Category: Legal Operations

With the increased pressure on legal departments to improve efficiency and control costs, modern legal spend management solutions are a sensible option as they quickly generate savings that exceed the initial investment. E-billing automates processes and allows legal departments to identify cost-saving measures in the immediate term and by using data-driven strategies for the future. Here are six of the ways legal spend management can reduce your costs.

1. ENFORCEMENT OF LEGAL BILLING GUIDELINES

E-billing software automatically checks invoices against billing guidelines such as caps on hours, total spend, expenses, overtime, or staffing rules. Human reviewers will make mistakes and miss certain invoice and line-item violations. This is especially the case for departments with multiple guidelines or different rules for different firms. Your company’s specific rules can be loaded into the e-billing software, which then automatically evaluates invoices during processing. Non-compliant invoices that may have previously gone unnoticed will be rejected or flagged for review, and compliant invoices will automatically be approved for payment.

2. REAL-TIME COST TRANSPARENCY

E-billing offers visibility and consistency of how legal bills, matter information, and budgets are input, processed, and centrally stored. This creates greater control vs. spreadsheets by default. Modern Legal Spend Management software has additional tools to improve visibility of the entire matter lifecycle and associated costs. Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp, for example, allows law firms to enter work in progress (WIP) and draft invoices before invoicing the respective line items, so the legal department does not need to wait for the bill to get this information. Legal departments can also submit cost estimates and instruct firms directly from the software. This increased transparency makes budgeting easier and reduces unexpected costs.

3. INVOICE PROCESSING AND TIME EFFICIENCIES

As with many software tools, legal spend management dramatically improves efficiency and accuracy. With BusyLamp, information is processed digitally without needing sorting and organizing, as bills are forwarded automatically to a designated person after being checked for guideline compliance. This saves a vast amount of administration time spent doing tasks that carry the risk of significant manual errors, and some tasks are made redundant, such as data entry, scanning, and filing. Coupled with other process automation, lawyers are freed up to spend time on actual legal work, their area of expertise, not tedious manual tasks.

4. REPORTING EFFICIENCIES

Having real-time, secure, accurate, and consistent, centralized data saves time accessing and reporting on documents, matters, and financials. A lot of time is wasted by legal staff of all seniorities manually compiling reports from multiple on- and offline sources. Using Legal Spend Management software, custom reports, as required by the business, can be scheduled for automatic creation and delivered to stakeholders by email. When ad-hoc reports are inevitably needed, they can be compiled in just a few clicks.

5. LEGAL ANALYTICS FOR STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING

Over time, legal spend management creates a database of all historic matters and their associated spend, broken down into UTBMS and LEDES codes. Analytics can gain insights into legal spend and inform data-driven decision-making by comparing savings, spending trends, and budget-to-actuals across law firms, matter types, practice areas, jurisdictions, timekeeper seniority, and more. This further reduces costs and improves legal operations. E-billing captures spend accurately and comprehensively. Without it, analyzing spend is incredibly time and resource intensive. With e-billing, the legal department is armed with valuable information for long-term legal spend management. It can contribute to business goals and achieve year-over-year improvements, becoming a driver of value and savings for the company instead of a cost center.

6. VENDOR SOURCING

Modern legal spend management solutions like BusyLamp include tools to submit RFPs and cost estimates for work to law firms. Pre-structuring the requests in a consistent format ensures a fair and easily comparable response from the firms. Proposals are more likely to be competitively priced, as firms know they compete for the work. Using data from responses and estimates can empower a legal department to make more informed resourcing and budgeting decisions faster.

To find out exactly how much you can save in each area, download the Building a Business Case for e-Billing Guide, which provides calculations for each saving category that can be achieved with a legal spend management solution.

When humans make decisions, they are nearly always impacted by invisible biases. And we are not the ones to blame! If anything, we will have to blame evolution for that. Humans only naturally rely on feelings, experiences, and personal views when making decisions. After all, in the past, this bias has often decided between life and death. Luckily, nowadays, the business decisions we must make daily are usually less dramatic. Yet they are equally shaped by experience, so we often stick with the tried and tested. This path often appears as “the safe choice,” but it leaves no room for improvement and might even sometimes prevent you from making the best or most cost-effective choice for your business.

Request for Proposals (RFPs) are a powerful tool to pre-empt this potential bias and choose a data-based approach to selecting the most suitable provider for your matter. A standardized template, for example, ensures that your legal teams repeatedly ask themselves and their vendors critical questions that support finding the right vendor. We have learned first-hand how crucial selecting the right vendor is to the project’s success going forward. Here, we will provide helpful tips on which features your RFP should include to best support you and your team in the decision-making process and pave the way for a successful project outcome.

BE PRECISE AND ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Be specific in your questions and provide law firms with information that gives a clear picture of the task. Precise questions are the be-all and end-all because the more general your questions are, the broader the law firms’ answers will be. Of course, you do not want to read pages and pages of marketing materials from law firms, which exist to represent themselves positively but are ultimately not a good decision-making aid. To get away from the so-called “gut feeling” and marketing materials, determine a set of questions that tells you which law firm is best for the upcoming project and your company. From the law firm’s point of view, it is helpful to have as much information as possible about the matter and, if relevant, about your industry to formulate precise answers and for them to respond with an offer. The more specific your questions are, the more likely you are to receive well-prepared answers that will help you to find legal advice that suits you and your business. Allow enough time for the drafting; you will usually get it back afterward because the RFP process will benefit from it.

HOW CAN BUSYLAMP HELP YOU STREAMLINE THIS PART OF THE PROCESS?

Frequently, a simple document or spreadsheet is used to gather and send a set of questions to law firms – it takes no tech expert to know that there are more modern and efficient solutions. Onit’s European legal spend management solution BusyLamp eBilling.Space, for example, summing compilation of relevant answers for your evaluation. This gives you summarized tabular data supported by graphs, allowing you to compare responses instantly. The RFP module asks law firms specifically for the information relevant to you and provides specialized templates, e.g., for finance and M&A transactions. Therefore, all the information in the law firms’ responses is in a standardized format of your choosing and adapts flexibly to subsequent changes.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS THAT SPEED UP YOUR SOURCING-PROCESS

Depending on the complexity of the matter, it is good practice to allow law firms to take up to three or four weeks to answer all your questions. We understand that there are often more urgent cases in the work schedule where the law firms need an almost immediate response – e.g., in corporate cases or an M&A acquisition. BusyLamp provides a functionality especially valuable for these specific cases, allowing users to limit the time to file a response. Additionally, software solutions generally save a significant amount of your time in the RFP process because answers on staffing, costs, hours, etc., will be received uniformly formatted, which allows a simple and intuitive comparison of the answers received. This leaves valuable time for other tasks, especially if your project is already very time critical.

DON’T FORGET TO NEGOTIATE

Ask the law firms about alternative cost structures and possibilities for discounting. Negotiation is possible, and it can be done without difficulty in a software-based environment. Finally, you do not want to simply receive an overview of standard rates. If law firms add to or adjust their responses after the initial offer, you will need to reassemble data at this point and track the changes. As an in-house legal team, you should be able to back up your negotiation results with numbers at any time. If a law firm revises its offer during the RFP process, you will want to note this later in your reports. A good negotiation result can make you feel good, but you should have clear numbers up your sleeve to back this up. BusyLamp works for you and records if the offer has changed during the RFP process. For example, it points out whether an hourly rate has changed within an RFP (i.e., if the rate was lowered compared to the previous response).

KICK-OFF FOR A SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION

In BusyLamp, the RFP module is only the first step in creating and managing the matter. After interviewing, evaluating, and selecting the law firm, the data from the RFP module is applied to a new matter with the corresponding budget settings by simply clicking one button. In the same step, the law firm receives an invitation to start collaborating on the matter in BusyLamp. If desired, it is possible to have the matter checked and the budget approved by the departments responsible with our approval module. Software-powered RFP processes are a time and resource-saving alternative to the old-fashioned and clunky manual processes. In conclusion, a powerful RFP tool is essential for selecting your vendor. It bypasses the urge to act based on biases and allows a data-driven approach instead. Doing that decisively shapes the outcome of the overall project’s success.

BusyLamp is acknowledged by our clients for its value-adding, continuously enhanced RFP tool. With the right decision made, the entire matter management cycle can be followed up in our legal spend management solution — a vital asset in times of remote working.

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

Legal operations is gradually becoming one of the most important disciplines for legal departments around the globe. Broadly speaking, legal operations encompasses all the responsibilities of a legal department that are not the law itself, including spend management, increasing efficiency and productivity of the legal department, vendor management, legal technology implementation. It is, therefore, multi-faceted with many roles and responsibilities and enables legal counsel to focus on providing legal advice in the most valuable and productive way possible. A legal operations team needs a wide range of skills to generate the best outcomes.

Fortunately, the legal operations head does not need to be perfect in those areas, as they can sometimes build a diverse team around them. Nevertheless, an excellent legal operations manager should always strive to develop generalist skills to mentor and lead the specialists within the team. Those with teams are the fortunate ones, though. A solo legal operations manager runs most legal operations functions in Europe, and it is even more critical that this person develops the necessary key skills.

Whether you’re already in the job or aspire to transition into legal operations, here are five essential skills every legal operations professional should have or be actively working on improving, especially if they are in a “team of one.”

1. STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATION

A legal operations manager needs to define and identify the relevant stakeholders for projects to understand their needs and address them while balancing competing requirements and priorities. On occasion, final budget decisions will be made in other departments of the organization, so maintaining effective communication and a positive relationship with all stakeholders is vital. The legal operations director is the link between the legal department and the rest of the organization, ensuring stakeholders are involved and updated. This may also entail influencing stakeholders to buy into a project in the first place by identifying how the project benefits the wider business. As other departments may be unfamiliar with the legal department’s workflow and the resulting obstacles, a legal operations manager must be able to explain projects and benefits in terms that make sense outside of the legal silo. They should be able to network and communicate with people at several levels throughout the organization. As Ben Eason, Head of Legal Transformation at Barclays, says, “Evidence of flexibility, interchangeability, negotiation, and managing stakeholders are crucial. These skills are arguably the most important for legal operations success.”

2. LEGAL DEPARTMENT BUDGETING

A legal operations manager should be able to manage and calculate the budget the legal department has and the budget it might need, even if this responsibility is outside their remit. Reliable, stable financial planning will help the legal department to develop consistently. While there should be an understanding of previous and actual budgets, as this helps with forecasting, actually planning the future is more important. The legal department will constantly be pressured to be more efficient, and resource optimization is key to success. Part of the job will be to spot new cost-saving opportunities. Spend management tools can make the visibility of these metrics, and therefore decision making, much easier. The legal operations director should have the acumen to acquire a budget for a project when there isn’t one by communicating with the budget holder/s and creating a business case that advocates what is best for the legal department and the whole organization. This links with stakeholder management and communication skill in that the business case must resonate with the budget holder/s aims and objectives, not just the legal department.

3. LEGAL TECHNOLOGY KNOWLEDGE

Technology is playing an ever more significant role in the role of a legal operations manager as legal departments strive to become more agile, collaborative, and efficient. A legal operations head needs to have an innovative and curious approach to problem-solving. They should be confident in rolling out tech (or knowing where to go for help) and have the ability to plan and implement a long-term process and technology roadmap. The rapidly evolving legal technology landscape can cause distractions, so staying up to date with legal tech trends and new entrants to the market to avoid any sense of overwhelm is important. This also helps the legal operations manager ensure projects and plans stay true to the department’s objectives. The ability to critically evaluate the relevance of the current plan and pivot quickly if required is essential. Since many lawyers are still doing repetitive and time-consuming tasks manually, the legal operations manager should find solutions to streamline and/or automate these processes by using existing enterprise tech or evaluating legal-specific vendors. An excellent legal operations head will know how to map out current processes and decide which can be improved by changing processes vs. those which require technology to solve and then prioritize accordingly.

4. FIRM AND VENDOR MANAGEMENT

In some organizations, the legal operations team manages the procurement of external legal services from law firms and vendors. In many companies, firms and vendors are traditionally selected through personal contacts or loyalty, though this status quo is being challenged more frequently now. A good legal operations manager has to turn this thinking around and focus on more effective and transparent solutions for the department. Instead of agreeing on standard pricing and staffing models, the head of legal operations should facilitate the negotiation of more flexible and transparent pricing models to create positive incentives. This can be a win-win for clients and firms, incentives such as ‘volume discounts’ encourage counsel to drive more work towards a single firm to reach the threshold that triggers a discount. Legal operations professionals not from a legal background need to familiarize themselves with how legal services are billed; rates, AFAs, LEDES, etc. They also need to approach vendor management with sensitivity to influence in-house counsel to the new way of thinking.

Legal services aren’t a commodity, and it can be challenging to quantify added value, so it is about more than “lowest cost wins.” By setting up a structured bidding request, as one example, the legal operations manager can force competitive rates from the firms while requiring counsel to objectively decide which proposal generates the most value for the cost. Another part of the work in this area is the administration of efficient onboarding for new vendors or firms. After choosing the right vendor/firm, clear rules (such as billing guidelines) must be introduced to measure the performance of the collaboration and get maximum value for money. The head of legal operations also needs to facilitate fair, transparent, and data-driven performance reviews with vendors and firms.

5. DATA LITERACY

Data literacy is vital for the work of a legal operations director. Many legal departments are making decisions inefficiently, using outdated processes such as spreadsheet reporting, anecdotal feedback, or simply “gut feel.” A legal operations professional is unlikely to start their job with sophisticated reporting tools and must be confident in navigating the existing paper or spreadsheet reports to find the needed data. While there is no need for a legal operations manager to be a data scientist, data literacy goes beyond compiling reports. Many legal departments waste time compiling frequent reports in which most data goes unused. The director of legal operations needs to avoid data tracking for the sake of it and understand how to use the information to develop the department and the organization as a whole. They should identify the goals (using existing data to help, if appropriate), work backward to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) and important metrics, and then ensure the department can capture the data points needed to measure KPIs. This consistent data lays the foundations for analytical capabilities to enable strategic decision-making and solve problems.

An excellent legal operations head needs to know how to structure, gather and analyze the relevant legal data. This can help in practical ways, such as maximizing value when negotiating external contracts or making a business case for increased headcount and budgets. Data literacy will also help the legal operations head to balance the needs of the department in an objective manner and decide where to focus their efforts.

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

When it comes to software tools that help you calculate, sort and analyze data—there is one platform that always comes to mind—Excel. It has historically been the go-to solution for legal professionals who want to create reports and organize information. In fact, almost 750 million people use Excel every day. 

While there is no doubt that this Microsoft-created tool is valuable, it is not the only tool available for legal professionals, especially those who are looking for a way to easily adhere to best practices and increase productivity and efficiency. 

If you are looking for ways to do more with less in the new year, then it’s time to explore cloud-based software designed specifically for legal professionals. 

What is Cloud-Based Legal Matter Management Software?

A legal matter management software system takes all the legal activities you do every day—expenses, time tracking, reporting, email, case document management and assembly and more—and organizes them in one location for easy access and collaboration with team members and clients. Since the software is cloud-based, it can be accessed via an Internet browser, no matter where you or your team are located. 

What is the Difference Between Cloud-Based and On-Premise Software?

A cloud-based legal software system is a computer system whose resources are available on-demand (via an Internet-connected web browser), including data storage and computing power, without being actively managed by the user. This differs from traditional on-premise-based software, where data is stored locally in an office and is managed by the user.  

Here’s a quick overview of the differences between on-premise and cloud-based software:

On-Premise Software:

• Software costs are paid up-front 
• No internet connection is required
• Data is stored in the physical location you determine 
• You are responsible for managing and updating software.

Cloud-Based Software:

• Software costs may be spread out (subscription-based)
• Access data anytime, anywhere
• Data can be stored anywhere
• Quicker, lower cost for deployment 
• No hardware maintenance
• Dedicated team for training and support provided.

Why Switching to the Cloud Makes Sense for Legal Teams

Numerous reasons exist to switch to the cloud which can lead to an immediate impact on your organization. Here are several reasons switching to the cloud is the best thing you can do for your organization this year. 

1. Decreased Up-Front Costs.

We live in a time where cutting costs is essential and waste is top of mind. By moving to the cloud, you can eliminate expenses associated with hardware that on-premise solutions usually come with. In addition, the ability to do more with the system increases productivity, which can lead to two important things for legal teams: better profitability and customer service. And who doesn’t want that? 

2. Scalable Framework. 

You want a platform that can grow with you, and cloud-based software offers just that. As your organization changes, the cloud offers flexible server space to accommodate whatever your needs may be, which is helpful since you can’t predict the future. This flexible framework puts an end to costly system downtime and performance issues because of a rigid platform. The ability to integrate with other platforms also provides an even wider avenue for growth and scalability needs. 

3. Improved Security. 

Cloud-based software is generally considered more secure than on-premise software because your data is stored on remote servers that are independently managed and maintained by expert security providers. This means your data has 24/7 protection from professionals who are well-versed in physical and cyber-security attacks and are constantly employing measures to guard against them. On-site software is more prone to physical and cyber breaches because of the lack of an expert security team that most cloud-solutions offer. 

4. Better for the Planet.
   
   By moving to the cloud, you can significantly reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to a recent report, cloud computing is 93% more energy-efficient and has 98% lower GHG emissions than on-premise data centers. And since data services are shared over a network, the organization will naturally be more efficient and effective in reducing energy consumption.

So-Long Spreadsheets: Managing Legal Data Completely in the Cloud

While many legal organizations have resisted moving to the cloud for various reasons, there is increasing evidence that to stay current in today’s world, it is required. With benefits such as better security and increased flexibility for remote work as well as reduced errors and the ability to scale makes the decision to move to the cloud a no-brainer for most operations. Cloud-based legal matter management software is the solution for legal professionals who are finally ready to take the plunge into a new, better way to work.

With more than 30 years of experience supporting organizations across a number of industries, Legal Files gives teams the centralized platform, support, training and upgrades needed to stay relevant in the changing legal landscape; and offers both on-premise and hosted solutions to meet your unique needs..

As we find ourselves nearing the end of another year, how confident do you feel in the rates you’ve negotiated for 2023?

C-suite executives are increasingly holding their corporate legal departments accountable for their spend. The Enterprise Legal Reputation (ELR) Report found that 37% of corporate legal departments feel this pressure from their CFO, while 30% feel it from their CEO, and 10% from their Board of Directors.

With mounting pressure to contain costs, your law firm rates are a great place to identify quick savings opportunities. That’s why we launched Rate Proposal Analyzer, the easiest way to collect, compare, and analyze your annual rate proposals. 

With a centralized view of your law firms’ rate proposals, you can finally say goodbye to the days of accepting above-market rate increases due to a storied law firm relationship or increasing caseloads. Rate Proposal Analyzer makes identifying savings opportunities quick and easy!

One Centralized Dashboard

Consolidating law firm rate proposals hasn’t been easy for corporate legal departments. 

Rates from one firm are submitted via email, while another is submitted via snail mail. And to make matters worse, you’re drowning in spreadsheets trying to keep track of everything.

From rate request to approval, our Rate Proposal Analyzer centralizes and streamlines your 

entire rate proposal process. 
Law firms can upload their rate proposals directly to the dashboard through manual submission or a spreadsheet.

Unprecedented Analysis & Internal Benchmarking

Collecting rate proposals is only half the battle–now, you have to determine which rates will or will not get approved.

Historically, this has been a headache for corporate legal departments. But the good news is rate proposal comparison and analysis just got significantly easier. 

With Rate Proposal Analyzer, corporate legal departments can now:

• Simplify rate proposal requests, including simultaneous submissions from multiple law firms
• Aggregate completed proposals in one place for easy review and comparison
• Request diversity information on timekeepers for specific projects

No more wondering where you’re overpaying–Rate Proposal Analyzer puts these insights at your fingertips.

Align Negotiations to Budget Goals

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again–rates cannot be accepted blindly. 

And we don’t just mean reviewing your rates before approving them. You have to go one step further and consider the impact these rates will have on your budget. 

Your budget is your North Star, so the rates you approve should align with your budget goals for the year. 

Rate Proposal Analyzer enables corporate legal departments to analyze cost impact with scenario forecasting. 

Now, you can easily assess the impact of your proposed rate increases with clear cost projections based on your historical spend from the previous year. 

Rate Proposal Analyzer offers unparalleled forecasting capabilities that you won’t find anywhere else in the market. 

Strategic Spend Decisions Await…

As organizations continue to prioritize cost optimization, you can’t afford to overpay on your law firm rates.

Our Rate Proposal Analyzer provides a holistic, centralized view of your law firm rate proposals, empowering your corporate legal department to budget smarter, negotiate harder, and make more strategic spend decisions.

Ready to take the next step in your spend optimization journey? Get in touch with a member of our team to get started.

Law firm relationships have long been measured with gut rather than metrics.

But should you really work with a certain firm just because a partner is your GC’s law school buddy? (Hint: the answer is no!)

While your law firms are trusted business partners to your organization, C-suite executives are holding legal departments accountable for understanding the value law firms deliver. To ensure you partner with the right firms on your matters, you must leverage a mixture of qualitative and quantitative metrics. 

But how can you determine if your law firms are making the grade without poring over spreadsheets for hours?

Introducing Bodhala’s new and improved Firm Report Cards, the best, most holistic view of how your law firms stack up against one another.

Now, you can get a detailed look at your firm’s rates and key performance indicators in one concise report–all in just one click. 

Let’s take a look at what’s new!

Unprecedented Analysis & Internal Benchmarking

Firm Report Cards leverages Bodhala’s reporting and analytics capabilities and presents it in a concise and easy-to-digest view for each firm. 

Customizable cohorts of firms are selected for comparison against one another to aid in panel management and potential consolidation.  

Full Transparency

Effective relationship management requires transparency and full transparency requires data. 

Firm Report Cards empower you to manage with metrics, not gut.

Flexible, customizable reporting can be shared directly with your firms, dramatically simplifying vendor management and increasing transparency.

Sharing Firm Report Cards with key internal and external stakeholders lets them know you’re paying attention and makes it easier to justify your spend decisions and display where you’re getting value. 

Instant Comparisons 

The Comparison Report shows how a firm stacks up against the rest of your panel across key metrics–such as overall spend, average partner and associate rate, average matter cost, and more. 

Need different metrics? No problem. Customize the Comparison Report to fit even the most unique needs.

Historical Trend Analysis 

The Trend Analysis Report shows how a firm has been trending over time, making it easy to see how well your law firms are managing your business. 

With this information under your belt, you can instantly prioritize your areas of focus in your next QBR or conversation with your law firm. 

Customizable & Shareable Scorecards

The KPIs included in Firm Report Cards are completely customizable to ensure that your legal department can score your firms on metrics you care about. 

The Report Cards can also be exported to PDF and shared directly with the firm for a line of sight into how you are monitoring firm performance. 

Repetitive Value Over Time

Firms are aware of the metrics they are being monitored on and where they sit relative to the other firms your corporate legal department is using. 

With the help of a dedicated Bodhala Client Success representative, you’re can monitor trends in firm behavior and leverage data to increase firm efficiency and drive continuous value over time. 

The Key to Successful Law Firm Relationships

Data sets the foundation for successful law firm relationships. After all, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

Firm Report Cards put data-driven insights at your fingertips, making law firm relationship management that much easier. 

So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with our team to learn how you can simplify your vendor management with Firm Report Cards.