Comprehensive Legal Cost Control Programs

	Accountability Services, a legal auditing and legal cost control specialist, can help you dramatically reduce your legal fees without sacrificing quality. We are distinguished in the market place by an approach to litigation management and legal cost control that acknowledges the importance of the attorney-client relationship. In fact, one of our clients told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that our legal cost control techniques strengthened its ties to its law firms. There is no question that legal fees are higher than they should be. Legal costs are no different from any other cost. If unmanaged, they will skyrocket. Legal cost control and litigation management does not have to be an adversarial process. However, clients need the tools to actively manage their attorneys. Experience has shown that clients who use traditional managerial techniques with their attorneys can manage litigation costs and dramatically reduce their legal fees without adversely affecting the attorney/client relationship. While legal auditing is certainly appropriate in a number of situations, our experience has shown that prospective legal management programs that create and maintain a relationship of trust and mutual respect with outside counsel are the most effective. In essence, our legal cost control techniques can help you identify the problems, define the objectives and implement your quality control and cost control solutions. Identifying the Problems that Increase Your Legal Bill Before you take bold or even modest initiatives to reduce legal fees, you need to know how wisely you have spent and are spending your legal dollars. To get this information, you might consider: Legal Auditing: Legal audits are designed to quantify the financial impact of any legal fee billing abuse, inefficiency or fraud that may have taken place. Our legal auditors and accountants scrutinize all time charges and expenses with the assistance of our proprietary software. Underlying documentation is reviewed to assist our auditors in determining, among other things, whether the time taken to complete particular tasks was reasonable. Our audits culminate in a written report that provides a solid foundation for negotiating a settlement with your law firm. In the event that your case goes to trial, Accountability Services stands ready to give Expert Testimony regarding attorney's fees at depositions, hearings or trials. Legal auditing is an effective response to a number of situations, including: Legal Fee disputes that cannot be resolved Statutory legal fee applications Suspected fraud or billing abuses Third party payment of legal bills Historic Reviews of Legal Bills: These reviews focus on law firms’ compliance with your legal management and billing policies, the efficiency of the law firm, the productivity of each timekeeper, the patterns or practices that artificially increased your legal bills, and the potential for cost-saving measures. The historic review will provide you with the insights necessary for sound legal cost management and cost reductions and will immediately change the way your firms bill and staff your matters. Benchmarking Law Firms' Costs and Efficiencies: Benchmarking is a popular management tool, either standing alone or as part of a total quality management program. Accountability Services uses this technique to reduce outside attorney fees by identifying the most efficient law firms and then improving on their efficiencies. By developing a data base containing staffing information, the number of hours to complete similar tasks and the effective blended rate for the tasks, Accountability Services can help you understand and control legal costs. The analysis provides guidelines for future review of legal bills to determine if expenses are "out of kilter" and aids in creating realistic legal budgets based on historical data. You find out not only what legal fees you have paid in the past but what legal fees you should have paid. If you are considering alternative legal fee arrangements, this will give you the information you need to intelligently explore fixed fees or other billing arrangements. Defining the Objectives After the problems have been identified, your objectives must be communicated to your law firms. Specifically, you should consider drafting and implementing these Legal Cost Control Policies: Billing Guidelines that establish an explicit, up-front understanding with your law firms, holding them accountable for cost-effective legal representation. The billing policy should address billing formats, record keeping, billing rates, staffing issues, appropriate use of attorneys and paralegals, reimbursable expenses and other issues that affect legal costs, such as when travel time, research and clerical tasks can be billed. Prospective Budgets should ensure that your attorneys engage in a cost benefit analysis to determine what is necessary to accomplish your goals. The budgets should include the name, billing rate and status of each person who will be working on the matter during the applicable quarter, an estimate of cost for the matter and each phase or component, the anticipated number of partner, associate and paralegal hours for the matter and each phase or component, as well as the motions anticipated and the likelihood of success of such motions. Implementing the Quality and Cost Control Solutions Even the best billing policy will have little effect on legal fees if it is not actively monitored. Although such reviews may be time consuming, it is an indispensable part of a legal cost control program. Outsourcing this function is always an option for clients and often is the most cost-effective manner of review. Monitoring Compliance with Legal Cost Control Policies: Accountability Services will review your legal bills to make sure your law firms are in compliance with your billing policies and budgets and that the bills are otherwise reasonable. Accountability Services will issue a Deviation Report that addresses departures from your billing policies and budgets and will make recommendations for reductions, if appropriate. The Deviation Report can be sent to your in-house counsel or directly to your law firms to inform them of the reductions. Senior personnel at Accountability Services will be available to discuss the Deviation Report with in-house counsel and/or the law firms if there are any questions concerning the validity of the reductions. Seminars/Workshops to Reduce Legal Fees: Accountability Services’ seminars provide training on how to retain lawyers wisely, how to create realistic prospective budgets and how to manage lawyers to assure value, efficiency and quality in the delivery of legal services. At the seminar, Accountability Services will explain what managers should expect from their lawyers and how to uncover and correct inefficiencies. Checklists will be distributed so that managers can put the suggestions into action with ease and efficiency. For more information about Accountability Services and its executives, please go the Company Profile. For applicable case law, please go to Case Law- Reasonable Attorney's Fees.
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