In the latest sign of an ever-tightening legal market, a new survey shows that more chief legal officers are planning to decrease their reliance on outside counsel and increase their in-house headcount in the coming year.

Chief legal officers from 126 companies responded to the survey, which was carried out over the last two months by US consultancy Altman Weil. Of these, nearly half came from companies with revenues of between $2bn (£1bn) and $10bn (£5bn).