Author: Onit

Even many otherwise highly sophisticated CFOs and financial departments have difficulty estimating expenses and doing fundamental accounting and bookkeeping, they need to control costs and keep outside counsel appropriately reined in.

You know it is time for a change to bring your legal billing process up to date. But you face a problem. Over the past several years, many legal e-billing software and billing apps have sprouted up. While you see the value of this kind of software, in the abstract, you are probably overwhelmed by all the choices and concerned about security and safety.

You’re not being paranoid. There are excellent reasons to be concerned. First of all, untested software (or at least software untested for the kinds of billing needs you need to get done) is out there and can expose you and your team to problems.

You want to maintain control of the billing process and avoid exposure to liability risks (for instance, what if billing data somehow got leaked?). Likewise, you want software without superfluous features that could complicate what you are trying to do.

LEGAL E-BILLING: HOW TO TELL IF YOUR BILLING SOFTWARE IS SECURE ENOUGH

Here are some tips for ensuring your data is safe with the legal e-billing application you select.

• Choose a provider that takes information security seriously. BusyLamp is ISO 27001 certified, meaning we have a framework with specific policies and procedures around data risk identification, implications, and control.
• Choose software with an excellent track record. BusyLamp works with many financial institutions, banks, and law firms. Our software helps them comply with complicated regulatory requirements, and we successfully work with institutions with significant data and privacy concerns. We use sophisticated encryption techniques as well as password-protected access to safeguard data.
• Before purchasing billing software and installing it, ask good questions. For instance, how can you protect data and billing information from being vulnerable to unauthorized access, manipulation, or destruction due to a fire or accident?
• Be watchful and systematize data review and backup. Even if the best hacking minds could not crack your systems, you still want to assess your billing statements and processes regularly to identify anomalies or red flags that could indicate problems.
• Avoid using untested legal e-billing solutions. BusyLamp’s scalable software as a service model has allowed us to provide diverse e-billing and fee-tracking tools. Our product is unique in the world of legal expense management.
• Respond immediately if you identify a security issue. A data breach or loss of important information is containable if caught quickly enough. By tracking your billing processes precisely and accurately, you will be able to respond faster if a problem occurs.
• Remember: Encryption is key. To our knowledge, BusyLamp is the only provider that encrypts stored data and not only the end-to-end communication.

Read and bookmark our checklist for more data security considerations.

We would love to understand more about your e-billing concerns and help you find the right solution for your team and budget. Contact us today.

Hiring outside counsel to handle urgent, time-sensitive work (or even ongoing, non-sensitive projects) can be heartburn-inducing, particularly if you must keep your team’s financials in line and reduce costs. Here are five battle-tested tips for ensuring that the money you spend on outside counsel gets spent wisely and that you get an appropriate return on any investment.

1. SET GUIDELINES FOR THE SPEND AND ENFORCE THEM.

Be specific and detailed when you create guidelines. Download “Getting Started with Billing Guidelines” for examples. Conduct record keeping, invoicing, and tracking attorney time and expenses according to strict formulas. This “by the book” approach may seem bureaucratic and even lead to accusations of micromanaging. But budget processes left unmanaged tend to evolve for the convenience of those involved rather than for the greater good of the company or customer. When everyone involved internally and externally understands billing expectations, there will be fewer surprises and less room for overinflated numbers.

2. EXAMINE PAST SPENDING AND BILLING HABITS AND LEARN YOUR LESSONS.

What’s gone wrong when you’ve worked with outside counsel? Examine metrics related to your relationship and conduct interviews with your team to gauge your process’s strengths and weaknesses. Map out how you spend money now (your “as is” budget), and then identify where you want to go. Don’t just harp on the problems; pay attention to what is working well, so you can do more of that.

3. MONITOR TO ENSURE QUALITY CONTROL.

After establishing a billing policy, defining how much you want to spend and for what, measuring your deliverables, and determining how to handle noncompliance, you still have work to do! Next, you must follow up on your process and identify slack and unnecessary constraints. When analyzing, look for duplicated steps, task waste, redundant research done on projects, poor communication, and billing at abnormally high rates for administrative tasks, like proofreading or document filing.

4. IDENTIFY BENCHMARKS TO MEASURE OUTSIDE COUNSEL’S OUTPUT.

For instance, if one firm is billing you at 1.5 times the rate you pay other outside counsel, you want to understand why. Why are you paying this extra amount? Is the spend worth it or not? By benchmarking across your relationships with various firms, you can clarify best practices and enforce expectations.

5. WHEN NEGOTIATING WITH OUTSIDE COUNSEL, FIRST LOOK INWARD TO DEVELOP THE BEST ALTERNATIVE TO NEGOTIATED ARRANGEMENT (OR BATNA).

Maybe outside counsel has been delivering good work but charging a relatively high rate. Before you dive into negotiations, determine in advance what you will accept in terms of a rate and your best alternative if you cannot get that rate. For instance, you might end the relationship, seek new partners, terminate the contract in question, and still do other business.

To control outside counsel costs and manage your business more efficiently and effectively, leverage Onit’s European legal management solution BusyLamp.space unique software. Explore our website for more details or call or email our team with any questions.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.space.

Whether you task outside counsel with predictable ongoing requirements or you and your team send work out ad hoc, you need metrics to track performance and processes to keep your budget in line and deliverables appropriate.

Developing a systematic approach to performance review can eliminate some financial uncertainty, assist your project managers, and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure efficacy. Good reviews can help you purge, if necessary, or overhaul the process you use with counsel to make it work better and more efficiently.

OUTSIDE COUNSEL MANAGEMENT: THE SECRETS TO GREAT REVIEWS

There is no hard and fast rule regarding your review’s ideal timing or depth. These elements will depend on diverse factors, such as:

• The size and scale of your team. Do you have a Chief Operating Officer or Legal Operations Manager in-house?
• The length and stability of the relationship you have developed. For instance, have you worked with counsel for years and automated many aspects of the relationship, or are you still getting to know one another and trying to figure out how to work together?
• The cycle and timing of the work. Are you engaged in long projects with relaxed timeframes or small projects with tight deadlines?
• Whether you’ve encountered challenges with counsel before.
• Whether you’re working with (or testing out) multiple attorney teams to determine the best fit.
• Whether regulatory or compliance requirements necessitate certain types of reporting.
• The degree to which you’ve solidified your business model. How well do you know what you need from outside counsel? Do you have a clear idea of the ideal relationship, or are you still evolving your business and developing your processes?
• In general, the more problems you’ve had in the past (or you anticipate that you might have, based on experience), the shorter your review timeframes should be. Similarly, the less familiar you are with counsel and your processes and expectations, the more frequently you should conduct performance reviews.

TESTED TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR REVIEWS SUCCESSFUL (AND AS STRESS-FREE AS POSSIBLE, GIVEN THE STAKES):

1. Quantify the expectations of everyone involved. As we touched on before, the more precisely you can identify your KPIs, the easier it is to give feedback. It’s a lot easier to say, “you didn’t meet such and such a number in quarter three” than it is to say, “we are generally unhappy with how you have been communicating.”

2. Solicit internal and external feedback to determine how the performance evaluation process can improve. Don’t assume. Ask good questions. Ask the people inside the process to tell you what could be improved and what works well.

3. Document the performance review process. Even if you’ve worked with outside counsel for a dozen years, and your people know their people intimately, document everything. For instance, someone can quickly fill in if a critical stakeholder leaves. Documentation also lets you improve the process over time. Write down exactly what happens (your “As Is” map). Separately determine precisely how to conduct the review. Then build towards a better process.

4. Use powerful software to automate the review. Explore Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space for insights. Our product can help you streamline your outside counsel performance review and strengthen and improve this crucial relationship.

The process of formal performance reviews is not always the most eagerly anticipated part of the work year for most managers and employees. So why should outside counsel or general counsel and their in-house legal department look upon it more positively?

The answer is that, as with a successful performance review system at any progressive company, the process can help nurture and sustain a good, productive working relationship, which in the end, is what both parties desire. It gives general counsel a chance to discuss and confirm expectations; it can reveal possibilities for improving the efficiency or effectiveness of processes through reviewing reports and procedures; and it provides an opportunity for GCs to praise outstanding performance and bring up any areas for improvement.

Some law firms these days are proactively asking to be evaluated, believing that constructive criticism can be beneficial in the long run, and displaying a positive attitude about the process can only help their relationship.

One of the keys to a proper outside counsel review is to make law firms aware of client objectives/expectations and milestones and the metrics used.

OUTSIDE COUNSEL MANAGEMENT PERFORMANCE AREAS

Some suggested areas of performance for review include:

• Quality of work — How does it compare with work performed with similar matters, in similar situations, or by this firm in the past?
• Expertise — Did outside counsel exhibit proper knowledge in such important areas as procedural law and substantive law, opposing counsel, judges, etc.?
• Timing in delivery of work against expectations
• Adhering to the budget and staffing plan — and if there were adjustments, were they discussed with plenty of advance notice?
• Communication with in-house management, including responsiveness and availability
• Outside counsel collaboration, as appropriate
• Results

Some of these performance areas should be monitored during outside counsel engagement as progress unfolds, at regular intervals, or in real-time. This is often when feedback and conversation can make a real difference — and this is where versatile tracking, e-billing, and legal spend and matter management software can provide valuable capabilities for compiling data, issuing reports, and analyzing performance.

The in-house team should also remember that outside counsel management is a two-way street, and the best performance reviews will also consider their performance. For example:

How did the general counsel/legal operations team do in managing processes? How did they partner and collaborate to help deliver value? What part of their performance can be better next time?

As much as they may not want to admit it, some general counsel find themselves thinking that, at times, monitoring and controlling outside counsel activity begins to resemble the proverbial task of herding cats. Fortunately, tracking and e-billing software today can help define, monitor, and control outside counsel spending to gather and guide these cats within the established parameters, with instant notification if one strays outside the lines.

Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space offers a Legal Fee Tracker that allows you to establish budgets, staffing limits, and other expectations and then measure the billable activity against those pre-defined totals and milestones along the way. Having access to pre-billing time entries makes it easy to stay on top of how legal spend is progressing on each separate legal matter, recognize potential issues developing, and make corrections before they get worse. Moreover, the updates come in without either party having to chase after the other.

BusyLamp’s Legal e-Billing accelerates the process of receipt and review of billing through automation, efficiently mapping it against your customized guidelines, including fee arrangements, negotiated discounts, spending caps, timekeeper rates, etc. It can capture the detailed billing information submitted by each firm, seamlessly translate manual or LEDES formats into a single form, and then route it to any designated approver. By automatically noting any violations, the software dramatically reduces the chance of error while increasing the review speed, substantially decreasing the support staff time needed to go over invoices.

MATTER MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL

Non-compliance with guidelines isn’t necessarily a deliberate act by outside counsel. Many firms deal with so many clients and differing contracts that it is understandably difficult to completely comply with each guideline. It’s not unusual for law firms to comply with widely varying terms regarding staffing (allocations for different experience levels, diversity requirements, etc.), expenses (including travel and other allowable or unallowed items), and time limitations. Billing software leverages technology to signal when actions are out of compliance, providing a straightforward, non-confrontational method of resolving the matter.

In addition to helping to manage matters and keeping operations running smoothly, the enhanced transparency and detailed information gathering, and analytics also help to set the stage for open and honest communication and collaboration between general and outside counsel. The additional insight provided through analytics can also deliver deep insights into the nature of your legal expenditures, providing a foundation for evaluating options for using outside counsel going forward and such considerations as internal cost allocation.

Compliance and cost-containment are necessary concerns for general counsel. But with a well-considered process in place, supported by versatile software capabilities such as those available from BusyLamp, maintaining a compliant working relationship can become less stressful, more productive, and in the best case, just the expected course of business.

Request a demo of eBilling.Space today and see our RFP functionality for yourself.