While the rest of America is still feeling the squeeze of a tough economy, corporate law departments loosened their belts a couple more notches this year. According to Altman Weil Inc.’s 2011 Chief Legal Officer Survey, law departments boosted their budgets for both in-house and outside-counsel spend. Fifty-six percent of chief legal officers said they had increased their internal budgets from 2010 to 2011, compared with 51 percent the previous year. The median increase also ticked up from 6 percent to 7. Forty-six percent of respondents increased outside-counsel expenditures, up from 43 percent a year earlier.
“The increase in budgets may have been a little surprising, based on the tough economy,” said Altman Weil principal Daniel DiLucchio.
