The Association of Corporate Counsel on Tuesday named 12 “Value Champions” for 2018 as part of the association's Value Challenge. The winners' list included both individual legal departments and collaborations matching departments with outside law firms and legal service providers.

These winners were chosen for their creative and strategic legal ops work. This year, big names such as the AARP, 7-Eleven and Walmart were among the “champions.”

A Tuesday announcement outlined the winners' achievements.

AARP, for instance, enabled compliant self-service through its “Train & Trust: Content Quickpath” program. The program is a two-hour training and certification program. AARP, based in Washington, D.C., reduced legal service requests by 36.7 percent and clients waited 1,403 fewer business days for content approvals in 2017 than they had previously.

Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven teamed up with Seyfarth Shaw to streamline its legal department to support the company's real-estate portfolio of more than 10,000 properties.

And Walmart Inc., headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, created the General Counsel Insights Platform and transformed itself “from an in-house law firm to a legal business.” Walmart saw improvements in firm/vendor spending, work allocation, matter oversight and gender and diversity.

Catherine J. Moynihan, the associate vice president of legal management services at ACC, told Corporate Counsel that she was satisfied with the winners this year and that they are leaders in using innovative practices that can be replicated elsewhere in the legal industry. She said the judges' choices reflected the values the ACC, which has been crowning champions since 2012, is looking to reward.

“[The judges are] trying to consider a number of important factors. They want [winners] as a group to be compelling. They look at innovation and replicability. The point is to provide inspiring and useful examples for others in the community to follow,” Moynihan said.

The winners were chosen by a panel of in-house lawyer judges who spent roughly a month evaluating over 60 nominees. Moynihan said that the judges consider three factors: cutting costs, improving predictability of spend, and improving legal and processing outcomes.

The other honorees this year were:

• Andeavor with Counsel Management Group
• Danaher Corp. with Seyfarth Shaw
• DXC Technology with UnitedLex
• Eaton
• Monsatno Co. with Husch Blackwell
• Ocwen Financial Corp. with Quislex Inc., Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Hunton Andrews Kurth
• Pure Storage Inc.
• Software AG
• Tahal Group B.V.

This year's honorees span the globe with winners hailing from the U.S., Germany and Israel. The ACC Value Challenge was launched in 2008 to help affect change within the legal industry.

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