Hi there,
“We’ve got an RFP out for an invoicing/e-billing tool, and we just don’t have the resources or prioritization to tackle any other technology implementations right now.”
When I hear this as the primary reason why an in-house team is deciding to delay a transformative program to change the way they engage outside counsel — like PERSUIT — it has me banging my head against a wall. 🤕
Because as logical as lawyers usually are, it just makes zero sense.
In-house teams spend countless months on implementation and big chunks of their legal tech budget on e-billing for 3% in cost savings.
Where a solution like PERSUIT can save millions 💲💲💲 in a matter of weeks.
Here’s what I think is going on.
The legal operations industry has developed its standard playbook.
So when a legal ops leader comes on board, the playbook usually leads with tackling one of two (or both) things:
📂 Contract lifecycle management, and
🔎 E-billing
There’s no doubt that both of these are painful problems to be solved.
But are they the first and most important challenges that a legal ops leader should be focused on?
At the expense of other solutions that hold the promise of delivering a much quicker and larger ROI on their technology investment (ahem, like PERSUIT 🤔 )?
Because the first thing a legal ops leader should be thinking about is delivering the greatest amount of value and the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time.
It’s not legal ops’ fault that they default to this standard playbook.
Let’s take e-billing for example.
The industry has been trying to solve the e-billing problem for onwards of 20+ years.
During that period, an entire ecosystem of e-billing technology solutions has sprung up — with dozens of competitors.
And for 20+ years they’ve been throwing their collective marketing budgets at convincing you that THIS — e-billing — is the problem that most urgently needs to be solved right now.
Then of course, that THEIR particular technology solution is the answer.
When you multiply the marketing and advertising efforts of 100+ e-billing and invoicing competitors into the marketplace, here’s what happens.
Like the “Bridgerton” ads clogging your social feed before the installment of the latest season 🤦🏻♂️, all you hear is:
“E-billing is your biggest problem! Here’s why!” 📢
Compare this to a solution for managing outside counsel spend, like PERSUIT.
There are really are only a handful of technology providers in this space.
A handful of teams trying to spread the gospel for a better way of sourcing outside counsel — against the cacophony of e-billing providers who are taking up all the air.
For those of you who are visual thinkers, here’s an illustration of what that looks like in this very noisy legal tech marketplace:
“E-billing is a problem!” X 100 E-billing SaaS Solutions = 📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢📢
“Outside counsel sourcing is a problem!” x 2-3 OC Sourcing SaaS Solutions = 📢
I might even be underexaggerating the disparity.
It’s hard to blame in-house legal leaders for over-indexing on the e-billing problem when that’s all they’ve heard for 20+ years.
Even though it’s probably not the problem that they should first and most urgently be trying to solve.
But there comes a point in time when you’ve got to rewrite the playbook.
GenAI will soon eliminate the need for e-billing.
Your firms’ e-billing AI will run through the draft narratives to match billing guidelines so they aren’t rejected by the system.
Your in-house e-billing AI will review the draft narratives to catch the discrepancies — which will only be coming from the law firms that are not using AI to draft or at least ‘edit’ their bill narratives to match the billing guidelines.
Those discrepancies will soon become fewer and fewer as firms get smarter in how they invoice.
It will quickly become a GenAI stalemate. ♟️
Which will soon leave legal leaders thinking:
“E-billing. What’s even the point!?” 🤔
As more in-house teams — and their firms — turn to alternative fee arrangements and fixed pricing, the ROI on e-billing investments will only continue to diminish.
E-billing might seem a good investment when your external spend split is 80/20 hourly billing/AFAs, but what happens when it’s the other way around, as it is with customers using PERSUIT?
Which leaves me with this one question for legal leaders.
Are the problems you’re most urgently trying to solve the ones that truly need solving?
Or are you just caught up in the noise that’s the legacy of yesterday’s problems?
Cheers,
Jim
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