Simple Legal Billing Software For Legal Ops

In legal ops, managers look for simple legal billing software to pave the way to efficiency and cost-saving strategies in the legal department. E-billing software has been around for decades in many permutations. As the years come and go, technology vendors have perfected simple legal billing software to make things easier for legal ops.

Benefits of Simple Legal Billing Software for Legal Ops

On the surface, everyone knows that simple legal billing software has its origins in e-billing solutions. Electronic billing is the simplest form of invoicing between outside counsel and the legal ops teams that manage billing for the legal department.

Invoice Automation

At its core, simple legal billing software automates the entire invoicing and billing process. Paper invoicing becomes obsolete unless required for certain circumstances, and the computerized process enables faster payment times for the outside counsel hired for matter management.

High-quality Reporting

Another bonus of simple legal billing software is reporting. Every leadership team, especially those who manage a cost center, wants monthly analytical reporting or more frequently, as necessary. The reports generated by simple legal billing software provide more metrics that can be compiled quickly. The legal ops function can provide a top-line snapshot of legal department performance featuring invoicing and e-billing data.

Invoice Accessibility

Drilling in another layer deeper, managing invoices with simple legal billing software becomes more efficient. Legal ops managers can keep invoices in one repository and also file them alongside matters as references in digital folders. This aspect of e-billing solutions has changed the way everyone in legal ops manages financials with law firms and other vendors. Previously, paper documents were filed in folders and tossed into a filing cabinet storage system. When paper became too voluminous, legal ops purchased rented warehouse space to keep important documents. The cloud has changed all of that, and legal ops are more efficient as a result. Besides legal operations professionals, lawyers interested in managing matter budgets with vendors can access digital billing files, as well. This saves valuable time for everyone in the legal department.

Timestamps and Approvals

Timestamps and approvals of invoices by reviewers occur within the simple legal billing software. This benefit keeps actions current, enables email exchanges directly from the software, and retains a record of vendor fees and whether their invoices are under or over budget.

Matter Budget Management

Without simple legal billing software, no one in the legal department could analyze legal spend. The old way, spreadsheets, is gone. Perhaps some people on the legal ops team still use spreadsheets for some analysis; however, robust enterprise legal management software provides full features to manage financials. This includes e-billing. The biggest bonus of billing software is the real-time access to numbers and status of legal spend. In the fast-paced environment of legal practice, no one has the time to sit and wait for the finance department to compile a report.

Benefits of Robust Legal Billing Software

As mentioned briefly above, enterprise legal management software is a robust platform providing various features to help run the law department. Its features not only deliver smart financial tools, but also vendor management, matter management, contract lifecycle management, work intake, and ways to measure performance and productivity of in-house and outside counsel.

Some of the primary methods that legal ops teams benefit from enterprise legal management and its smart financial features include:

• Invoice review with automated error identification and correction that reduces human subjectivity and errors
• Faster invoice processing by AI-driven features and task automation. Legal ops teams benefit from automatic invoice processing that automatically moves an invoice to the next reviewer without pausing the process. This alleviates bottlenecks and silos while improving streamlined operations.
• The ability to set rules and billing guidelines so legal ops controls how invoices are delivered while ensuring each vendor uses similar, approved descriptions for timekeeping. Moreover, the advanced legal billing software is programmed to monitor hourly rates of timekeepers and also flag an invoice when a partner pops into bill on a matter (who was not previously approved).
• Approvals of timekeepers assigned to work on a matter and others who may be approved to bill to a matter
• Alleviation and/or elimination of administrative time for invoice review and approval in addition to approval of UTBMS codes that frees up the legal team to practice law with a focus on matter management
• Advanced reporting with visual graphics showing performance metrics that pertain to vendors. With an advanced solution, legal team leadership can request a snapshot of legal spend at any given time, and this helps with vendor management and hiring legal services.
• Budgeted accruals versus actual legal billing are more accurate and easily tracked. Using spreadsheets for this type of work would be time-consuming and highly inefficient. The time savings and cost savings of an advanced financial management tool provide the legal department with proof points about cost savings that legal leaders want to see.

While simple legal billing software is a critical first step for legal ops, the law department that advances to a more robust enterprise legal management platform has the most advantage. Reach us to learn how we can help your team realize advanced benefits.