Corporate Counsel Names The Hartford's in-House Attorneys as "Best Legal Department" for 2009.

NEW YORK -- Incisive Media's Corporate Counsel magazine today announced the selection of the in-house attorneys of The Hartford Financial Services Group as winners of the magazine's fourth annual "Best Legal Department" competition. Corporate Counsel's editors also named the legal departments of Exelon Corporation and IBM as finalists. Profiles of the winner and finalists will be featured in the June issue of the magazine, out today, and on the magazine's Web site at www.corpcounsel.com.

The in-house legal department at The Hartford was selected for its work and success in negotiating, structuring and closing a critical deal with global insurance giant Allianz SE in record time. In the midst of the financial service industry's meltdown last September, the agreement brought The Hartford a crucial $2.5 billion capital infusion that played a key role in saving the company from insolvency. The legal team later repeated its stellar performance, enabling The Hartford to acquire a troubled bank under a tight deadline, and allowing the company to qualify for participation in the Treasury Department's TARP program.

"Choosing a winner was a particularly close call this year, but general counsel Alan Kreczko and his legal team's feat of bringing a complex, multi-billion dollar deal to completion in only 15 days stood out," said Anthony Paonita, editor in chief of the magazine. "Equally important to our decision was the quality of the work they do outside of crisis management. From systems and diversity, to management of settlements and outside counsel, The Hartford's lawyers impressed us on every level."

The magazine's editors cited Exelon Corporation's legal department for its efforts in expanding pro bono work and improving lawyer diversity. Last year, 54 of the legal department's 59 attorneys, and all of its 15 paralegals, spent a combined total of more than 1,600 hours on pro bono projects. When it comes to diversity, Exelon not only actively works to hire more female and minority attorneys in-house, but also makes sure that its outside counsel are doing that as well. And, Exelon goes one step further, tracking whether women and minorities at outside law firms actually work on Exelon's legal matters, and rewarding those firms that respond with additional work.

The 580 lawyers in IBM's global legal team were recognized for their groundbreaking work and innovation across a variety of areas. In 2008, for the sixteenth year in a row, the company's IP lawyers led the nation in number of new patents, with 4,186. But, it's more than IP. Big Blue's legal department acts almost as a legal SWAT team, making decisions quickly without getting bogged down in bureaucratic groupthink and reinventing itself as the company moved from hardware to software and services. As could be expected, the department is also among the savviest users of legal technology in the profession. Recently the department used its Internet technology to stage a "Global Law Jam" over several days to brainstorm how to make the group better. And, among its unique achievements under GC Robert Weber, is the creation of a "virtual law firm" of nearly 100 retired IBM lawyers who practice as freelancers, supporting the IP department.

Winners were selected from responses submitted to a detailed questionnaire developed by the editors and reporters of Corporate Counsel and distributed to the general counsel of all Fortune 500 corporations. The magazine's editors and reporters evaluated submissions and selected the winners.

The winner and finalists will be honored this fall at a joint event with Corporate Counsel's sibling publication The American Lawyer. The dinner will salute The American Lawyer's Lifetime Achievement Award winners, the 20 firms from the Am Law 200 selected for the magazine's "A-List," and the winners and finalists of Corporate Counsel's Best Legal Department competition.

The award-winning Corporate Counsel, the nation's leading magazine for general counsel and in-house attorneys at corporations across the country, is published monthly by Incisive Media and is available on the Web at www.corpcounsel.com.

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