Year: 2014

5 Reasons Legal Department Operations Is Taking a Second Look at E-Billing

Posted on February 4, 2014 by - Business Process Management

Legal e-billing has been around since the mid-1990s when it was introduced as message-based store and forward systems based on EDI technologies developed during WWII. Many legal departments implemented these burgeoning e-billing systems as enterprise-scale software deployments at great cost.

Secure Ebilling

Unfortunately, not much has changed since then, and many legal departments find themselves still using the system they originally installed.

But now, savvy legal department operations leaders are taking into consideration the huge advances in technology to increase visibility and efficiency while reducing risk for their department.

The top five reasons to re-evaluate e-billing software for the modern era are:

  1. Software As A Service (SaaS) has removed the barrier to replacing or augmenting software.
    No longer are legal departments constrained by IT resources the months required to implement and configure a new system. SaaS software makes it easy to get started with a new system in days rather than months.
  2. The need for a shared workspace has become critical as working with outside counsel has exploded.
    It’s common for a legal department to be working with multiple (even numerous) law firms for a variety of tasks. Trying to keep track of all the firms – much less stay on the same page for open matters, timekeeper rates, budgets, and invoices – is difficult in legacy e-billing systems.
  3. Processes need to be flexible – without working around the system.
    Processes change from instance to instance, from day to day. Different people need to get involved depending on changing criteria. Companies need the ability to include additional people ad hoc to a process without ‘faking’ it. This is important both for getting work done and for creating audit trails.
  4. Poor timekeeper management reduces cost benefits.
    Tracking all authorized timekeepers and their rates is complicated in legacy e-billing systems. Timekeeper rates are less static than in the past as well, when this data is out-of-date, your department may be spending more than it realizes.
  5. Management expects analytics around every facet of outside counsel work.
    Many e-billing systems fall down when it comes to reporting. The need to report on metrics that matter specifically to your department, and quickly track your KPI’s with dashboards, has only recently been tacked on to legacy e-billing systems. You shouldn’t need to export everything to Excel before you can analyze it.

Today, Onit announced the launch of BillingPoint, its suite of Legal E-billing and Matter Management Apps, at LegalTech New York 2014. This new suite of Apps enables corporate law departments and laws firms to share all the types of sensitive information (i.e., matter types, practice areas, timekeeper rates, expenses, invoices, budgets, or any document essential to their financial relationship) in a truly collaborative workspace.

Now law firms and law departments can now take advantage of the first real innovation in legal e-billing in more than two decades. BillingPoint was designed from the ground-up by experts in legal e-billing — the founders of Datacert — Eric M. Elfman and Eric Smith. Onit has developed the first truly innovative e-billing software that takes advantage of all the advances made in technology over the last 20 years.

Come learn more now.

 

Image courtesy of Sujin Jetkasettakorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

2013 Year in Review

Posted on January 6, 2014 by - Business Process Management, Company News and Events

It’s been an exciting year at Onit and we appreciate the opportunity to share it with you. We’ve made great progress this year, both from a product and customer perspective, and I wanted to highlight some of our accomplishments.

To begin, we have successfully deployed Apps at numerous Fortune 500 and privately held companies. In addition to seeing unprecedented user adoption rates, our Apps have been deployed globally in more than 175 countries. This has taken off faster than we anticipated.

Second, we have built new Apps on our App Builder platform (as anyone can do) to serve the growing needs of our customers. Some recent Apps that have been deployed include:

And our biggest news of 2013 will be officially released at LegalTech NY 2014. Check back here later this month to see the next way we’re changing how legal departments get work done.

General Counsel: Ask Your Outside Counsel for a “Career Associate” and Lower your Legal Spend

Posted on January 3, 2014 by - Business Process Management, Enterprise Legal Management

Imagine seeing this title on your AmLaw 200 law firm bill: career associate. While a bit odd, it may be the latest way large firms are controlling costs and creating a lower threshold for billable hours.

The ABA Journal reports that law firms have been experimenting with different titles that can signify different career paths for outside counsel. For example, the above mentioned “career associate” references a lawyer at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe that works at lower rates and reduced hours and is excluded from the partnership track. The article reports similar trends at Greenberg Traurig and Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton.

But are these title changes semantics or substantive?

According to an expert interviewed for the article, the changes reflect the “economic challenges of the past five years” and “lawyers’ changing professional expectations and desires.”

Truth be told, law firms have been juggling titles for quite some time. While this may be just marketing machinations, the fact that some of these new titles charge a lower rate could translate into substantial savings for corporate law departments – who have, for years, pushed for an appropriate and applicable mix of billing levels on outside counsel bills. After all, basic work doesn’t need “drive by” billing from a senior partner. Now, with the advent of these new positions, there is the possibility to move basic work from associates to an even more budget-compliant level of attorney.

So if you happen to see career associate, legal resident or department attorney on your latest bill, give yourself a moment to smile as you (hopefully) savor the spend savings.