Reuters reported last February (see post) that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan was seeking a buyer for Mitratech. It was reported today, however, that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has obtained $2B financing from a group of credit investors led by Blackstone and including Antares Capital, replacing its old lender group that included Golub Capital, UBS, Barclays, and Deutsche Bank that provided $780M of financing allowing for the majority acquisition in 2021 by OTPP from HG. See here for information on this current financing deal. With financing like that, I predict more system acquisitions by Mitratech are coming.
Category: EBMM
Legal Matter Management and Electronic Billing, as it pertains to Enterprise Legal Management Technology
Priori Adds Ebilling Functionality
Priori, a legal technology platform for outside counsel decision-making, has launched a flexible ebilling integration and Next Steps Flow within its Panel Management and RFP platform. This new functionality provides post-RFP accountability and budget oversight without limiting which ebilling provider is used by Priori clients.
Mitratech For Sale?
Reuters reported today that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan was exploring a $4B sale of Mitratech. For more information, see their posting here.
New Products in Legal Ebilling
At ILTACon 2024, I found some new products available with functionality for different purposes in legal ebilling.
Hercules AI is offering a new product called Verify that is designed to assist with Outside Counsel Compliance. So slick. Very next generation. It knocked my socks off, and I sent 6 people over to look at the product. You can learn more here: https://hercules.ai/verify/.
The week prior to the conference I received a Google Alert mentioning FulcrumGT’s Salvo product. No one on the LEDES Board had heard of it, and it was the one product that I was in search of more information on as I headed to the conference. Salvo is a new entrant in the Ebilling Administration tool market, competing against Elite eBillingHub and Aderant BillBlast. This market has long been in need of additional products, and now one exists. Interestingly, they state, “The solution can provide real-time updates across all vendor sites” which I think is a differentiator. You can learn more here: https://legacysite.fulcrumgt.com/products/salvo/.
FulcrumGT also is offering a collaborative ELM system called RapidX. It is worthy of a look from any law department or insurance organization wanting to implement legal ebilling or to change vendor systems. The system is similarly available to law firms that would like to better collaborate with non-ebilling clients. You can learn more here: https://fulcrumgt.com/.
Finally, I wanted to mention seeing Oddr’s Invoice to Cash Platform. I have seen this product at a couple shows now, and still am struck by their creative solution for invoice/collections/payments. I am not aware of any other product aimed at this particular segment of the “problem” with legal ebilling. It is not unexpected that they are picking up traction in the marketplace. To learn more: https://www.oddr.com/.
Onit Interview Picked Up By JDSupra
I am pleased to report that my interview with Onit that was posted to their blog has been picked up by JDSupra. You can read their version here.
New ELM Systems for Law Departments
I have learned of a couple new ebilling and matter management systems available to law departments, CaseGlide and Legal Track Software. The listings have been added to our Resource Room list of law department ELM solutions.
LEDES Ebilling Format Changes
I have been leading the Tax Accommodation Subcommittee for the LEDES Oversight Committee for the last year, spearheading changes to the global ebilling formats for two projects:
Project 1: Accommodating a greater number of cursor columns to the right of the decimal separator for the tax rate only. These proposed changes impact LEDES 98BI and XML Ebilling 2.0 and 2.1.
Project 2: New functionality to accommodate Tiered Taxes. The changes required are extensive and result in the creation of LEDES XML Ebilling 2.2. The proposed solution adds 2 new segments and 13 data elements to the file and significantly changes the invoice math statement.
You can access the proposed changes and feedback survey through https://ledes.org/proposed-standards-requiring-public-comment/, which page includes a link for providing public feedback on the proposed standards. The public comment period will remain open until 8 September, 2019.
New at Legal Tech
Just back from Legal Tech where I found a new ELM system, LeGuard, that allows clients access to outside counsel WIP in order to manage matters and spend. To my knowledge this is the second system of this type now available. Is legal ebilling evolving in this direction?
Mitratech (Also) Acquires CaseTrack
CaseTrack, by Economic Analysis Group, has been acquired by Mitratech.
This acquisition, the latest in a dizzying 2015 acquisition schedule by Mitratech, brings yet another ELM product within the Mitratech ELM system portfolio.
Twenty Years In – Reflections on Ebilling
My 20th anniversary in ebilling has come and gone and I think it worthwhile to reflect back on the industry.
In 1994 law firms didn’t use Windows. Heck, some legal finance people didn’t use a mouse until after 2000! TyMetrix’s founder believed there had to be a way for law departments to understand their legal spend. We worked on the prototype system and held back until the ABA/ACCA UTBMS Codes were released. We installed the system at the first 13 firms before the end of 1995. I spent most of 1996 on the road and by May more than 220 firms had been on-boarded. We quickly learned that law firms would not provide electronic billing data unless it was tied to payment of their invoices so, after some redesign, we began receiving invoices in August of 1996 electronically using the model still used today for ebilling.
Once the LEDES 98B format was released, it was amazing to see so many new system offerings. We were the only company operating with a business model that required professionals from within the client company to review invoices. And how fortunate for us. As State Bar Associations issued ethics opinions about breach of confidentiality when invoices are released to third parties for review (intended to crush legal ebilling altogether), our business model ensured no breach of confidentiality would occur.
On the client side, streamlining the receipt, review and payment of invoices within the system made for a much more efficient process. While some matter information was necessary to administer ebilling, by adding more fulsome matter management functionality there would be far greater ability to manipulate the paid billing data, especially if we included information on how a matter was resolved. System functionality absolutely exploded with the addition of budgeting, case planning, timekeeper and rate management, scorecarding, accruals, global features, etc. It was dizzying expanding in so many directions in so short a period.
I can wax nostalgic about this period because there were many visionaries working on solutions. Really, there were a lot of smart people involved. Many of the ebilling third-party vendor solutions have been sold, and the new owners focus on retaining clients and increasing market-share. Today I see many caretakers, not innovators. Except for adding BI and cross-industry metrics, not much has changed with these systems in the past decade. And much of the functionality provided for law firms is shameful.
In the past few years there have been a couple new takes on ebilling: project management with ebilling features (like OnIt or AlignMatters), or Viewabill’s real-time connection to WIP. But mainstream legal ebilling exists much the same as it did in 2000.
It’s time to throw out the ebilling playbook and reenvision the industry. If this is on your roadmap, I would be thrilled to help.