October 5, 2006
U.K. E-Billing Trend Signals U.S. Movement
There is an interesting story coming out of the U.K. It often happens that things on that side of the pond find their way here without a long delay.
It seems that the Royal Bank of Scotland and ABN Amro are about to take e-billing to the next level—requiring law firms to provide them, as clients, with a continuous stream of hourly and expense activity. They want to “monitor” their matters and the staffing in “real time”, according to an article titled E-billing: thrilling or chilling? on The Lawyer.com.
Will we see a similar movement in that direction in the U.S. among the corporate consumers of legal services? Yes, but expect it to come with a heavy budgeting requirement imposed on the law firm. To the corporate clients, uncertainty is even more important than reducing legal cost. They want to know the estimated cost and benefit through the conclusion of the matter or case, not just a running tally of cost incurred to date.
For more on the trends in e-billing, see my prior post Corporate Clients to Demand More Electronic Incorporation. In that post I noted that the movement toward continuous information exchange demands is likely to parallel the implementation of the new LEDES XML standard by time & billing software vendors and the e-billing value added networks. Full implementation from time & billing vendors to the corporate consumer is expected by 2010. See the quotation below from that earlier blog post:
“What you can expect is an increase in corporate demands for information. By 2010, you are likely to be submitting budgeting information and regular projected cost updates on work undertaken for major corporations. You are likely to be required to update timekeeper information in real time for any change to that information.”
“Law firms with business and billing software that is not on the leading edge of LEDES developments will find they are at a competitive disadvantage when competing to gain or retain work from major corporations and financial institutions. The following legal business system vendors are on the board of Directors of the LEDES Oversight Committee: Juris, Inc., Aderant, Thomson Elite, and RainMarker.”
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Filed under Technology by Tom Collins