Hunton & Williams and Axalta Recognized as 2016 ACC Value Champions

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.”

Hunton & Williams and Axalta are one of 12 corporate legal departments and law department/ law firm or legal service provider collaborations recognized as ACC Value Champions. The complete list of the 2016 ACC Value Champions, along with additional details related to Hunton & Williams and Axalta’s submission, can be viewed online at: www.acc.com/.

“This year, we honored three law department/outside counsel partnerships, all crafted under value-based fees, as ACC Value Champions,” said Veta T. Richardson, president and CEO of ACC. “We were especially impressed by the way these inside and outside counsel partnerships collaborated on technology-based solutions to clarify processes, promote knowledge sharing across the business and shorten the time needed to resolve legal questions.”

Hunton & Williams provides the full range of value-engineered commercial contracting and sourcing support associated with the procurement function of clients in a range of industries, including consumer products and services, big box and on-line retail, manufacturing, financial services, insurance, health care, life sciences, energy, technology and media, among others. The team supports the full life cycle of contracting operations, from forms development to contract counseling and negotiation, training, vendor management and dispute resolution.

The Association of Corporate Counsel is the world’s largest organization serving the professional and business interests of attorneys who practice in the legal departments of corporations, associations, nonprofits and other private-sector organizations around the globe.