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I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | T E C H S O L U T I O N S 37 volume of material is too great and too much time would be lost. That said, it is crucial to embed a culture that ensures timekeepers are engaged on the subject of outside counsel guidelines. A useful route is to make the realities of individual realization rates clear to timekeepers. This quickly gets timekeepers' attention because low realization means, in effect, a diluted hourly rate. No timekeeper likes to know that they are behind their peers when it comes to their realization rates. Making the link that poor quality time records, that do not conform to the client's outside counsel guidelines, are the most likely to erode their realization rate, will help to focus the timekeeper's mind. Thereafter an efficient approach is to put fee-earners through some short e-learning modules. The objective is to make them aware of the typical key guidelines that arise for each client and their potential impact on the firm. For instance, if a client won't pay for research unless it's been signed-off in advance – lawyers need to know this before there's a chance they'll initiate some research. It's also advisable to structure the e-learning in such a way that fee-earners have to correctly answer some simple questions to complete the module. This ensures they pay attention while working through the guidelines and satisfies the 'acknowledgement' element. Firms should also keep track of who has completed modules. Those that do so can use it to demonstrate to their clients that they are taking OCG compliance seriously and also use this as a point of differentiation, positioning themselves as a trusted partner who is willing to embrace OCG compliance rather than fighting against the rules. Achieving compliance Although law firms are cataloguing their clients' outside counsel guideline documents in their document management system to ensure that they can be found, and version controls can be efficiently exercised, this nevertheless relies on busy timekeepers to extract, read and remember a huge array of rules. When a busy timekeeper is engaged on a client matter they are unlikely to want to spend time reading through verbose OCG documents, particularly if they are on a tight client deadline. More helpful is the adoption of e-billing, and the deployment of the right e-billing system that can store client billing rules and validate invoices for compliance before submission to the client. For example, Thomson Reuters eBillingHub conducts approximately three million outside counsel guideline validations each month, based on billing rules from a library of more than 7,000 client templates. As well as reducing the payment cycle time, the adoption of e-billing also has the benefit of demonstrating to clients a willingness to engage with their outside counsel guidelines. However, ensuring compliance at the billing stage, although useful, means a time-consuming "It is crucial to embed a culture that ensures timekeepers are engaged on the subject of outside counsel guidelines."

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