e-Billing and Expense Management are indispensable financial tools. They show you—at a glance—what you're spending, who you're spending it with, and whether it's being spent wisely.

Expense

Invoice

Budget

Status

Expense Management sets budgets and holds everyone to them

Whenever you open a new matter, LAWTRAC lets you set a budget for it right on the main screen. If you've established a customary budget for that type of matter—a certain dollar amount for, say, discovery—LAWTRAC compares your budget with the customary budget and lets you know how much you're varying from the norm.

Once a budget is set, authorized personnel logging in to LAWTRAC can see where the matter stands vis a vis that budget.

e-Billing sets guidelines for outside firms

Once you've established how much certain tasks should cost you, LAWTRAC e-Billing lets you set guidelines for the law firms working for you.

Each outside timekeeper—whether an attorney, a paralegal, or a staff member—gets a rate card with a set hourly rate. Guidelines for allowable expenses are entered in accordance with LEDES billing codes.

With e-Billing, all outside counsel invoices are submitted electronically. This means LAWTRAC gets the first look at any bill that comes in.

If LAWTRAC detects that any charge falls outside the guidelines—whether it's an improper hourly rate, an excessive number of hours, or an expense error—it flags the error and alerts the law firm with an explanation.

All this happens with no human involvement. Your department never sees the invoice until it's correct. Billing disputes, for the most part, never materialize because they've been settled electronically prior to anyone in the department reviewing the bill.

See the details clearly

e-Billing invoices are better organized, and give you more detail, than paper invoices ever could. This makes them easier to review line-by-line, and easier to make adjustments.

But more than that, each invoice is itself a rich information source, with data fields that can be mined for reports. Through these reports, the department can better understand what they're spending on certain types of matters, how long certain tasks are taking, which expenses need tighter control, and much more.