As companies increasingly focus on efficiency, they place more emphasis on in-house legal counsel, unbundling services, using smaller firms more often and keeping a close eye on alternative fee arrangements, according to a 2013 CEB trend report.

Your next General Counsel hire should offer strong recommendations in this area based on practical experience. The right candidate is well aware of ways to reduce spending and may even use benchmarking practices to compare spending at the company to legal spending elsewhere.