We consider the counting function (“spectral staircase”) for eigenvalues of a random unitary matrix, drawn from the corresponding beta-ensemble. Our goal is to characterize the statistics of maximum deviation of this staircase from its mean slope in a fixed interval, when size of the matrix N >>1. We will show that one-sided extremes can be addressed by exploiting a mapping onto the statistical mechanics of log-correlated random processes and using an extended Fisher-Hartwig conjecture. The resulting statistics exhibits combined features of counting statistics of Fermions with Sutherland-type interaction and extremal statistics of the fractional Brownian motion with Hurst index H = 0. Some of the features are expected to be universal. The talk will be based on the paper Y.V. Fyodorov & P. Le Doussal PRL v.124, 210602 (2020).