A new subcommittee has been authorized to to review the processes currently involved in the preparation of timekeeper uploads and determine/document the issues stemming from this process. The subcommittee with then produce a recommendation for a new Timekeeper process that is operationally much smoother and less time consuming.
The subcommittee was formed as an off-shoot of discussions held by the UK Regional Group. The subcommittee charter describes the issue to be solved this way:
Law firm billing departments are facing a huge operational problem in terms of the time and resource required to accomplish ebilling to an adequate level and in a timely manner (i.e. the production of valid and accurate ebills created quickly with little difficulty). Given that the level of ebilling is set to increase as client demand rises, then by-extension the problems are set to get worse as the volume of ebills needing to be produced increases accordingly.
Chief amongst these ebilling problems faced by Billing departments is the time required for the provision of Timekeeper related data to the respective ebilling systems – it is estimated that 50%-60% of the total time it takes to do an ebill is spent on checking and uploading timekeeper details, so that the ebilling system can validate the timekeeper in the ebill.
The typical problems faced are: Details different timekeeper upload templates; Different data fields; Different methods of uploading; Identification of which timekeepers that need to be uploaded; Currency issues; Rate issues (where different matters types have different charge-out rates) – these are but a few of the issues they face and the list is not exhaustive. Additionally, the timekeeper validation itself is done differently across the various ebilling systems.
This subcommittee will be chaired by David Nelson and Andrew Dey.