How you can reduce your legal spend by 20% with automated billing guidelines

Promoted by Brightflag.

Reviewing invoices from outside counsel against billing guidelines is part of the job description for corporate legal teams. Unfortunately, it’s both time consuming and not high up on the list of work you want corporate lawyers doing. What if establishing a central system allowed you to automate invoice review, saving precious time for your lawyers whilst reducing the charges you didn’t intend to pay for?

By Brightflag • 20 September 2019 • Big Law

How you can reduce your legal spend by 20% with automated billing guidelines

Modern corporate legal teams are using dedicated e-billing software, designed specifically for legal, instead of relying on general accounts payable systems to:

Automatically enforce billing guidelines to control legal spend
- New e-billing systems allow teams to implement custom billing guidelines suited to their organisation. Multiple sets of guidelines can be configured for different types of legal work, from litigation to employment. When invoices’ narrative line items are reviewed they’re compared to your billing guidelines - every time. As more invoices are reviewed your system builds up a picture of how your guidelines are applied. If you ever need to review and update your guidelines there’s information available to point you in the right direction.
- AccuWeather used Brightflag’s intelligent billing guidelines to reduce their legal spend by 20% in a matter of months. Download our case study to find out more: https://info.brightflag.com/case-study-how-accuweather-cut-legal-spend-with-brightflag
Remove manual invoice review so lawyers can spend less time on admin and more giving trusted advice.
- I. powered ELM systems can now read the individual narrative line item descriptions of your outside counsels’ invoices. Instead of taking up your corporate lawyers’ working week with tedious invoice review A.I. can now review your invoices and either approve or reject based on rules you set up. Watch our webinar to see how invoice review is being automated: https://info.brightflag.com/live-webinar-automated-invoice-review-and-billing-guidelines
- There’s also a newfound confidence in the accuracy of the review. This is because the line items themselves are read instead of the system relying on industry codes or keywords to categorise the work done. If there was a mistaken code assigned to a line on the invoice the artificial intelligence is now intelligent enough to correct it for you.
Get full visibility on legal spend and matters across the legal department
- Instead of needing your lawyers to sift through emails to get an update on individual matters and find the invoices related to it you can now allow your outside counsel to submit invoices through their own portal in PDF or LEDES format. All of your legal spend is contained in one system and is associated with the matter your law firm is working. Automatic requests for accruals updates sent by your e-billing system to your law firms ensures you can see the full extent of what you’re spending on each matter and help you stay within budget.
Build better relationships with law firms thanks to fast e-billing
- By speeding up the invoice review process you’re reducing the time it takes your law firms and ALSPs to get paid. That means less conversations about outstanding invoices and more time collaborating on the legal work that matters.

Fit-for-purpose, dedicated legal technology has arrived, allowing corporate legal teams to more efficiently deliver legal work whilst carefully managing their budget and the risk they’re exposed to. Find out more about how enterprise legal management can work for your team at www.brightflag.com

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