Home > Outside Counsel > Why do law departments use their e-billing system with only a bit more than half their firms?
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Why do law departments use their e-billing system with only a bit more than half their firms?

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Approximately forty of the Fortune 500 law departments provided data abut their technology use and Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, March 2009 at 72, summarized some of the results. One question asked, “What percentage of outside counsel does your department use e-billing with?” The survey found an average of 58.5 percent.

That figure seems low. It could be that those firms account for 80 percent or more of the external spend by the companies, which would make sense. But then surveys should ask “what percentage of outside counsel spend do you receive through e-billing.” Second, it is possible that some law departments believe that if they receive bills in PDF that they are doing e-billing. They are not. E-billing means receiving the invoice data in a format that allows software to review it and populate a matter management system.

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One response to “Why do law departments use their e-billing system with only a bit more than half their firms?”

  1. Doug Hagerman says:
    March 8, 2009 at 10:32 pm

    We use our ebilling system for 100% of our US outside counsel spend. We also use it to keep track of our non-US spend, even though we don’t require most non-US firms to bill through the system. (We do ask the Canadian and British firms to use our ebilling system.)
    Doug