Managing budgets for legal services

General counsel must manage and track budgets on legal services for compliance and reporting requirements. ContractPrime legal spend management solution is part of the legal operations platform for the legal department to bring transparency and visibility into the legal expenses without bypassing the GDPR requirements. The objective is for the management to make informed decisions on the legal spend when multiple departments, practice areas and external law firms are involved.

All legal requests are handled in the in-house matter management software and there might be a need to hire external law firms for litigation requests. The legal tech solution must allow outside parties to be invited to matter files and offer the ability to enter their invoices and expenses without the need to send in email.

The cloud budgeting software must offer the following features allowing lawyers to become accountants to manage and report on the cost centers.

Track disbursements and services to correct task and expense code.Budget management in real time with ability to make revisions based on the governance rules.Analytics on the spending with the KPI to understand the most effective law firms and lawyers filtered by location and practice areaManage vendors and clients so selective permissions can be provided to contract repository. All the edits must be tracked.Coauthoring of Microsoft Word documents among matters and contract team members. Stakeholders like clients and counter parties can be invited to document management software for law firms without IT support.

Outside legal services to review legal agreements in contract management software can be tracked in the same application. All legal requests from the business can be charged against the allocated amount for the business units. Bespoke requests can be routed to the legal team and time spent can be billed automatically when the contract is executed.