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.

Acquisitions and New Offerings

It is conference season and with that comes news of acquisitions and new products.

Wolters Kluwer ELM has acquired CLM Matrix, a contract management platform, filling in a gap in their product offering.

Onit has acquired SimpleLegal, a law department-focused ELM system.

Also in the news is a new law firm billing program, Accurate Legal Billing. It is in the vein of other systems recently in the news that purports to produce bills that comply with client guidelines.

Look on our Law Department and Law Firm Resource Room pages for links to each of these products

Law Firm Billing – New Features

There is a new trend in law firm billing: functionality to check compliance with a client’s outside counsel guidelines.

As law firm ebilling professionals can attest, it is virtually impossible to remember all of a client’s billing requirements, especially when law departments that don’t require ebilling also issue billing guidelines.

This new feature allows firms to capture quantifiable client requirements so that the system can validate line items at the point of entry for compliance. The idea is to mimic the functionality provided in law department ebilling systems that test time entries so that law firms are more likely to submit a compliant invoice on their first submission.

While the structure and composition of a time or expense entry is the focus of many rules, others look at the invoice structure and other aspects (like rates and budgets) which are not available to the law firm at the point of time entry.

Nonetheless, this is a great new feature that law firms should look for when shopping for tools.

New Publication Available on M&A UTBMS Codes

Aileen Leventon and Jenny Anne Horst-Martz kindly provided me with a pre-release copy of their new publication, “Best Practices for Using Uniform Task-Based Management System Codes for Merger & Acquisition Transactions” that should be available in September for purchase.

The book, which runs 44 pages, does a great job of explaining when the M&A Codes should be used.  As far as I am aware, this is the first publication that provides this level of detail behind any of the code sets available for use by law firm in their ebilling submissions.

New Law Firm LEDES Creation/Editing Tool

I saw a demo yesterday of the new BILR tool offered by LSG as either a standalone system or as part of their law firm portal functionality.  The simple-to-use system allows for uploading templates or spreadsheets and converts the information into editable LEDES 98B or LEDES Ebilling XML 2.1 files.  Use the “Get In Touch” feature on their web site for more information.

By the way, the features in their law firm portal are excellent!  Hats off to a company that recognizes that law firms need to be served too.