A new survey from Proskauer Rose shows how legal departments are handling labor and employment budgets and staffing.

Most legal departments that set aside a budget for labor and employment matters are not meeting those budgets, as unpredictability in claims and higher than anticipated costs have in some cases pushed budgets up, according to a survey released Wednesday.

The survey from Proskauer Rose, the second that the firm has done, was conducted in early 2017 and gathered feedback from more than 300 in-house legal decision makers and labor and employment specialists. The respondents came from a variety of industries and more than half work at companies with over 1,000 employees.

Only 36 percent of respondents said that their departments met their L&E budgets in the last year. Some 26 percent spent more than expected and 14 percent spent less. Interestingly, the rest of respondents had no set budget for labor and employment.

Elise Bloom, co-chair of Proskauer's labor and employment department and co-head of its class and collective actions group, said in a press release announcing the report that in-house counsel working on employment matters for their companies are working to get the most out of their dollar as L&E challenges shift and evolve.

“With the focus on federal deregulation, there has been an increase at the state and local levels surrounding the scope of protections under the discrimination, leave and wage-and-hours laws,” said Bloom. “With the continuing pressure to do more with less, the survey provides information on how in-house lawyers are allocating intellectual and financial resources to manage labor and employment matters and increase the value added to their business partners and organizations.”

The survey indicated that companies are spending about one-eighth of their outside legal budget on L&E per year, an average of around $500,000. But spend varied across industries. Financial services, according to the survey, had the highest median spend per employee on labor and employment at $393 per head. At the low end was health care, with a median spend of $52 per employee.