardly a new phenomenon. “My sense is that law departments have been trying to achieve some sort of predictability in their legal fees for many years now,” he said. In the last few years though, he said many law department leaders have realized outside firms “aren’t going to change much,” and as a result they have taken matters into their own hands—sometimes quite literally.

The survey showed that this year, 47 percent of respondents decreased outside counsel budget. This trend has been consistent over the last few editions of the survey—last year, 39 percent said they were cutting back on outside spend, and in 2011, 25 percent reported cuts. Some 29 percent of CLOs said their departments are planning to decrease the use of outside counsel—with 82 percent of these departments moving that work to in-house staff instead.

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