Two of my friends, Bruce Heintz and Nat Slavin, both experts in interviewing corporate law departments and clients, reacted to my post on client interviews on behalf of law firms (See my post May 19, 2011: pros and cons of partners or consultants.). I have merged and shortened their comments…
A speaker at a customer conference for users of a leading e-billing system gave some data about questions law firms asked when their invoice had been rejected. The leading cause of a question was the rules that had been invoked (about 20%), followed by “manual return,” unapproved billing rates (about…
Back in the day, there was a moderate amount of talk about and acclaim for discounts on law firms bills automatically applied when the company paid quickly. A common combination was about two percent if a bill were paid within a week. You don’t hear about cost control by prompt…
If a general counsel normalizes the hourly rates charged be various law firms – an effective-billing rate calculation – it is almost always calculated at the firm level. Take a pile of firm’s bills and divide their total by lawyer hours. A variation, and one that can produce significantly different…
At a customer conference for users of a leading e-billing system, one speaker gave some data about inquiries from law firms about invoice processing. That category of inquiries, by the way, accounted for the most calls (about a third), with invoice rejection accounting for about a quarter more. Of the…
To calculate the effective billing rate of a law firm, divide the amounts of several of its representative invoices by the number of lawyer hours charged under the invoices. Law departments calculate that figure sometimes to compare it to their own fully-loaded cost per lawyer hour. The range for U.S.…
You can’t declare “mission accomplished” when your law firms agree to freeze their billing rates. The reason you can’t is that firms may end up with more senior lawyer time on similar matters than before the rates froze. In fact, that shift upward may be likely since for the same…
A panelist from Baxter Laboratories recently shared with the audience that the law department requests an early case assessment at the 180-day mark. Baxter’s period between receipt of the complaint and receipt of the law firm’s assessment – six months – is longer than the more usual 30- or 45-day…
For years I have urged law departments that negotiate fixed fees with a firm to insist on monthly bills nevertheless. The law department wants to be able to review staffing, the order of tasks undertaken, levels and composition of lawyers assigned, and other intelligence from invoices. Furthermore, when it comes…
An astute observer of the legal scene remarked during a recent presentation that “the best marketing tool of a law firm is its invoice.” What he views as enhancing a firm’s image is the value of being shown that a partner has written off time so that you see tangibly…