Over the course of the past decade, Insurance Carriers, TPAs and large corporations in the US have invested over a billion dollars on bill review vendors and better bill review platforms in order to ensure that each of the panel invoice submitted to them is entirely compliant with their individual billing guidelines.
On the other hand, law firms have not competently risen to the occasion and have retained their use of outdated practice management and billing software that were developed around the late 90’s or early 00’s. None of these tools are capable of matching the optimal standards set by the tools that the bill review vendors are equipped with today.
Much of my conversation with Billing Directors and Managing Partners revolves around the increasingly aggressive nature of bill review vendors across the US.
To gain further insight into why they might be becoming aggressive, we need to consider two things:
The competition is rather strong. Every year over the past decade, the number of bill review vendors across the US alone has been steadily increasing, with new players entering the field with their updated tools and methodologies. Which means that in order to hold on to their existing clients as well as consistently acquire new ones, the bill review tools have to be constantly fine-tuned as well as the staff have to be trained to not miss the slightest non-compliance on invoices submitted to their clients.
Expectations are high, as are the stakes. The US average reduction on law firm invoices is 6% and the increasingly demanding clients expect their preferred bill review vendors to meet this average and improve their overall performance.
Technology is by far the only solution for law firms to tackle various billing guidelines and ensure that they are consistently compliant with those of their clients. Implementing new technology and appropriate changes to the billing department shall impact positively on the law firms’ cash flow and help save them time.
An ill-advised strategy currently in practice to maintain compliance with client guidelines is for law firms to add more resources to the billing team or write-off high amounts off the pre-billed invoices. If you ask me, this is nothing short of a recipe for disaster as it neither addresses the core issues nor provides any strategy towards an effective solution.
Here are some of the issues being faced by law firms today:
If left unaddressed, all the above-mentioned issues will lead to
In Summary
All law firms, especially insurance defence and worker comps firms should seriously take a look at their current time tracking and billing platform and either upgrade to (if available) or entirely switch to a platform built on the latest technology enabled with advanced tools similar or better than what bill review vendors currently have which allow them to check billing guidelines’ non-compliance on firms’ invoices.
While initially the law firms’ staff might be reluctant to implement such changes, it is up to the firm’s management to help the staff realise the importance of such changes to help increase the firm’s profit margin.
Firms which fail to implement the right technology or move forward as technology evolves, stand to lose out big time as the next credit crises is approaching soon.
About Andre Wouansi
Andre Wouansi is the Founder and CEO at Accurate Legal Billing, Inc, the world’s first AI-enabled legal billing platform to ensure that law firms’ invoices are 100% compliant with clients’ billing guidelines.
Accurate Legal Billing (ALB) mission is “To help law firms across the world improve their cash flow and billing efficiency, by easily capturing their daily activities, preparing and submitting invoices that are 100% compliant with their clients’ billing guidelines.”
To schedule a demo, please visit: www.accuratelegalbilling.com/schedule-a-demo