Category: General

The legal ebilling industry was born on November 28, 1994, when I started as the first employee at what later became known as TyMetrix.

TyMetrix founder Bob Heinemann and an insurance GC believed that legal invoices contained information that was impossible to distill because of how it was presented, leading to little understanding of the services provided by outside counsel. They believed there had to be a better way, and I was hired to help turn the idea into a business.

We viewed ebilling as more than just a pipe to receive and pay invoices. We believed that combining billing data with matter information would create rich reports to provide insight into how different approaches to handling a matter can result in different outcomes.

Bob fostered a collaborative environment and our early team members (Steve Zielinski, Nancy Doyle, Scott Holliday and Frank Mikulak, among others) were key to our success. I am enormously proud of the decisions we made with the product in those early days: we created functionality that is foundational to legal ebilling today.

So happy 30th birthday legal ebilling, and my thanks to all who contributed to moving the industry ahead over the last 30 years.

 

GLE has continued its support of World Central Kitchen in 2022, and applaud their efforts in providing assistance to citizens of Ukraine.

We were sad to learn that Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions will no longer be selling its eBillingDesk product as of 1 June 2021. It was perhaps the most versatile of the stand-alone LEDES invoice file generator/editor tools available in the marketplace. We learned that they will honor existing subscriptions to the end of their subscription term, but no new subscriptions will be available for purchase. 

GLE has been fortunate to work consistently throughout the 2020 pandemic year at a time when so many are struggling. As you may have noticed on our 2020 holiday card, GLE made the largest donation in our 9 year history to World Central Kitchen and Chef Jose Andres. In addition to the obvious synergy (we are Global Legal Ebilling and they are World Central Kitchen), we have enormous respect for the mission of WCK.  Imagine formulating and then executing a plan to tackle hunger on a global scale!  You can learn more about the work of this very worthy organization here.

Those who are regular readers may recall that I published a post on the crazy awards that are basically pay-to-receive distinctions. A real award isn’t something that you pay for.
And while I continue to receive award notifications from all kinds of organizations, I saw a really great article echoing my comments on these non-distinctive awards in the ABA Journal, June/July 2020 edition. Here’s the link.  
It seems that Lucy Davis of Davis Law Group in Seattle won an award as Lawyer of Distinction in the personal injury field in 2017.   Lucy is a poodle.  In submitting her application for the award, Lucy’s office mentioned that she had “Juris Dogtor” and was a member of the King Country Bark Association.
To those at Davis Law Group, I salute you!!  And to Lucy, you’ve got my vote.

While the pandemic impacts businesses around the world, we are fortunate to have work underway and have not closed our doors.
Our best wishes for good health for you, your families and friends, and our thanks to all who continue to provide essential services and medical care during this time.
Please stay home to flatten the curve, wear masks if you need to go out and wash your hands!

 

This year I began to receive notices of awards from numerous legal publications. The offers were remarkably similar, all notifying me that I had been nominated by my peers in legal for a prestigious award and was a finalist based on recent voting. Some of the awards received so far this year include:

• Finance Monthly’s Legal Awards Global Award 2019.
• CIO Application’s Magazine’s Top 10 Legal Tech Consulting/Services Companies 2019
• Lawyer Monthly’s Women in Law Awards for 2019
• and then again Finance Monthly’s Global Award 2019.

And this doesn’t include the number that I deleted before I started saving my “Award” notifications. I think my favorite early honor was one that named me as a top lawyer. I corrected them several times that I was not a J.D., but apparently that wasn’t enough to disqualify me from the award.

Each of these honors required a fee to be interviewed and for the printing, shipping, etc. of the award. So my question is this: Who pays for an award?

Recently Forbes Magazine published an article on top corporate law firms in the Americas, which can be found here.  I believe I have finally found an award I can respect.  At the bottom of the page you will see the following note:  “Companies do not pay a fee for placement on the list, which is independently determined by Forbes.”   My congratulations to all who were honored on the Forbes list and to Forbes for their methodology and process.