Category: Enterprise Legal Management

LEGAL TECH ERFOLGREICH IMPLEMENTIEREN: PROJEKTBETEILIGTE MIT INS BOOT HOLEN 

Diese dreiteilige Blogserie ist ein Leitfaden für die Umsetzung eines erfolgreichen juristischen Technologieprojekts. Dies ist Teil zwei. Klicken Sie unten, um Teil eins und drei zu lesen: 

Teil 1 – Projektumfang vor dem Lauf einer neuen Technologie definieren 
Teil 3 – Change Management während und nach der Implementierung 

Dieser Leitfaden zeigt die wichtigsten Bereiche auf, die es bei der Implementierung einer Rechtstechnologie zu berücksichtigen gilt. 

Die Einbindung von Interessengruppen ist sowohl bei der Definition von Technologieprojekten als auch bei deren Umsetzung von entscheidender Bedeutung. Wie können Sie also die wichtigsten Projektbeteiligten ermitteln und die erforderliche Zustimmung erhalten? Wie Sie im ersten Teil gelesen haben, ist die Erfassung und Analyse der Anforderungen von Interessenvertretern und Endnutzern ein entscheidender Faktor für den Erfolg bei der Entwicklung und Implementierung eines neuen Systems. Natürlich ist es möglich (und leider auch häufig der Fall), die Anforderungen an die Lösung zu skizzieren, ohne die Bedürfnisse der Interessengruppen zu berücksichtigen, aber dies birgt ein reales, aber vermeidbares Risiko des Scheiterns des Projekts. 

Einige dieser Stakeholder-Gruppen oder Einzelpersonen sind möglicherweise voll und ganz dabei, unterstützen das Projekt und benötigen nur sehr wenig Management in Bezug auf ihre Erwartungen. Allerdings gibt es wahrscheinlich auch wichtige Interessengruppen, die andere Prioritäten haben oder sich gegen die Veränderungen wehren, die ein neues Software-Tool mit sich bringt. 

Wenn Softwareprojekte aufgrund von Problemen mit den Beteiligten/Endnutzern nicht den erwarteten Nutzen bringen, lassen sich diese Projekte in zwei Kategorien einteilen: 

  • Diejenigen, die die Anforderungen der Stakeholder nicht unabhängig verifizieren („einer der Benutzer hat das gesagt, also müssen wir das tun“) 
  • Diejenigen, die die Projektbeteiligten und ihre Anforderungen als eine Art unbequeme Wahrheit behandeln („es gibt sie, aber wir stimmen nicht wirklich mit ihnen überein/ wollen ihnen nicht zuhören“) 

Beide Positionen sind weder wünschenswert noch hilfreich, und beide lassen sich relativieren. 

PROJEKTZIELE DEFINIEREN 

Eine effektive Lösungsauswahl erfordert ein Verständnis der Bedürfnisse aller Beteiligten und der Endnutzer der Anwendung. 

Wie im ersten Teil erläutert, trägt die Erstellung eines Scope Dokuments dazu bei, Verwirrung innerhalb des Projekts zu vermeiden, da die Erwartungen von Anfang an gesteuert werden. Mit der Erfassung der Benutzerbedürfnisse werden die Ziele des Softwarekaufs definiert und zusätzliche Projektbeteiligte können identifiziert werden. 

IDENTIFIZIERUNG DER PROJEKTBETEILIGTEN 

Nachdem die Projektziele definiert wurden, ermitteln Sie die relevanten Interessengruppen. Erfassen Sie deren Anforderungen sowie die Auswirkungen der Lösung auf ihre Teams. Ein erfolgreiches Projekt muss nicht nur von der Rechtsabteilung, sondern auch von oben nach unten getragen werden. Wenn die Projektbeteiligten ignoriert wurden, kann dies die erfolgreiche Implementierung Ihrer Software ernsthaft beeinträchtigen. Die Identifizierung der Stakeholder kann eine zeitaufwändige Aufgabe sein, da es sich dabei um Parteien handeln kann, die nicht nur auf den ersten Blick erkennbar sind. Wer sind typische Stakeholder? Die unmittelbaren Systemnutzer (bei eBilling wären dies die Buchhaltung und die Rechtsabteilung/ Legal Operations), aber auch Rechtsdienstleister und Anwaltskanzleien, der Vertrieb, die IT-Abteilung und das Beschaffungswesen sind potenzielle weitere Beteiligte. 

Ein strukturierter und kohärenter Ansatz kann Ihnen helfen, die Interessengruppen und ihre Rollen zu ermitteln. Zu den Instrumenten und Techniken gehören gezielte Interviews, Multimedia-Kommunikation, Umfragen, Rollenspiele und Workshops zur Nachbereitung von Maßnahmen. Auf diese Weise wird sichergestellt, dass die Stakeholder-Gruppen umfassend einbezogen und unterstützt werden. 

VERWENDUNG DER INFORMATIONEN 

Nachdem Sie die Anforderungen der Interessengruppen erfasst haben, geht es in der nächsten Phase darum, die Ergebnisse zu interpretieren und zu entscheiden, welche Maßnahmen ergriffen werden sollen.  In dieser Phase ist Ausgewogenheit wichtig: lassen Sie nicht zu, dass der Stakeholder, der am lautesten ist, die Anforderungen dominiert.  Denken Sie daran, was die Rechtsabteilung zu erreichen versucht, und wählen Sie nur diejenigen Rückmeldungen aus, die dazu beitragen. Versuchen Sie zu vermeiden, dass der Projektumfang zu groß wird. Denken Sie auch daran, dass die besten Lösungen sowohl effektiv als auch effizient sind und dass ein positiver ROI ein Maßstab für den Erfolg sein wird. 

Wenn Sie Zugang zu einem erfahrenen Projektmanager/Analysten haben, wird dieser in der Lage sein, die Ergebnisse der Stakeholder- und Benutzersitzungen aufzuzeichnen und zu interpretieren und die Schlussfolgerungen in die allgemeinen Projektanforderungen einfließen zu lassen. 

KONTINUIERLICHE KOMMUNIKATION 

Abschließend besteht die wichtige Aufgabe darin, den Beteiligten mitzuteilen, was Sie mit ihrem Feedback gemacht haben und warum.  Dies ist der Schlüssel, um sie für das Projekt zu gewinnen. 

Sie können es nicht immer allen Projektbeteiligten recht machen, also begründen Sie Ihre Entscheidungen, wenn Sie können, mit Daten.  Die Stakeholder und insbesondere die Hauptnutzer haben es in der Hand, ob der neue Prozess Erfolg hat oder nicht. Wenn es um die Implementierung geht, brauchen Sie ihre Unterstützung, um ihre Teams und Kollegen zu ermutigen, das neue System zu nutzen. Auch wenn es ihnen vielleicht nicht gefällt, was sie hören, werden sie es zu schätzen wissen, dass Sie auf sie zugehen. 

Letztendlich müssen Sie die Stakeholder auch im weiteren Verlauf des Projekts zur Validierung heranziehen, vor allem um sicherzustellen, dass das gelieferte System nicht von den vereinbarten Zielen abweicht, und um zu prüfen, ob die ursprünglichen Anforderungen noch gültig sind, da sie sich im Laufe der Zeit ändern können. Auch dies ist ein Vorteil eines Scope Dokuments. Viele Anwendungen wurden in Betrieb genommen, und die Benutzer sagten: „Toll, aber das ist nicht das, was wir jetzt brauchen!“ 

FAKTOREN, DIE FÜR EINE EFFEKTIVE BETEILIGUNG DER STAKEHOLDER ZU BEACHTEN SIND 

  • Machen Sie deutlich, was mit dem Projekt erreicht werden soll 
  • Identifizieren Sie die Projektbeteiligten – insbesondere deren Rollen und Verantwortlichkeiten 
  • Verwenden Sie relevante Erfassungsmethoden – halten Sie sie konsistent und unvoreingenommen 
  • Lassen Sie das Feedback in die Lösungsanforderungen einfließen – achten Sie auf Ausgewogenheit und behalten Sie die Projektziele im Blick 
  • Halten Sie die Beteiligten über den Fortschritt auf dem Laufenden und seien Sie bereit, das Projekt anzupassen, wenn es die vereinbarten Ziele nicht erreicht 
  • Überprüfen Sie die Projektziele immer wieder anhand der geänderten Anforderungen der Interessengruppen. 

Der dritte und letzte Beitrag in dieser Reihe befasst sich mit dem Change Management. Wenn  

Wenn Sie bereit sind, Ihr Legal Tech Projekt zu starten, fordern Sie eine Produktdemo für unsere Legal Operations-Lösungen an, die genau auf Ihre Anforderungen zugeschnitten ist. 

Your Guide to Seamless Legal Tech Implementation: Part 1 — Scoping the Project Before Buying

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

8 Great Ways an Enterprise Legal Management Solution Can Help You

Traditionally, enterprise legal management (ELM) vendors have taken a databased-centric (system of record) approach in designing their solutions. However, and this cannot be over-emphasized, your competitive legal department needs a system of engagement – a system that supports the highly collaborative nature of your legal work. This in turn reinforces your business goals and ultimately, your bottom line.

In previous posts we’ve explored the benefits of a cutting-edge ELM solution, such as cost savings, flexibility, robust reporting capability, etc. But equally as important are the numerous crucial processes that enterprise legal management can help your team with. After all, you’re trying to find ways to improve your processes.

At Onit, we believe it’s important to manage the “whole” of your legal department’s operations – not just matter management and e-billing. Our definition of enterprise legal management includes a myriad of processes to help you manage your legal department like a business.

So what are some ways the right solution can help your organization? We’ve selected eight of our clients’ favorites:

  1. Matter Management – A matter management solution gives you clarity about your overall matter portfolio so you can make informed, strategic business decisions.
  2. E-billing – An e-billing solution allows third parties such as law firms and other vendors to submit invoices securely to the corporate legal department for review and payment.
  3. Contract Administration – A contract administration solution lets you quickly manage contracts and business documents in one central location.
  4. ReviewAI and Approval – A contract review and approval solution simplifies the submission, review, approval and management of contracts in one easy to use tool.
  5. Legal Service Requests – A legal service request solution simplifies the intake process and provides a simple portal so business users can interact with the legal department.
  6. Legal Holds – A legal hold solution helps legal departments notify custodians of their duty to preserve information in a timely manner and guarantee compliance.
  7. Legal Project Management – A legal project management solution includes task, milestone management, resource management, and our differentiator: spend management.
  8. Alternative Fee Arrangements – An AFA submission and approval solution lets you easily track and manage AFAs from the intake process through approval.

One last word: you need to ensure that your ELM solution can be built around the way your teams work. After all, you’re trying to streamline your operations and avoid the old standards of relying on email and spreadsheets to get the job done. In today’s fast-paced legal settings, lawyers need to be able to work faster, smarter and more efficiently, and the best way to do it is by automating legal department processes.

2018 in Review: A Few Highlights

A lot has happened at Onit in the last six months and we wanted to share a few blog posts. Whether you are looking to learn more about our products, read about some of our recent awards or hear from our customers, take a look at these blog posts below.

Product Posts 

Awards/Thought Leadership Posts 

Customer Posts 

 

How Procurement Can Benefit From Legal E-Billing Software

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. 

5 Ways a Legal Hold Solution Can Help You

Unfortunately, legal holds are here to stay and the best we can do is to have a trustworthy process to handle them. But it takes a little digging to find just the right software for your legal department, and it will be time well-spent.

The best legal hold solutions help corporate legal departments notify custodians of their duty to preserve information in a timely manner and guarantee compliance with this duty. Highly intuitive, easily mastered “process” platforms allow team members to gain real-time access to the status of collection requests, know when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention.

The tool should also create comprehensive dashboard views, so teams can see when a custodian leaves an organization, so they can enable email archiving or suspend the destruction of data.

Beyond those basic features, a legal hold solution should be able to help you to:

  1. Avoid significant fines
  2. Streamline and simplify the legal holds process
  3. Create new holds and distribute notices to all legal hold custodians
  4. Gain visibility into all legal hold activity to minimize company risk and increase defensibility
  5. Ensure all relevant data is properly collected and preserved

In our white paper, “Is it Worth the Risk?  How to Implement a World Class Defensible Legal Hold Process” we discuss the significance of legal holds in today’s corporate environment, why you need gold-standard legal hold automation software, and strategies to fuel your company’s path toward a robust legal hold process.

Download this white paper to discover how a cutting edge legal hold platform allows team members to gain real-time access to the status of collection requests, know when actions were issued, which tasks are in progress and which legal actions require immediate attention.

Our white paper offers the following insights:

  • Why you need a world class legal hold process
  • A little history of recent landmark legal hold cases and why they should concern you
  • Current best practices of legal holds
  • Essential features to know before shopping for legal hold software
  • The problems associated with using antiquated or inappropriate legal hold tools
  • Onit’s intuitive, agile and quickly deployable legal hold solution where user experience is top priority

A powerful legal hold solution offers a quick and highly cost-effective way to supercharge your automated business processes, as well as your bottom line. Reduce the ever-present risk of costly court cases. The stakes are high, and the time to act is now.

5 Most Popular Enterprise Legal Management Solutions

Enterprise legal management (ELM) solution come in so many flavors now, that it can be a confusing job just finding the right match for your legal department. Worse yet, there are still ELM software providers out there that are simply regurgitating databases that look or feel better. But there’s so much more to ELM than that – systems of engagement are what you need to be looking for.

We’ve narrowed the field a bit in order to show you the solutions that many legal departments have chosen for their enterprise legal management platform. Some departments start with only one solution and add more as needed. Others feel just one solution is all they need. The point is that if the enterprise legal management platform is flexible to start with, then adding more solutions later or modifying existing ones is never a headache.

The most popular enterprise legal management solutions to solve legal departments’ needs are:

  1. Matter Management – A matter management solution gives you clarity about your overall matter portfolio, so you can make informed, strategic business decisions.
  2. E-Billing – An E-billing solution allows third parties such as law firms and other vendors to submit invoices securely to the corporate legal department for review and payment.
  3. Contract Administration – A contract administration solution lets you quickly manage contracts and business documents in one central location.
  4. Legal Service Requests – A legal service request solution simplifies the intake process and provides a simple portal, so business users can interact with the legal department.
  5. Legal Holds – A legal hold solution helps legal departments notify custodians of their duty to preserve information in a timely manner and guarantee compliance.

We should also mention that any enterprise legal management platform you choose should provide the benefits of cost savings, flexibility, easier collaboration and cutting-edge performance. Finally, watch out for solution providers that have long implementation times.

Your chosen provider should be able to promise an implementation time that’s a fraction of what the rest of the “pack” offer. This is the only proven way to start quickly driving the results you’re seeking and deserve.

Five Must-Have Features in a Workflow, Process & Collaboration Platform

Business process automation (BPA) platforms have been around for years. It can be an overwhelming task trying to decide which one is just right for your business. When it comes to state-of-the-art enterprise solution (or “app”) development, you must have the workflow, process and collaboration platform that is the best fit. In other words, software also needs to fit the collaborative way that business is now done. These are the reasons that a cutting-edge, collaborative platform is critical.

We now almost take for granted certain features we need in such a platform: no-code configuration, rapid value delivery, responsive user interface, and adaptive end user experience. But it should also be highly human-centric with certain simple capabilities — a simple intake form, a shared workspace, configured and ad hoc workflow, and a dashboard to view all of your transactions.

The platform should centralize all data, notes, documents, conversations and email threads in one location. Business teams should have real-time visibility into the process—whether it is a contract negotiation, NDA request or sales quote approval. It should easy to configure custom forms, fields, checklists, workflows and process tracking capabilities with the flexibility to make changes and improvements in-stream as often as required.

So, knowing the basic things needed, what are five features that you need to be looking for in the best BPA platforms?

  1. Short Development Time  A simple process pilot can be ready for implementation in hours and in production within days.
  2. Flexible Technology that provides business users with the flexibility to route, comment, revise and track progress of the project to accommodate the variability and unpredictability inherent in knowledge work.
  3. Standard Intuitive Interface  A simple intuitive interface allows the user to focus on the “process” instead of the application.
  4. A Hands-On Approach  Business users can optimize their processes quickly using an agile approach, unlike traditional software customization that requires the development of process maps and workflow design.
  5. Cost Savings – Solutions developed with the platform should be a fraction of the cost of standard business process automation software and traditional enterprise systems.

We fully agree that the task of finding just the right BPA platform can be daunting, to say the least. But if you proceed in your quest armed with the knowledge of what you need to be looking for, you’re already a giant step ahead.

To learn more about Onit’s Apptitude platform, listen to our most recent podcast.

Strengthening the Relationship Between In-House Legal Teams and External Firms

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.

Six Benefits of the Top Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) Solutions

When shopping for an enterprise legal management (ELM) solution, you need to ensure that it can be built around the way your teams work. After all, you’re trying to streamline your operations and avoid the old standards of relying on email and spreadsheets to get the job done. In today’s fast-paced legal settings, lawyers need to be able to work faster, smarter and more efficiently, and the best way to do it is by automating law department processes.

Traditionally, ELM vendors have taken a databased-centric (system of record) approach in designing their solutions. However, and this cannot be over-emphasized, your competitive legal department needs a system of engagement – a system that supports the highly collaborative nature of your legal work. This in turn reinforces your business goals and ultimately, your bottom line.

So, what should you be looking for in your new ELM solution? We’ve chosen six key benefits that should be included in a cutting-edge system:

  1. Cost savings  You can realize substantial cost savings of between 4 percent and 7 percent of your outside counsel spend.
  1. Easier collaboration – Improved knowledge sharing and collaboration among internal and external team members allow you to be more responsive to clients and provides transparency to your operations.
  1. Enhanced performance – Aggregate all transactions and develop metrics around cycle times, work distribution and others at the portfolio, business unit and individual level that allow you to quickly shift to find efficiencies.
  1. Drive operational improvements easily – Unlike the development and implementation process for a large enterprise legal management system, which can take several months or years, our implementation process is faster so you can see ROI quicker than other ELM vendors promise.
  1. Robust reporting – Track total spend by law firm and matter type and create reports in various formats (i.e. line graph, bar graph, pie chart).
  1. Flexibility  As your intake process evolves so can the tool. Adding a new approver or creating business logic to route matters or business documents to the appropriate reviewer can be done quickly without involving IT.

There are many other benefits of the best ELM solutions, so look around and find the system that best suits your organization’s needs. It will be time well spent, and will better ensure successful adoption of your new ELM solution.