Tag: InvoiceAI

The Latest Advancement For AI in Spend Analytics: Finding Legal Invoice Errors “Between the Rules” with InvoiceAI

Posted on September 14, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal invoice review is rarely a top-ten task for corporate legal departments, meaning it’s the ideal process for AI in spend analytics to improve. That’s why Onit has announced the general availability of its AI-enabled invoice review offering – InvoiceAI.

Onit’s InvoiceAI analyzes historical and real-time legal invoices to find errors “between the billing rules.” It uses AI and machine learning to support outside counsel guidelines, looking into common invoice areas of note such as non-working travel, block billing, vague descriptions and work done by improper staff class.

How InvoiceAI Works

Before the rise of e-billing and legal spend management, paper ruled the invoice process. Law firms sent substantial bills – think hundreds of pages – to their corporate clients. In-house counsel, in return, rarely had the time, tools or resources to scrutinize line items.

The transition to e-billing opened the door for more technologies to improve bill review – namely, billing rules. Billing rules rely on specific descriptions and context provided (or not provided) by in-house legal professionals to evaluate line items. However, descriptions for line items can vary based on the biller and service. Invoices without the exact language or terms outlined in billing guidelines may evade review and be approved for payment. There is simply no way to code billing rules to cover every possible permutation of language that might populate future invoices.

This is where AI in spend analytics enters the picture.

InvoiceAI has been trained on millions of legal invoice charges. It fully integrates with Onit’s enterprise legal management system and works with billing rules to look for areas where overpayment is common. When these issues are flagged, InvoiceAI can automatically adjust an invoice to comply with guidelines or bring the item to reviewers’ attention.

Essentially, InvoiceAI allows machine learning to do what it does best, looking for discrepancies and continually learning and improving its invoice review. It also allows Onit’s existing e-billing rules to continue doing what they do best – focusing on compliance with outside counsel guidelines and flagging issues for additional expert review. Finally, it allows legal operations teams to do what they do best: reviewing trends for compliance, managing vendor relationships and implementing best practices across outside counsel guidelines.

As a result, corporate legal departments benefit from:

  • A reduction in invoice review time due to better recommendations and less manual work
  • The ability to review past invoices and have AI identify errors and unnecessary payments
  • Insight into legal spend trends and vendor performance
  • Access to Onit’s partner Sterling Analytics, the leader in third-party invoice review.

How to Learn More About AI in Spend Analytics

To learn more about InvoiceAI, hear Matt DenOuden, Senior Vice President of Sales, and Mary Fuzat, Vice President of Product Management, discuss how AI in spend analytics boosts efficiency and saves money in this podcast.

InvoiceAI is now available to all Onit customers. Reach out to us today at [email protected] to learn more about InvoiceAI and Onit’s enterprise legal management system. You can also schedule a demo here.

How to Balance Legal Cost Management with Rising Associate Fees

Posted on June 17, 2021 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal cost management has become more challenging for corporate legal departments, as law firms’ associate salaries continue to climb.

Despite the global pandemic, many law firms had surprisingly strong financial performances in 2020. Reports show AmLaw 50 law firms saw a revenue increase of more than 7%, with other firms reporting double-digit growth and profits per partner jumping 30%.

Now, the nation’s top law firms have raised associate salaries in the hopes of remaining competitive and retaining top legal talent. First-year associate salaries at top firms now sit at $200,000, increasing as associates go up in seniority.

While this is certainly good news for associates, many corporate legal departments are conflicted since the bump will surely be reflected in law firm fees. Some corporate legal leaders view the salary increase with skepticism, especially when companies are under heavy pressure to cut costs and control legal spend. As more and more firms continue to match the new associate pay scales, in-house counsel and legal operations will have to find new ways to respond to the rising fees.

Six Strategies for Legal Spend Containment

While higher associate rates might lead to more pressure, the challenge isn’t insurmountable when it comes to legal cost management. The following are just a few strategies that corporate legal departments can employ to better understand and potentially offset those increased charges on their end.

  1. Set automated billing rules that address time charged to junior associates. Many corporations disallow billing by first-year associates during their ramp-up period and may start more closely scrutinizing overall firm staffing on matters now that rates are increasing. Any such rules should be clearly included in outside counsel guidelines.
  2. Closely review all your bills. No one enjoys legal invoice review, but it’s critical for catching improper costs. While not necessarily intentional, inconsistent coding and charges from improper billers happen all the time. They’re often missed because they’re buried in long bills with extensive charges.
  3. Pursue alternative fee arrangements. Whether it’s flat fee billing or contingency arrangements, alternatives to the billable hour model are increasing in popularity among corporate clients. Outside counsel might collaborate with you to implement them.
  4. Consider shifting some work in-house or to alternative legal service providers (ALSPs). As outside representation becomes more expensive, now is the time to take a detailed look at whether all the work you’re outsourcing to law firms could be handled just as well by internal resources or more cost-effective ALSPs.
  5. Move work from associates to paralegals or administrative personnel where possible. Junior lawyers often handle tasks that don’t require someone of their skillset. As associate rates go up, it’s more important than ever to ensure that every task is being handled at the right staffing level.
  6. Understand your overall approach to legal cost management to see where your dollars are going. Are you paying for things like overhead charges and photocopies or are you allowing invoices that include block billing? Eliminating these charges can help offset the newly increased associate fees.

The Role of Enterprise Legal Management and AI Invoice Review

All of the above cost-cutting measures will be significantly easier and more effective if you have the right enterprise legal management software (ELM) and AI-powered invoice review tools. These tools incorporate electronic billing, automated billing rules, machine learning and more which make it easier to enforce your outside counsel guidelines and engage in legal spend management.

AI is far more efficient at reviewing lengthy legal invoices and better at catching improper coding – charges that aren’t allowed, work that’s being handled at the wrong level and more. In-house legal professionals are already tasked with doing more with fewer resources and manual invoice review shouldn’t add to that burden.

Whether you turn to third-party review or implement your own internal solutions, you stand to better understand your overall spend and significantly reduce costs. InvoiceAI, Onit’s new AI offering for legal invoice review, has already identified six-figure savings in improperly billed travel costs for Onit customers during a time when travel was at an all-time low. The potential savings from using the right tools is significant.

ELM enables the e-billing, legal spend management and matter management you need to get insight into and control over your legal spend. Schedule a demo today or email [email protected] to learn more.

Meet InvoiceAI: Onit’s New Artificial Intelligence Offering for Legal Invoice Review

Posted on May 26, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Legal invoice review is a necessary process for corporate legal departments and also notoriously complex and time-consuming – even with business rules applied. Nevertheless, legal departments spend countless dollars every year for in-house counsel and other professionals to manually inspect invoices, whether flagged or not. That’s time wasted on administrative tasks that in-house professionals can reallocate to higher-value work and strategies.

That’s all about to change.

Today, Onit announced the debut of InvoiceAI for its customers. The artificial intelligence offering for first-pass legal invoice review and analytics decreases the burden of invoice review while providing insights into spend analytics.

An Intelligent Review

The sheer volume of legal invoices has pummeled Fortune 500 corporate legal departments for years, challenging corporate counsels’ ability to understand and control legal spend and build productive partnerships with law firms.

Even with flagged invoices, corporate counsel can face a large number of line items on each invoice to reconcile and miss noted issues or errors. Enforcing outside counsel guidelines is complicated even further with issues like vague or incomplete invoices, improper block billing, incorrect coding and more.

InvoiceAI builds off Onit’s existing billing rules engine, enhancing the invoice review process by incorporating machine learning and natural language processing to more accurately and efficiently identify invoice issues that need further review. Our machine learning models identify potentially problematic billing issues like administrative tasks or travel and integrate with existing eBilling, legal spend management and enterprise legal management technologies. What you get is an intelligent review that learns more as you process more invoices, plus all the advantages of our configurable rules engine – the best of both worlds when it comes to understanding legal spend.

AI-Powered Invoice Review Leads to Significant Cost Savings

While InvoiceAI’s models continue their training, the offering is already used to analyze past invoices and identify potentially non-compliant charges under company billing guidelines and legal spend management best practices.

A select group of Onit Fortune 100 customers ran InvoiceAI through historical bills with significant results. InvoiceAI uncovered on average of 6-11% unactioned errors for invoices submitted in 2020, above and beyond the savings that Onit’s rules-based invoice review tools had already found.

For example, even though 2020 was a notably slow year for travel, InvoiceAI identified travel charges in the high six-figure range that should not have been billed.

On top of better invoice review, you also get powerful analytics. The results generated by InvoiceAI can serve as a learning tool for outside counsel, giving them a clear report on the core commercial expectations of the companies they represent. The reports are also beneficial for demonstrating immediate savings in outside spend to internal stakeholders.

The Future of Legal Invoice Review, Ready Now for Customers

InvoiceAI is available to Onit customers now and will be generally available to the public in the fall.

AI-enabled invoice review from SimpleLegal, Onit’s subsidiary, will launch this summer, with availability open now for select existing corporate legal customers.

If you’re currently an Onit or SimpleLegal customer and you want a complimentary AI analysis of the last 90 days of your billings, contact your account manager today.

If you’re not currently a customer but want to learn more about how InvoiceAI can improve your legal invoice review and legal spend management, contact [email protected] today.

What the Future With AI Looks Like for Enterprise Legal Management: InvoiceAI Coming Soon

Posted on April 13, 2021 by - Artificial Intelligence, Business Process Management, Company News and Events

As technology continues to evolve, many in-house counsel and legal professionals wonder what their future with artificial intelligence (AI) looks like. Will legal AI technology replace lawyers? Will it make work easier or more complicated?

Fortunately, we already have indicators of legal AI success. It’s providing commendable results in contract lifecycle management, accelerating contract approvals by up to 70%. Now, AI is also enhancing enterprise legal management software.

InvoiceAI, the new, AI-enabled invoice review solution for enterprise legal management, is coming to Onit and SimpleLegal next month. It lets corporate legal departments leverage the power of AI to boost efficiency in invoice review drastically. When InvoiceAI does a first-pass invoice review, in-house counsel reset their activities to review only the invoices that genuinely need their attention. This frees them up to focus time on more critical, higher-value work that helps the company succeed.

The Future with Legal AI Technology for Legal Operations

More and more companies are incorporating the benefits of AI in their workflows every day. In their annual global survey on artificial intelligence, The State of AI in 2020, McKinsey & Company found that half of their respondents had adopted AI in at least one function in their organizations. The survey also found that companies were increasingly using AI as a tool for generating value, particularly in the form of revenues.

Recent research from Gartner agrees. According to Gartner, by 2023, having AI will be a substantial competitive advantage for companies, bringing a 30% increase in efficiency to document completion and contract negotiation processes via AI-enabled contract lifecycle management tools. They also predict that, by 2023, 90% of multinational global enterprises will be investing in those solutions, as will 50% of regional midsize businesses.

What do these AI advantages look like when quantified?

Onit conducted a study of its ReviewAI software to quantify the time and cost savings for its pre-signature contract review AI software. The study found that lawyers were 51.5% more productive when using ReviewAI than when working manually. The percentage of productivity increased the more proficient they became with the tool.

To illustrate this benefit, consider that a typical midsize company in the United States employs 28 lawyers and reviews 4,850 contracts annually. With ReviewAI, each of these lawyers can unlock capacity – 51.5% more – and that same team of 28 lawyers can now process 2,498 more contracts annually.

That’s the same as adding nine lawyers to the team.

A Better Way to Review Invoices

The competitive advantage that AI has brought to functions like contract lifecycle management is now coming to invoice review. With InvoiceAI, general counsel and in-house counsel will finally be able to stop wasting precious time on tedious invoicing tasks. While legal AI technology handles your first-pass review, you can focus on more important things.

Onit’s founding principle is to help lawyers more effectively practice law, and InvoiceAI is a critical new tool to make that goal a reality.

AI-enabled legal invoice review from Onit and SimpleLegal will be available in May 2021. To learn more about InvoiceAI and how AI can improve your legal invoice review, contact Onit today or email [email protected].

Coming Soon: InvoiceAI: AI for Legal Invoice Review

Posted on February 2, 2021 by - Company News and Events

Today, Onit kicked off its next phase of AI innovation at Legalweek(year) with the announcement of InvoiceAI, an AI-enabled legal invoice review offering for enterprise legal management. The offering, which will launch in May for both Onit and SimpleLegal, uses AI to create greater efficiencies in invoice review and allows general counsel and in-house counsel to focus on what they do best for their companies.

The invoice processing AI speaks to Onit’s founding principle: Help lawyers practice law more effectively. InvoiceAI eliminates tasks that aren’t related to practicing law – in this case, removing legal invoice review friction by relying on AI.

Onit leadership served as pioneers for legal e-billing, championing the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES), the Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) and more. Now, that experience is taking legal invoice review to the next level with AI.

If you’re interested in learning more about Onit’s AI for legal invoice review, please speak with your account manager or email [email protected].

AI Innovation from Onit

When it launches in May, InvoiceAI will join three other AI offerings from Onit:

  • Precedent, Onit’s AI-powered business intelligence platform that automates and improves both legal and business processes for corporate legal departments, law firms, contract professionals, and procurement teams
  • ReviewAI, contract AI for pre-signature contract review that quickly and accurately reviews, redlines and edits all types of contracts in minutes.
  • ExtractAI, contract AI for post-signature contract management that extracts usable data from executed, legacy and third-party paper contracts.

You can schedule a demonstration of these three solutions by visiting this page.