What is CounselLink Legal Billing?
Understanding CounselLink legal billing starts with the basic concept of law firm expenses and the terminology used in the industry. Once that is established, CounselLink is simply a solution to the problem of law firm expense tracking and management for corporate law departments. At its core, CounselLink is a solution for tracking how much is paid to your law firm by your business for legal services and expenses . Legal billing is more than just submitting bills and getting paid, CounselLink simplifies this process by converting an extremely complex and tedious coding system into the automated process you find with CounselLink. Now when your organization receives a law firm bill, it is coded and automatically recommends payment. It provides all financial coding which can be used for cost centers, G/L coding, department coding, etc. This way your staff does not have to go through the coding and approval process for every individual line item on the bill, saving them time and effort.
Key Features of CounselLink
Some of the key features offered by CounselLink for law firm billing management include the firm’s ability to manage the full billing process, not just invoice generation. These features save time in the billing process and make it easier for attorney’s to send out accurate invoices and keep accurate records of all expenses.
Billing Management
The CounselLink system allows the firm to customize and automate billing management. The system has the ability to create automatic reminders for billing cycles and sends out alerts when bills are due or paid from a law firm’s escrow account. It eliminates non-billable hours by reducing time spent on the billing process. It also allows for customizing the timekeeping process so attorneys don’t have to keep two timesheets or worry about losing a note of a write-off if they need to edit a time entry.
Invoicing
CounselLink allows the firm to create invoices with the click of a button. The invoice will automatically be generated with the appropriate format and stored in a digital filing system so there is never a reason for a bill to get lost or misplaced even if it is emailed directly to the client.
Reporting
Reporting capabilities through CounselLink streamline the reporting process by integrating all reporting into one system and doesn’t have to be imported from a spreadsheet or other format. While CounselLink can export all reports to export them if the attorney or firm prefers that option. There are various options for reporting an invoice history from a simple aggregate report to tracking change history and showing detailed time entries for each line item on the invoice.
Advantages of CounselLink for Law Firms
CounselLink provides the very latest technology in legal spend management and matter management across the industry. These innovations are ongoing which are beneficial for law firms who are delivering legal services to their clients. There are many advantages that they gain from implementing CounselLink which include time savings, cost savings, expenditure and billing accuracy, process improvements as well as financial transparency.
CounselLink clients save an estimated 7 days for each invoice that is processed due to the ROI that is allowed when utilizing the platform for invoice management, utilizing their legal billing guidelines, and tracking their matters. The faster the invoices are received, more time is saved.
When it comes to the cost savings, this is one of the most important aspects of CounselLink legal billing for law firms. Because there are technology solutions with this platform, the return on investment is very high. The attorneys can use a common platform for all their clients. Along with the savings, 40% of invoices are paid in less than 10 days; 50% are less than 20 days. The average payment being made is $950,000. This is significant cost savings for a law firm. They can pay invoices more quickly, and with the space that is saved electronically and not using so much paper, this is very cost effective.
Legal and finance have more control over the expenditures and using CounselLink promotes consistency for greater leverage. Less time is spent in manually processing invoices, open lines of communication with clients and law firms which allows for savings. Law firms are able to make timely payments to vendors, and the time that is spent manually entering invoice data is reduced. There is a high volume of invoices that are processed which allows for automatic upload and approval of invoices. The savings in all areas using CounselLink means more profits for a law firm.
Enhancing Compliance and Security with CounselLink
One of the greatest advantages of CounselLink is how it handles compliance and security. CounselLink’s solution to industry standards focuses on staying current with how vendors should adhere to data protection guidelines rather than getting bogged down in vague and outdated standards. For example, they offer compliance services for CMMI, SSAE 16, PCI DSS, HIPAA and ISO standards, and even provide a database of open-source security searches to allow you to feel confident that CounselLink adheres to the latest and most relevant guidelines.
CounselLink clients also benefit from the company’s ongoing investment in software design. As software is updated to ensure it meets the latest industry standards, CounselLink makes those updates, while providing customers with information on all new features and functions that have been implemented. These updates are often rolled out with additional updates to keep with the general pace of advances within the industry. This is important, especially as companies like CounselLink offer more and more security features, such as:
In addition, CounselLink offers additional security measures, such as a single sign-on function, two-factor authentication, HTTPS enforced, and necessary re-authentication for files that are longer than four hours. The latest upgrade that has begun to be implemented is a single sign-on (SSO) function, which permits users to authenticate credentials by entering various forms of identification, such as a username and password, into one single sign-on account. This step promotes simplified browsing by allowing users to gain access to multiple software platforms by entering individual credentials, rather than creating a separate username and password for each software platform.
Implementing CounselLink for Law Firm Efficiencies
Effectively implementing CounselLink in a law firm requires thorough planning and collaboration with the client. The more guidelines that can be agreed on upfront, the better, as gray areas in billing can lead to disputes down the line and perceptions of non-compliance. CounselLink requires law firms to submit specific information on each invoice, including a description of the hours billed and identifying the responsible attorney. In addition, there are a number of fields required by the system that may not be necessary or relevant to every circumstance. Therefore, the client and the law firm should agree from the outset what works best for everyone, and not be afraid to update these guidelines over time as new issues arise or as new CounselLink requirements are put in place.
Before the billing process begins, the law firm should ensure that its staff members feel comfortable entering data and submitting invoices through CounselLink. This can be accomplished through in-house training, or by participating in webinars organized by ILTA’s CounselLink Support Group (CLSG) or CounselLink end users from around the world.
There are two opportunities to give employees a broader view of the importance of accurate and detailed billing, as well as the procedures to accomplish this. First , education of all firm attorneys on information coding and tracking through CounselLink may help motivate attorneys who may be more inclined to submit accurate and complete invoices if they understand the importance of providing specific information regarding the work that was done. Second, a group training session for billing attorneys by CounselLink’s Help Desk or CLSG may ensure that billing attorneys clearly understand if they have entered everything needed.
Once the billing process is underway, law firm staff should take advantage of the strong help resources available through CounselLink. CounselLink provides two Help Desks: one for general questions and one for technical questions, both of which are available twenty-four hours a day. The Help Desk is based in the U.S., but CounselLink has offices in Canada, the UK, South Africa, Australia, and China.
In addition, CLSG has been an active resource to groups interested in improving compliance with the CounselLink system, including setting up a listserv to introduce users to one another and brainstorm best practices. By going beyond just "having CounselLink" and turning it into a collaborative tool for both the firm and its clients, law firms can give themselves a significant advantage in compliance.
CounselLink vs. Standard Billing Solutions: A Comparison
When you compare CounselLink with more traditional billing methods, the differences are clear. First of all, you’ll find that efficiencies are lost with the older ways of billing. You’re wasting a lot of time just doing the follow-up, as you’ve got to get all of the financials in order and then make sure you review it correctly. This is the case whether your process is manual or some sort of spreadsheet-based tool; you’re going to be on the phone, or researching for a long period of time to find out just what you need. That’s a lot of man hours, and it gets worse as more and more invoices come in. You can’t help but lose accuracy in what you’re trying to get across and show to people. You also run the risk of losing their trust or faith in the invoicing because of having too many errors in these things.
Then, consider cost: you’re spending so much money to keep track of all of the legal expenses, only to possibly miss some of them later on. So you’ve got to go back and redo all of those invoices once again. The cost for your MICR check, and the printing out of these invoices or PDF-ing them, all can be pretty high in those final couple of steps, and wastes even more time. The actual review of the billing also hurts you in terms of efficiency. All of these expenses just keep adding up. While CounselLink doesn’t make billing in and of itself simple, at least it helps you with the management and accuracy of those things. People can trust that they’ll be able to get accurate reviews through it, as well as have a fairly simple enough process to put a final check on it.
Success with CounselLink: Client Case Studies
A 2015 survey shows that 60% of law firms are utilizing eBilling software to automate the billing process. Now that electronic billing is ubiquitous in the legal community, there are more examples of law firms using CounselLink for real world applicabilities. One example is a large healthcare system provider in the Midwest who was seeking to improve billing and reduce costs across its network of providers. They found that their current billing practices were getting more complicated and costlier as more providers entered the market and began sending invoices to the healthcare system for payment. Their solution was to use CounselLink to manage its outside counsel, reduce labor costs in handling paper invoices, better manage their litigation spend and create reporting visibility into their caseloads. The result was a reduction in billing hours across 20 firms, resulting in 62% reduction in total billing requests, 75% reduction in notice of rejection errors and an 81% reduction in resource costs bringing overall costs savings of over $330,000 year-on-year. A recent case, where a Welsh law firm reduced the number of hours it spent in processing invoices from 16,000 to 97 annually, shows how CounselLink allows for efficiencies that are not possible using paper-based systems. The law firm was able to save more than £250,000 annually on administrative staff salaries and increased the time its legal staff had available to work with clients. With CounselLink, they were able to move from a total of 45 members of its staff who supported administrative tasks relating to invoice processing down to just eight staff members—all of whom are employed exclusively on a full-time basis to review documents sent in by the clients. Law firms are demonstrating that eBilling Applications, such as CounselLink can help them increase profitability by eliminating wasted time on administrative billing tasks. Reducing administrative overhead in the firm gives more billable time back to attorneys to provide the services their clients need and want.
Trends and the Next Generation of Legal Billing Tech
Looking even further into the future, legal billing will become even more standardized and uniform across the industry as legal project management tools and case-management software become more commonplace in corporate law departments. As these legal project management tools and the focus on controlling legal spend mature, lawyers will increasingly move from being an input in the process towards being a consumer of a predictable legal services output with a consistent set of inputs and outcomes. As legal project management tools become more prevalent, electronic billing software like CounselLink, which provides a uniform, predictable means of measuring compliance with law department and firm-wide billing guidelines , will play an increasingly critical role in the overall quality and effectiveness measurement of the corporate legal department. In contrast to the earlier generational billing software tools for time entry and bill consolidation, CounselLink and other legal practice and billing software providers are now focused on providing a complete suite of applications that help law firms and legal departments manage all aspects of corporate and law firm billing. And even though the hosted, Software as a Service model of cloud-based processing is preferred by solvent firms and corporate legal departments, all software companies, from independent to industry giants, are now moving towards providing essential practice management, project management and e-billing capabilities across the entire enterprise.