The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) has named Avis Budget Group Inc. as a 2017 ACC Value Champion.

Avis Budget's legal department earned the accolade for its Legal Transformation Program, which created a legal operations model that enabled the company to drive efficiency throughout the organization and realize significant savings on its annual legal spend.

"This year's ACC Value Champions demonstrate the positive impact a strong law department has on the business and its bottom line," said Veta T. Richardson, ACC’s president and CEO. "The law departments we honored created solutions to business problems, initiated strong partnerships with external providers, and created processes and systems to empower clients to access self-service legal tools."

Avis Budget's Legal Transformation Program reduced the number of law firms that represented the company around the globe from approximately 700 to a panel of seven firms. In addition, it created metrics that provide a more accurate way to predict and address future issues and allowed Avis Budget to deliver significant cost-savings while handling more matters year-over-year, according to the company.

"Our initiative was based on a ‘win-win' model with our panel law firms,” said Michael K. Tucker, Avis Budget Group’s executive vice president and general counsel. “It not only reduced our legal spend, it also gave our panel firms the ability to increase their profits by providing them with the ability to better manage their partner-to-associate utilization ratio on matters, leverage technology, and incorporate project management tools to increase their profitability while also increasing the efficiency of the legal services they provide to us. We are proud of our results and are honored to be named a 2017 Value Champion. We thank ACC for the esteemed recognition."

A panel of ACC in-house counsel judges selected 12 companies for this recognition.