Corporate Legal

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Traditional billing involves paper or PDF based bills that are hard for the client to analyze. When an invoice is sent through eBilling software it is sent in a digital format which enables the client to analyze the invoice in line with its own billing codes. Leading applications include eBilling Hub (Thomson Reuters), Bilr and LegalBill.

eBilling

Business of Law solutions support all of the aspects of running a law firm other than the substantive practice of law. This is therefore a broad category, covering processes from client intake and management to timekeeping and billing, matter management, budgeting and pricing of matter work, email management, records management, information governeance and so on. Many of these processes are administrative and repetitive, lending themselves well to automation. The range of solutions in this category means a large number of vendors are represented, with certain behemoths such as Intapp and Aderant straddling many capabilities. In small and mid-sized law firms, practice management systems act as platform solutions that enable all aspects of the business of law. Clio is the leading practice management system for mid-sized law, incorporating many integrated products that extend its native capabilities.

Business of Law

Matter Management

<p>Subscription management, including the procurement and subsequent management of technology, market research products, is a significant resource drain for many companies and law firms. Solutions in this category support companies and firms in managing the costs, effort, and resources related to subscription procurement and management.</p>

Subscription and Portfolio Management

Legal billing solutions assist law firms to improve and streamline the processes around billing, including tracking time and expenses, creating invoices and bills, reviewing bills, dealing with collections, payments and trust accounting. Elite 3E and Clio are two of the key providers in this category.

Billing

Client portal solutions provide a two-way interface between a law firm and a client, allowing for some combination of capabilities such as collaboration, joint project management on legal matters, the sharing of select thought leadership, access to matter documents, financials and WIP, and access to data-driven insights related to the engagement. While some firms create custom client portals with tools like SharePoint, solutions that offer many of these attributes, such as LUPL, have become effective one-stop shops, rolling together the types of capabilities that used to be spread across multiple technology tools. Other solutions in the space include HighQ and Moxtra. See also, Extranets.

Client Portal

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions allow for the full management and administration of an organization’s customer relations, including the ability to keep and track information about customers (or clients), providing a searchable database that stores customer information and related documents and records interactions with customers. In law firms, the information stored will often include not just the contact details for a client but also the relationship partner, any additional connections between the firm and the client, and notes on events, meetings or calls with the client. More sophisticated systems will provide data analysis capabilities and predictive qualities that support business development. In legal, InterAction (LexisNexis) has been a common system, however many firms are now switching to leading inter-industry solutions such as Salesforce.

Any time a new client engages with a law firm, a conflict check must be conducted to ensure that the firms' lawyers are not conflicted out of working with the client due to their obligations to previous or existing clients, or, if there are some minor conflicts, to make sure that processes are put in place that allow for the new client work to be conducted while maintaining ethical obligations of privilege and confidentiality. The conflicts checking process for large law firms can be onerous, with many people having to respond to questions about conflicts around a new client, and careful records needing to be kept of the firm's processes. Solutions have therefore been developed to help firms automate and track the conflicts checking and response process. Intapp is a leader in conflict-checking software for large law, while Clio offers a leading solution for mid-sized law.

Conflicts

The business development and marketing solutions used in legal overlap substantially with those commonly used in other industries. However, there are specific aspects to legal business development that require specialized solutions. Tracking responses to pitches and proposals to easily create new RFP responses is a critical aspect of legal business development. Qorus is one of the solutions in this space. Many firms also use Foundation for pitches and proposals.

Business Development

Budgeting

Email remains the prominent mode of communication between lawyers and their clients, but the magnitude of emails sent and received each day is often overwhelming, making it difficult for lawyers to regularly file relevant emails to client-matter files. Email management solutions provide automated filing capabilities, often using machine learning to predict which matter an email should be filed to based on the subject or recipients. Solutions include ZERO and Hushmail.

Email Management

Identity and access management technology provides the means for organizations to define roles and manage individal user access to critical information in a variety of cloud and on-premises systems. Generally speaking, IAM systems will define one digital identity per individual or item. After establishing these identities, they are managed and maintained throughout the user or device lifecycle. IAM forms a core part of organizational cybersecurity and is integral to managing risk within an organization. In legal, core players include Amiqus and Sailpoint.

Both law firms and legal departments need to track the work that they undertake, for a variety of reasons including the necessity of being able to locate past work product easily. In law firms, matter management is of particular value because it allows lawyers to easily find representative work that can be referenced in pitches for new work, to use historical matter information in budgeting for future matters, and to track budget and WIP on current matters. Leading solutions for law firms, such as Foundation, provide the capability to track all of these aspects of law firm matters - from matter financials to nuanced matter metadata. Solutions such as Xakia provide matter and work tracking capabilitis for corporate legal departments.

Metadata Scrubbing

The onboarding of a new client or matter by a law firm requires a complex set of administrative processes including the capture of key information about the prospective work. A New Business Intake system is generally the first place that details about a new matter are recorded, including which client it is for, in which industry, in which practice area, what type of matter it is, the name of the originating partner and so on. Intapp Intake and Clio Grow are two of the leading solutions in this area.

New Business Intake