Peer to Peer Magazine

91 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Coding for Insight: UTBMS Codes Have Brought Legal Billing into the Modern Age MEMBER RESOURCES Earlier this year, the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC) ratified a new Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) code set for categorizing work done on mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The M&A code set provides corporate clients with increased transparency into their spend on the specialized, and oen costly, work done by outside counsel in this increasingly important practice area. It also gives law firms a new opportunity to demonstrate the value they provide to clients. Rising costs associated with M&A work make this a particularly high-stakes area of the outside counsel-client relationship, and leveraging UTBMS code sets offers law departments insights needed to evolve beyond the cost center model to become true business partners within their organizations. A Little History About the Codes According to utbms.com, UTBMS codes were introduced in the mid-1990s when law departments and insurers in the United States were looking for a way to gain a beer Coding for Insight: UTBMS Codes Have Brought Legal Billing into the Modern Age by Linda Hovanec of Wolters Kluwer and the LEDES Commiee understanding of the work done by their outside counsel firms. The goal was to standardize the submission of electronic invoices so corporate clients could more consistently enforce billing guidelines. A commiee was formed to create the initial standardized UTBMS codes, and they have continued to add new code sets as legal and claims departments expressed needs. Better Coding for Better Metrics In the years since they were introduced, the use of these codes has progressed far beyond the need for streamlined billing and invoice review. Because law firms can code every specific task performed, legal departments can use the information gleaned from invoices to build detailed reports that provide insight about budgeting, staffing, efficiency and other operational considerations. These insights inform decisions by legal department leaders that define litigation strategies, improve outside counsel relationships and help to meet overall corporate business goals. On the law firm side, coding this information not only supports client goals, but also allows firms to capture valuable information about how lawyers are spending their time. All of this data becomes even more valuable when legal departments share it with law firms, giving outside counsel a more detailed picture of what is important to their clients. Once firms have beer familiarity with client goals, they can collect their own UTBMS-based metrics, adjust staffing distribution, budgets and maer plans proactively. This level of granularity in the client-law firm relationship was not possible before UTBMS codes gave the profession a common "language" to discuss the details of the legal business. Continuous Improvement Even with the broad scope of codes now available, the LOC is not finished developing new codes. Many law firms and legal departments have told the LEDES Oversight Commiee they would like to improve billing efficiency by providing more informative codes that reveal exactly why an invoice was rejected by a client. This will generate beer alignment of law firm invoicing with client expectations. The LOC is always looking for ways to help legal departments and law firms generate beer metrics for analysis by standardizing the data they use to communicate with each other. P2P

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