I was honored to be included in the short list of individuals requested to provide feedback on the UTBMS code set drafted by the Jackson Review team. The full project team includes participants local to the England and Wales jurisdictions and, considering that I am based in the US, it was a particular honor to be asked to review their work product.
The draft code set reflects a different way of considering the services provided by law firms and other legal vendors on litigation matters as compared to the original sets set forth in the US. I found the beta set to be very thoughtful and provided a few comments for consideration by the team as they move toward finalizing their recommendations. I am anxious to see their final work product released for public use later this summer.
This project marks a new era in legal ebilling.
- The original constituencies involved in setting standards for legal ebilling were law departments, law firms, consultants, time and billing vendors and the third-party ebilling vendors, and resulted in the formation of the LEDES Oversight Committee.
- We have seen tax authorities in Latin America get involved, legally requiring XML files with electronic invoicing information to run through systems hosted by the tax authority or its designees in order to ensure the government receives appropriate tax payments.
- The Jackson project marks the first jurisdictional-specific UTBMS code set whose usage will be codified into law.
I expect we will see more efforts like this in the future.