Legal Bill Review Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from In-House Legal Teams
In-house legal teams often balance cost control and maintaining strong relationships with outside counsel. This section addresses how LegalBillReview.com ensures fair billing practices, why negotiated rates alone don’t prevent overbilling, and how outsourcing bill review can save time, reduce costs, and improve efficiency without straining law firm relationships.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from In-House Legal Teams
We prove to the law firm that LegalBillReview.com's participation ensures promptness, a consistent and predictable set of standards, and a fair, communicative review process, including an avenue for appeals. Further, having a third party handle the bill review and payment approval process inspires confidence on the part of the client that the billing is fair, which can prevent tension between the client and their law firm around billing. Most lawyers overlook the reality that the client's in-house attorneys are not the only stakeholders that must be convinced of that lawyer's value. Leaders in other departments often have concerns that outside law firms are overcharging. We show the law firms that their willingness to correct unreasonable or incorrect charges allows LegalBillReview.com to confirm to all of the client's stakeholders that the law firm delivered full and fair value. Consistent confirmation of value from a law firm will likely earn that firm a client for many years to come.
How are you able to balance reducing legal bills and maintaining a positive relationship with our law firms?
LegalBillReview.com obviously isn't looking over the attorney's shoulder tracking the amount of time spent on each task, so how does LegalBillReview.com know whether the billing is fair?
LegalBillReview.com's analysts are experienced, US-based attorneys who take the time to review each bill and consider it in the broader context of the overall matter. We set clear expectations and guidelines for our clients’ law firms, which results in greater detail and clarity in the attorneys’ time entries. When bills fall short of that standard, it’s a matter of simple enforcement and follow-up. By the end of our review, we have extensive information on which to judge the value of each time entry. We then present that information to the law firm as the basis for a particular adjustment.
We negotiated great rates with our law firms. Why do we need your service?
We focus on attorneys’ hours, not their rates. Many attorneys must meet annual billable hours quotas, which gives them an incentive to record more hours per client. So we look at each task from a value and efficiency standpoint, and ensure that sufficient detail was provided to document the work done. We also monitor for a variety of other factors that may impact whether the charge should be allowed: considerations such as whether it was handled by the appropriate level of staff, whether it was duplicative of any other work documented on the bill (whether by the same attorney or another), and even whether the task was billable in the first place. Competitive rates are important, but they still aren’t sufficient to avoid the most impactful overbilling practices.
We carefully review our legal bills internally and we will ask for reductions when we notice billing errors. Why would we need your service?
Is that the highest and best use of your time? Consider the increased productivity of your team members by having LegalBillReview.com review the legal bills, discuss adjustments with the law firms, and approve payments. Also most in-house personnel are hesitant to discuss sensitive billing-related concerns with law firms, and therefore frequently choose not to raise an objection even when there are valid concerns about billing. LegalBillReview.com is the buffer that keeps your communications with your law firm focused on legal issues, not financial issues.