Why Use Electronic Billing Codes?
Some clients require bills to be submitted in an electronic format (“eBill”) rather than on paper or PDFs. Your client might instruct you to provide an electronic file generated in a pre-defined format that their reader software can process. The most common eBill format is known as “LEDES 1998B”. This is prevalent among larger corporations & insurance agencies — eBilling is an unavoidable requirement for law firms wanting to take on such clients.
Comprehensive UTBMS Codes – Built-In
UTBMS is the Uniform Task-Based Management System. CosmoLex provides built-in support for following practice groups:
- ABA Bankruptcy
- ABA Counseling
- LOC eDiscovery
- ABA Litigation
- LOC Project
- LOC Patent
- LOC Trademark
While UTBMS codes are most often used with eBilling, many law firms choose to use them across the board for all client invoices. CosmoLex UTBMS support can be expanded to add your own codes to the UTBMS code set provided.
Improve Accuracy of eBills
Due to the huge number of available UTBMS codes, many audit houses/processors limit use of only certain codes. Rejection of “nonconforming” bills is fairly common. When creating time entries, law firm staff are often unaware of the “acceptable code list” — which varies from one client to the next. Clearly, rejected bills are both time-consuming & costly for your law firm.
CosmoLex gives you tools to effectively minimize such errors. You can:
- Make various codes inactive — these are codes you do not want to use for ANY client.
- Enable only certain UTBMS code sets for your entire firm or for specific matters (e.g., limit code sets to Bankruptcy, Counseling, eDiscovery, Litigation, Project, Patent, and Trademark).
- Define a specific list of task & activity codes for use at the Matter level. This will ensure that only “permitted codes” are available while entering Time or Expense cards — a guaranteed way of preventing errors!