Every day there is more evidence that in order to stay competitive, lawyers need to harness technology to streamline their processes. The more sophisticated the client, the less tolerance they have for inefficiency. In our never ending quest to provide the right tools for law firms, CARET Legal is thrilled to now support electronic LEDES invoices with Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) Codes.
For the uninitiated, LEDES, which stands for Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard, is an international standard created by an oversight committee to facilitate a uniform mechanism for law firms and corporations to exchange billing information. UTBMS is the set of standardized codes for time and expenses in areas such as Litigation, Counseling, Project, Intellectual Property, Worker’s Compensation and Bankruptcy. The ability for law firms to provide LEDES invoices can be the difference between winning a new client … or losing an existing one.
This is the reason why we felt that it was imperative that CARET Legal support LEDES invoices.
As with everything we do, we’ve built this feature to work seamlessly with your firm’s work flow. If your firm doesn’t do electronic billing, it won’t be in your way. If only some of your clients or matters require electronic billing, then only the time entries and expenses for that matter will prompt you to select the proper UTBMS codes designated for that particular matter.
For example, if you have a matter that uses the litigation UTBMS codes, then only those litigation UTBMS codes will be selectable for that matter. We have the full complement of current Code Sets, Activity Codes and Expense Codes embedded in the system. As new codes are introduced by the LEDES Oversight Committee, we will do our best to keep them updated, but we want to hear from you if we’ve missed anything. Now get back to business.
