Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions is the leading source of technology and expertise that helps corporate legal departments successfully develop and enforce effective legal billing guidelines. Our eBook People, partnerships, and technology: Critical components for expertise in billing guideline compliance details the three pillars of a successful billing guidelines program: technology, people, and partnerships.
Technology
The data and solutions that legal departments choose impact their ability to benchmark billing guidelines against industry standards, enforce their guidelines, control legal spend, and attract top talent. In order to optimize performance, companies must choose solutions that can deliver relevant data and enforce processes efficiently.
For most legal departments, this means leveraging artificial intelligence to analyze billing guidelines and scrutinize invoices from outside counsel. Applying reliable, tested AI algorithms in these contexts allows staff to focus on more valuable work while improving the outcomes of the decisions they make.
People
AI is an important tool but not a replacement for people with strong domain expertise. The most effective solutions for honing and enforcing billing guidelines are those that combine smart machines with data scientists and legal bill review experts.
This coupling of technology and human expertise is so effective because AI excels at quickly identifying patterns and flagging potential violations, errors, and inconsistencies, then experienced experts use that machine-generated input to decide on appropriate actions, including their recommendations for improvement. This feedback is then incorporated back into the AI algorithm to continuously improve its results, gaining greater benefits over time.
Partnership
The partnerships that legal departments build with outside counsel law firms are critical to their success. There is a second type of partnership – those with the department’s technology service providers – that can strengthen those outside counsel relationships when the right providers are chosen. The teams that help legal departments hone and enforce billing guidelines are working to support a fruitful partnership in which the legal department is satisfied with the law firm’s work, and the law firm has a happy client that continues to engage them for matters.
However, the ideal vendor should be a business partner as well as a legal technology provider. They should clearly understand your program objectives and how they fit into the company’s business goals They should also have extensive experience doing similar work with other legal departments and be able to guide you through some key steps detailed in the eBook.
When a legal department selects a technology partner that successfully addresses all of these components, they stand to recognize significant benefits. Wolters Kluwer ELM Solution clients typically save up to 10% on outside counsel spend and improve billing guideline compliance by up to 20%. Download our eBook People, partnerships, and technology: Critical components for expertise in billing guideline compliance for more information.
