Hi there,
As long as I can remember, e-billing has been pitched as a savings strategy.
And I just don’t get it.
In-house teams spend countless hours on implementation and big chunks of their legal tech budget on e-billing.
And a key justification is to ensure the invoices from outside counsel conform to the corporate’s outside counsel guidelines.
E-billing: “Gasp! There were two(!!!) associates who billed time for this phone call when the guidelines only permitted one!!” 👀 Gotchya!
Also, e-billing: “Congrats, we just delivered you 3% in cost savings!” 🎉
Now, look.
Firms should abide by the billing guidelines. And I’m all for the tools that make them do so.
But I struggle to see how e-billing sells itself as “cost savings.”
Your outside counsel overcharged you — and you caught them out.
It was an extra 3% (call it 5%, 7%, or even 10%!) that you shouldn’t have been charged in the first place. That’s not savings.
But here’s my larger point.
Hourly billing — and all the systems, guidelines, technology, and time used to micromanage it — keeps us focused 🎯 on the wrong thing.
As a result, we’ve forgotten to ask the question that matters most.
Is there a better way to engage our outside law firms?
One that is built on outcomes and value and removes the need for billing in (often) meaningless 6-minute increments in the first place?
Setting up e-billing takes months or (more often) years. ⏳
Only to catch relatively small errors 🤏 that aren’t even savings at all.
Whereas tools like PERSUIT help in-house teams examine firms side-by-side on the things that matter — like price, quality, expertise, diversity, and strategy — to drive true value and real cost savings 💵 (26% on average, according to our data).
Driving outcomes rather than measuring time.
If you want a little more info, here’s a link to a data report we just published last week about the impact of reverse auctions when engaging outside counsel — and the real savings they create.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Hit reply and tell me!
