April 15, 2022

 Sharath Beedu

 Allison Hart

manage billing elm law department

It might seem counter-intuitive, but one of the most collaborative activities between a law department and its outside counsel is billing: both parties work together to ensure bills are accurate, complete, and comply with the client’s Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCG). Harmony is the goal.

Too often, this process can feel like it has devolved into a big game of “Gotcha!,” with law departments scouring law firm bills for errors, omissions, and other problems. As satisfying as it may feel to catch outside counsel making a billing mistake, it’s not productive. And it certainly doesn’t help foster a cordial relationship. In these challenging times, wouldn’t it be great to have everyone work together so that invoices are correct when submitted and law departments don’t have to comb through them line-by-line to ensure there aren’t errors?

With the Manage Billing for Law Departments software module from Elevate, law departments and law firms can breathe a sigh of relief. Part of the Elevate ELM platform, Manage Billing for Law Departments transforms legal e-billing. Now available in its 2.0 release, the Manage Billing module lets law departments customise and automate the flagging of problematic billing entries before they find their way into the submitted version of a law firm’s invoice. No more having to manually hunt for and reject line items that do not comply with OCG or have issues such as block billing, unallowed expenses, or vague activity descriptions.

Manage Billing provides API integration with your existing accounts payable system, eliminating any need to switch between systems when handling invoices. It also captures 100% of billing data from global suppliers regardless of location, size, or technical infrastructure.

Powered by a legal-centric AI engine, Manage Billing provides not just alerts but guidance on why a charge is in violation so that law firms understand how to consistently submit clean invoices. This means greater transparency, faster bill review cycles, and a billing process that is a collaborative endeavour between law departments and their firms.

The day has come when law firms will call to thank you for helping them bill correctly. Okay – that might be a stretch, but with Manage Billing, law departments can help law firms submit clean invoices and stop spending endless hours reviewing for billing errors.

So, take advantage of a system that takes a fraction of the time to implement and costs less than traditional software. The result is a streamlined invoice intake, review, and analysis process. No more Gotcha!