Artificial intelligence (AI) is having an impact across every industry – automating rote, manual tasks, introducing new ways to use data to make decisions, and helping organizations achieve greater efficiency. The legal industry is no exception and in an uncertain economy with hiring freezes and budget cuts, leveraging the many benefits that AI offers is more important than ever.
However, to fully realize the power of AI, it must be implemented in a thoughtful way within areas where it can make a quick and lasting impact. Bill review has proven to be such an area.
Here are two ways AI is making bill review more efficient, accurate, and automated—and two examples of AI in action.
AI’s first steps with bill review
Bill review is not inherently legal work. It is time-consuming and takes legal professionals away from the business of practicing law—most of the time for hours. It’s also error-prone because of the tedium and pressure people feel to just get through the task and move on to more meaningful (and billable) work. And it’s just gotten harder as billing guidelines have gotten more nuanced and complex.
AI takes the onus of bill review off corporate legal staff. Instead of an attorney spending hours scanning invoices line-by-line, software quickly and accurately checks to ensure bills are accurate and in compliance with billing guidelines. Inconsistencies in coding, block billing, matter management violations, and late invoices are just some of the items that the AI can flag (without getting tired in the process).
AI and humans conquer bill review
That’s not to say that humans still aren’t an important part of the process. People still need to check and respond to the AI’s results and recommendations, especially any red flags.
But with AI doing the bulk of the review work, legal experts end up reviewing just a fraction of the bills. They can instead spend time on the billing issues that could make the biggest impact on budgets and their organizations’ bottom lines. Plus, legal professionals gain the clarity needed to provide business leaders with strategic insight into potential opportunities for cost savings and efficiencies.
AI in action
At Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, we are seeing the positive impact that AI is having on our clients every day.
Take the insurance provider that reviewed stacks of client-specific bills the size of the Yellow Pages every month. Implementing LegalVIEW® BillAnalyzer automated this process and found 12% cost savings for the organization.
Or the engineering firm that discovered that 80% of attorneys were “rubber stamping” invoices because they simply did not have the time to review them. LegalVIEW BillAnalyzer helped the company accelerate compliance rates and savings.
You can read about these use cases and more in our new whitepaper, Artificial intelligence in legal bill review. It dives into how AI can improve the legal bill review process by reducing the hundreds of hours it takes for a single attorney to review law firm invoices with automatic scans for discrepancies, guideline violations, and more. It also provides ROI calculations to help make the case for AI investment.
And what a savvy investment it is. Using AI for bill review will not replace your legal operations department. It will make it smarter and more efficient and help it weather today’s economic challenges while preparing for the future.
To learn more download the full whitepaper today.
