NOMINATE NOW! The deadline for nominating an innovative legal department for the InsideCounsel 10 is June 29.

It's that time of year again—time to nominate the country's most innovative legal departments for InsideCounsel's IC10 Awards.

The IC10 Awards shine a spotlight on departments that find new ways to adapt to some of the most pressing problems facing law departments. This includes innovative strategies for managing legal vendors, increasing diversity, cutting costs, using technology and more.

Last year's winners, for instance, demonstrated creativity when dealing with issues ranging from social media usage to in-house discovery to ethics training. Pfizer's legal department cut costs by 10 to 15 percent by replacing the billable hours model with the Pfizer Legal Alliance, a network of law firm partners that receive a monthly flat fee. CA Technologies raised employees' compliance awareness by introducing the hapless, yet humorous character of Griffin Peabody into ethics training videos. And Northeast Utilities increased its law department's diversity with a wide-reaching Diversity Scholar Program.

The deadline for nominations is June 29. Winners will appear in the September 2012 issue of InsideCounsel.

Read more about the nomination process here.