It's a cliché that we journalists love it when bad things happen. Sure, natural disasters, terrorism strikes (I write this a few days after the Paris attacks) and scandal give us something to write about. But we don't go looking for this stuff. Okay, maybe we do relish a juicy scandal. But it depends.

In this magazine, we do write about the bad stuff, but it's mainly in the context of helping you, as in-house counsel, avoid it. There are cybersecurity threats, economic threats (nothing like a class action filing to ruin your day), and just the friction between employees and their companies.

But this month, we're taking time off from most of that to celebrate some good things. To coincide with the holiday season, we're recognizing legal department innovation, in fact. If it's December, we take the time to step back and look at what 10 innovative departments are doing to make their work lives better, faster, cheaper, and more clever.

And they're a varied lot. Some have come up with terrific, clever ways to spread the word on compliance. Others use technology to enable their clients to work without involving the constant supervision of Legal. They inform their clients, they manage outside counsel wisely, they cope and thrive with change, and they're an example to their in-house counterparts elsewhere.

Speaking of change, there's been some movement here in the Inside Counsel newsroom. We said good-bye to Rich Steeves, who served as the main editor and social media contact for this magazine and website ever since our parent company ALM brought this magazine into its portfolio of legal publications. Rich was tireless, a terrific reporter and writer, and went about his business quietly and quickly. We'll miss him.

We also welcome Stephanie Forshee as a staff reporter. Stephanie has great business reporting chops and a lively writing style. You'll see more of her work in the coming month. For this issue, she's worked behind the scenes, putting together the “Numbers” pages that appear in the issue, as well as posting news stories online at insidecounsel.com.

Finally, a shout out to two people who were indispensable in making this issue happen. The attractive layouts are the handiwork of art director Jeremy Werling, who's been really patient with me as I request changes and take too long to get something done. And Michael Moline, an old newsroom friend from our affiliate publication The National Law Journal, put the IC 10 reports together. They're a good read—I urge you to take a look.

Oh, and by the way, happy holidays everyone. We'll see each other after the new year.