Tag: BusyLamp

Part one of a three-part “Guide to Seamless Legal Tech Implementation.” Parts two and three are below.

Part 2 – Ensuring the internal and external stakeholders are on board
Part 3 – Change management during and after implementation

Part One focuses on the project scope and gathering the key requirements prior to purchasing legal technology, and addresses the following questions:

• Why use a scope document?
• What should a scope document contain?
• What steps should follow the creation of a scope document?

WHY USE A SCOPE DOCUMENT?

Many legal technology projects fail because the tool doesn’t meet the fundamental needs of the legal department. We recommend first listing the requirements, then sourcing the right tool/s to meet these needs in a “scope document.” By developing this scope document, you will embark on the right path for defining a successful project scope and initial definition of user needs. This doesn’t need to be complex and comprehensive. A scope document captures your team and other stakeholders’ expectations of what to achieve, the steps required to meet these expectations, and at what cost and resource effort internally and externally.

A scope document:

• Forces you to think through the elements of the legal technology project and software purchase.
• Gives you a document to share with your team and other end users to ensure you have interpreted their needs correctly.
• Verifies the legal technology project’s why, who, what, when, where, and how.

Provides the basis for the request for proposal (RFP) you will send to vendors and saves time when compiling it. If you do not scope the project first, you risk multiple iterations of the RFP once vendors are already involved. This wastes time and causes internal and external confusion about the essential requirements.

WHAT SHOULD A SCOPE DOCUMENT CONTAIN?

The document’s level of detail will vary based on the complexity of the needs to be addressed. Here’s what to document when scoping a potential technology purchase.

1. THE PROBLEM OR PROJECT NEED

Describe the problem or project request. By doing this, the issues (as described by the legal department) get documented to avoid miscommunication of expectations and define the legal technology project’s goals and objectives. This section doesn’t have to be lengthy but needs to include enough detail to clearly outline the requirements and objectives.

2. THE WORK PLAN

This portion of the document will develop once a solution is selected, at which point vital milestones and potential issues will be easier to document. At the pre-solution selection stage, your scope document should include estimated time frames so internal stakeholders and vendors know the expectations. These time-based expectations have go-live dates and how fast you want to onboard various departments around the business.

3. RESOURCE NEEDS

Quantify the internal resources that your legal technology project needs. Here, it is important to identify the key project stakeholders and stakeholder groups. There are various tools and techniques to manage these stakeholders through the process; explore these in the next blog. Many projects are joint ventures with resources needed from the legal department, other internal teams, software providers, law firms, and consultants. Speak to teams elsewhere in the business who have been through similar projects and learn from their experiences.

4. COST

There are both internal and external costs. Set a budget for the software itself. Also, consider the cost of project managers, who use many different cost models (such as billing time and material), give a fixed project cost, and work on a monthly retainer fee. There may also be a cost for internal IT resources; SaaS-based solutions are significantly cheaper than resource-intensive systems hosted by yourself. If opting to build a solution, calculate the costs of this.

NEXT STEPS

Share your scope document with the users and stakeholders in the legal department and beyond. One of the main scope document benefits is a clear interpretation of requirements, so double-check and approve the document. Use this document to research potential tools, draft your RFP, and engage vendors.

Producing a scope document helps eliminate confusion within the project and manages expectations to avoid dissatisfaction and user adoption issues when a solution is ultimately selected. It saves time when you start to engage software providers, as your requirements are clear. It ensures the solution you buy or build aligns with the legal department’s priorities to maximize user adoption and business benefits.

Part 2 – Ensuring the internal and external stakeholders are on board
Part 3 – Change management during and after implementation

There are well-documented benefits of e-Billing for corporate legal departments. With digitally created billing files and automated processing and checking of invoices, e-Billing saves a huge amount of administrative resources and tracks external legal spend in almost real-time, ensuring adherence to guidelines and budgets.

Less talked about is how the legal procurement function can benefit. Legal spend management software captures detailed invoice line-item data on matter information and bill totals, as well as timelines, timekeepers, and expenses coded using the UTBMS (Uniform Task Based Management System) code set for tasks, activities, and expenses. This creates an extensive data set to analyze and make future decisions.

Organizations can use the powerful reporting and analytics capabilities in modern e-Billing solutions in the following ways:

1. BENCHMARK SERVICE PROVIDER PERFORMANCE WITH E-BILLING

E-Billing ensures consistent entry of billing data points for all service providers. This allows for accurate comparison of performance metrics such as timekeeper rates, experience levels, time to complete a matter, budget adherence, and billing guidelines compliance. Some solutions allow the in-house team to rate the firm, though this data point is subjective. Benchmarking metrics give legal procurement visibility into the service and value they receive from each service provider, leading to open and honest conversations.

2. INFLUENCE FUTURE LEGAL PURCHASE DECISIONS

The data generated by Legal Spend Management can ensure the right option is selected when deciding how to resource legal work. Longer term, the right analysis will lead legal procurement to the right purchase strategy based on past data and comparisons. This works even better when legal procurement is open with providers about using this approach and sharing their goals so external providers know how to meet expectations.

3. REVIEW AND RESTRUCTURE EXISTING PANELS

Panel reviews can be time and resource intensive because of insufficient data from which to compare levels of experience, performance, and expertise across firms, a lack of spend data, and an inability to track service delivery methods across providers. E-Billing removes all these problems, reducing the resources needed to conduct a review and generate a confident outcome. One positive of a panel review can be a reduction in panel size, which usually leads to more significant discounts by consolidating work to fewer firms. The potential downside is a lack of specialist firms on the panel. Weighing up these risks can cause conflict between procurement and the legal department and is much harder to evaluate without the data generated from Legal Spend Management software.

4. RENEGOTIATE RATES AND TERMS

By comparing fees and rates and reviewing service provider performance, legal procurement can enter negotiations with an arsenal of data to help them reduce costs and create more valuable relationships with external providers. Firms often do not have access to this level of data and may be surprised by legal procurement’s findings. They want satisfied clients and are open to these discussions.

The above benefits drive savings and confident decision-making and create a healthy competitive environment within the industry, raising standards for all corporate clients and ensuring maximum value from legal service providers. With procurement helping with financial management activities, the legal department can focus on their external legal business relationships, improving the in-house relationship between legal and procurement as they work together to achieve company goals.

Learn more about BusyLamp from Onit, our end-to-end legal spend management solution built for European corporate legal departments. 

The conventional view of electronic invoicing (e-billing) focuses on managing legal spend, potential cost savings, and the ability of in-house counsel to compare the efficiency of their panel firms. Consequently, there are less obvious — but real and measurable — benefits arising from a successful e-billing implementation.

Some known benefits for clients claimed for e-billing are that it reduces false charges, enforces compliance with the billing guidelines, and ensures that the seniority and, thus, charging rates of lawyers working on a matter is known to the client. Some clients rigorously enforce their billing rules, and e-billing provides a way for stricter application of these rules than paper-only bills. While this strict compliance with the rules is more prevalent in the US, we are also seeing more rigour brought to bear in enforcing what can (and cannot) appear on legal bills in the UK and mainland Europe.

Typical billing restrictions of this nature are that clients will not pay for certain expenses – for example, telecom charges, administrative overhead, and online research. Some further examples of external counsel guidelines are:

• Law firms should use appropriate resources for performing specific tasks – such as partners not being used on more junior-level tasks/activities.
• The client will only pay for time spent traveling if that time was productive (i.e., the lawyer worked while they were traveling).
• Clients can specify that only one external firm lawyer should attend certain types of meetings and will be able to verify that this happens.
• That several distinct tasks are not “block billed” in a single amount and to avoid using vague time narratives.

Download “Getting Started with Billing Guidelines” for more examples.

STRENGTHENING THE RELATIONSHIP WITH LAW FIRMS

There are, however, further indirect benefits gained from e-billing in terms of establishing closer working relationships between clients and their external advisors and opportunities to form mutually positive ties on a longer-term basis. Examples of these types of “added value” benefits are:

Law firms can offer more access to internal data not ordinarily available to the client, for example, written-off /unbilled time and nonchargeable work done for the client. Firms can also categorize billed time by the client’s work breakdown/cost codes and improve the value to the client of the information in the e-bill. It means that more comprehensive information about each matter is available to both law firm and the client. This improves the quality of the discussions at relationship meetings, for example.

Law firms should see e-billing as a marketing tool and something to offer to new and existing clients. Many law firms are experienced in e-billing and can advise on e-billing issues and how to best tailor billing data to meet the client’s needs. Prospective clients now require law firms to be knowledgeable about e-billing and demonstrate that they can offer this service when making new business pitches.

E-billing can facilitate a fresh dialogue between law firm and client about the pricing of legal work and the use of more flexible cost models. An example is where part of a matter gets priced with part according to time-based billing, and part is fixed-fee work. This costing type only gets achieved if both parties are comfortable with the work done and at what stage or phase of the transaction. E-billing is the only way to measure and make visible this work breakdown for both parties.

Finally, several studies have shown that using e-billing software results in faster payment of the lawyer’s bills. E-billing tools significantly reduce the client’s manual workload for invoice validation, resulting in quicker invoice approval and payment.

All this shows that using e-billing software can improve the relationship between law firms and clients. Regarding business life, there is probably no closer relationship than that between a lawyer and a client. Such a close relationship is based on transparency and, therefore, must avoid information asymmetries. This applies not only to the content of the case in which the law firm is advising the client but also to the costs arising from that advice.

Modern e-billing providers like Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp e-billing.Space contribute to strengthening the relationship in this respect. They have set themselves the goal of establishing the use of e-billing for the client and the law firms as a smooth process.

The business process of legal e-billing (electronic invoicing) between an in-house team and outside counsel is rapidly growing; we can learn lessons from many successful implementations. Some key factors can assist with the implementation of e-billing and help ensure that both the in-house legal department and the law firms benefit from the changes.

While there is now a general level of knowledge in the legal marketplace about e-billing, there still seems to be a need for more detailed information and expertise regarding the exact steps required by both the client and the law firm to make e-billing a success.

On the surface, e-billing, from a client’s perspective, may seem straightforward. But we believe that many in-house legal departments are unaware of the issues that may arise from poor initial resourcing or project management with e-billing. There are also several “best practices” that client organizations need to be aware of and apply to maximize the opportunities from e-billing.

In our experience, clients have some work to do to prepare for e-billing, even before they can approach their law firm panel regarding an e-billing project – either directly or through one of the e-billing intermediaries.

E-BILLING CHECKLIST: ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

It is important that an e-billing implementation is a two-way process and not just something imposed by the in-house legal team. A standard e-billing checklist identifies the key questions the law firm needs to know to ensure successful implementation. Ideally, work should start after answering all questions; otherwise, significant implementation delays may occur.

• The checklist should include questions on the following:
• What LEDES format does the client want to use?
• What UTBMS codes and timekeeper classification does the client want to use?
• What billing rules is the client seeking to impose?
• What is the project’s scope – including client entities and types of matters?
• What does the firm have to do to achieve a successful bill?

In return for a stricter, more transparent billing discipline, the client could commit to a minimum bill payment period following approval of the e-bill. When not agreeing to these conditions at the outset, it is difficult for the firm to impose conditions after the event.

E-BILLING PROJECT RESOURCING

E-billing is a relatively resource-intensive process. The larger law firm will likely deal with upwards of five different e-billing vendors and several varying LEDES formats. The team responsible has to be able to log into each system, understand the differences, and know what to do for bill rejection to minimize bill turnaround time. In addition, the team must constantly update systems with new fee-earner information and any changes to billing rates; otherwise, the system will reject them. For every 200 e-bills issued monthly, a firm must employ approximately one individual to administer the systems. Without the experience, skill, and discipline to administer the systems, you could face significant collection time delays.

In-house legal departments must appreciate this and ensure they have chosen an e-billing provider that is always available to law firms for any queries. Professionally set up e-billing providers like Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp e-billing.Space focus on responding quickly and with high quality to law firms’ questions to ensure that the client and their firms get the best possible service and keep the flow of instructions and invoices moving.

ENGAGE E-BILLING STAKEHOLDERS FROM THE OUTSET

E-billing needs to be owned and driven at a senior level and requires the input of all stakeholders that touch on the process. Within law firms, e-billing is not just a function of the billing department. It needs to be understood and contributed to by the fee earners, business development, finance, revenue, credit control, and billing. Strategic implementation becomes even more critical when several e-billing projects with competing priorities roll out simultaneously. Likewise, within the client organization all the stakeholders must be engaged in the process – including the legal teams, General Counsel, and, more recently, the Corporate Legal Operations Teams.

IN-HOUSE BILLING PROCESSES

The introduction of e-billing also requires resources from the in-house team. Introducing an e-billing system does not differ from any other process change of comparable scope. Legal departments need to ensure that their internal processes and systems can maximize the benefits that can accrue from e-billing. This may mean changes to the Accounts Payable system to enable electronic acceptance of e-bills once approved for payment. Also, the internal invoice processes should be capable of meeting the requirements that a move to e-billing brings. This may mean changes to existing procedures for budgetary approval, giving matter instructions, and the processes for authorizing and paying law firm invoices.

A glance at the many successful introductions of e-billing systems shows that the effort will undoubtedly pay off. While this is evident from the in-house point of view due to the significant cost savings, the advantages for law firms are often only apparent at a glance. Law firms strengthen and improve their relationships with clients if they support them in making e-billing a successful project.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.space.

The use of technology within in-house legal departments is increasingly catching up with the IT that has been available to the lawyers in larger external law firms for some time. This is particularly true of international firms with solid bases in the US or UK, where a significant percentage of fee income goes toward leading-edge IT systems. These solutions include such business applications as Document/Records Management, Knowledge Management, Matter Management, Litigation Support/eDiscovery, Cost Tracking, Resource Planning, and Advanced Data Analytics. This extends to the latest technology trends, including using Machine Learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) in document drafting, contract comparison, and due diligence. These systems are increasingly available to lawyers and support staff in the office and increasingly “on the move” or working remotely.

Corporate Legal Operations is now becoming a significant focus, and these applications are increasingly available to in-house lawyers with the strategic vision to deploy them efficiently and effectively. One key area to look at is that of e-billing (electronic invoicing) which is not just the provision of a legal bill as a PDF but a file of structured billing data – broken down into individual line items – enabling in-house lawyers to gain a considerable amount of added value from this cost and expenses data.

BACKGROUND OF E-BILLING

Like many legal technology systems, e-billing began in the US in the mid-1990s. The interest in the UK in e-billing began in 2003 when UK branches of US insurance and finance organizations started demanding such functionality from their regional law firms, which led US e-billing solution vendors to set up offices in the UK. Over the past decade, many e-billing projects have been undertaken, with several law firms successfully e-billing their largest clients to millions of pounds per year. In terms of market penetration, estimates put around 90% of repetitive litigation work is now e-billed in the US. Recently, Tim Arvidson (Director of Accounting and Billing at Hawkins Parnell) reported that many mid-sized US firms collect around 70% of annual revenue via e-bills.

While the UK is not yet at this level, e-billing currently accounts for 15-20% of the total volume of bills issued by the largest law firms in the UK market. With e-billing clients being among these firms’ largest and most important clients, this typically equates to approximately 25% of total revenue.

BENEFITS OF E-BILLING

What is the driver for legal e-billing, and what returns do corporate legal departments expect e-billing to deliver? Conventionally an e-billing implementation has been driven by a desire to control external legal spend but to realize other non-financial and unplanned benefits. The older “traditional” e-billing solutions have delivered some real benefits, such as:

• Clarity, consistency, and transparency in the billing of legal services
• Compliance with the corporate legal department’s billing rules, e.g., what will the client not pay for?
• Cost and expense tracking for every matter
• Access to data analytics and allowing comparisons across all external legal service providers
• Knowledge of what every external law firm is working on and who instructed them
• Assisting the decision-making process on which is the best option for undertaking legal work
• Improving the department’s internal processes – speedier workflow and paper reduction

LIMITATIONS OF CONVENTIONAL E-BILLING

Some of the criticisms leveled at these older e-billing systems are that they are very cumbersome, if not “clunky,” and do not sit well with the current trend in IT for software to require “no installation.” Furthermore, they can only reflect the position “after the event,” i.e., the legal bill goes to the client. Other negative comments often made are that the e-billing vendors are too “corporate” and are inflexible in their approach. Also, many law firms, especially those not using the large time and billing systems already, cannot produce LEDES files, and e-billing has yet to deliver on the promises often made to clients and law firms.

MODERN LEGAL E-BILLING SOLUTIONS

Over the past few years, new solution providers have come into the market – both in the US and from within the EU. Interestingly some of these, e.g., Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space, have been founded by lawyers who realized that many clients (and law firms) were resisting the more “traditional” e-billing solutions. These new solutions bring a fresh perspective to legal spend management and utilize tools and techniques that are breaking ground in the delivery of IT services. While not all products have these features, they employ many, including ease of set-up, use of AI for the bill review process, and a high degree of collaboration – allowing legal departments to review cost and expense data in the pre-billing stages of a matter. They also offer a low cost of ownership, integration with other legal department applications, and support for a wide range of business processes from RFP and budgeting through billing to a comprehensive management information and reporting suite.

MAKING THE BUSINESS CASE FOR E-BILLING

Quite rightly, in-house departments want to know the return on investment (ROI) of e-billing solutions and whether they can measure it. (BusyLamp has a whole paper dedicated to making the business case for legal e-billing) Several examples of what has been achieved in terms of in-house departments getting a positive financial return. Most of these results arise from such billing practices as eliminating duplicate time entries, removing “block” billing, ensuring utilization of the right resources, and minimizing the possibility of erroneous charge-out rates. The fact that external lawyers know that the billing data is under closer scrutiny often improves the accuracy and ensures more prompt time recording.

Further non-financial benefits can arise from an e-billing implementation. We know that e-billing helps form closer ties between law firms and in-house, adds value to the relationship, and makes client/law firm meetings more productive. When both parties have access to more accurate billing information, it reduces potential conflicts, allows the law firm to provide more than just basic billing data, and can assist in discussions about alternative charging models. Indeed e-billing is not just for charging billable hours but can support various billing models – including fixed fee, retainer, and value-based pricing.

E-BILLING DATA SECURITY AND DATA PROTECTION

Buyers and users of e-billing systems need to ensure that the vendor understands and complies with all Data Protection regulations and has a high-security rating for their data storage and communications functions. As legal data is especially sensitive, providers must have high data protection standards to ensure privacy and security. The GDPR and other regulations already set those high standards, but providers should look to go “above and beyond” to secure these top-notch privacy standards in the future. Read our handy checklist of legal tech security considerations.

SECURING A SUCCESSFUL E-BILLING PROJECT

The successful implementation of an e-billing solution requires a serious approach from all parties, the in-house team, the law firms, and the solution provider – with the right level of resources to bring the “buy-in” to the project. Even the best application cannot deliver the right results without the people who use it applying the appropriate effort. Finally, it is fundamentally important to choose the right provider. We know that modern e-billing vendors are gaining new business and winning customers from established providers. Indeed, clients must decide which e-billing solution offers the best mix of usability, service, IT security, project experience, and price TODAY. It is also essential to talk to existing customers and not only rely on the statements of the respective salesperson.

Request a demo of BusyLamp eBilling.space today. 

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.