Hunton Retail Law Resource

On May 11, 2016, Hunton & Williams LLP and client Axalta Coating Systems, LLC, a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, were named 2016 ACC Value Champions by the Association of Corporate Counsel (“ACC”). The two were recognized for their efforts in driving significant legal process improvement and savings, which resulted in exemplary change management and a comprehensive approach to value.

Axalta seized an opportunity to refresh its procurement processes after the company separated from DuPont in a carve out. A team of Hunton & Williams lawyers, including partner Randy Parks and associate Sarah Carpenter, worked with Axalta’s Law Department to build templates and playbooks to overhaul the interaction between the legal and procurement functions, a crucial part of the business. The work enhanced Axalta’s internal efficiency, reduced spending on outside counsel, and improved client service. Axalta’s procurement department now processes 62 percent of contracts without engaging the legal department, approaching an 80 percent goal. Due to these initiatives and alternative fee arrangement-based spending with Hunton & Williams, annual spend for commercial contract review by outside counsel has dropped significantly. Hunton and Axalta will be honored during the 2016 ACC Annual Meeting on October 16 in San Francisco.

“It’s rare for a company to re-do its entire way of buying,” said Randy Parks. “Axalta’s innovation was in the scale of the project and the legal team’s ability to rethink how the legal organization engaged a large swath of its business.”

“We’re tremendously proud to receive this level of peer recognition for the work our Law Department and partners at Hunton & Williams have performed,” said Michael Finn, Axalta Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “Our procurement department is the single largest area of spend at the company and being able to support their work and create added efficiencies has been gratifying. Our work with our in-house client and the Hunton team was all the more rewarding because we accomplished it while the entire company was transitioning into becoming an independent organization.”

Read the full press release.