The National Law Journal this week highlights lawyers who serve as outside counsel to some of the top in-house legal teams at companies based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Twin Cities Counsel to Counsel is a follow-up to our Twin Cities Legal Departments of the Year reports, which we published earlier this year and in 2014. Those reports spotlighted top corporate counsel teams thriving in the region’s manufacturing, medical, technology, food, real estate and banking sectors. We focused on legal departments that are performing at exceptional levels in outside-counsel management, corporate compliance, mergers and acquisitions, diversity initiatives and pro bono and community service. Among those companies were 3M Co., Best Buy Co. Inc., Xcel Energy Inc., Supervalu Inc. and Tennant Co.