Peer to Peer Magazine

www.iltanet.org 82 Peer to Peer inside iLTA T hough progress in legal technology has evolved at a rapid pace, the current UTBMS task and activity codes are over ten years old. In 2009, an initiative to update the codes was undertaken by a cross-industry taskforce that included the American Bar Association (ABA), the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC), the Council on Litigation Management (CLM) and ILTA. Under the direction of Fred Paulmann, legal administrator at Pfizer, the group worked together to review the existing codes and make recommendations for updates. The taskforce determined that the existing UTBMS Litigation Code Set needed to be modified to be more descriptive of, among other areas, litigation and current discovery rulings. There was a wide divide in the group's thinking as to the extent of the changes. The majority didn't want to expand the code set too much, as there was concern for adoption. Many law firms felt that it's hard enough to generate a bill under the current code set. Many law departments felt that if the codes were too granular, it would be difficult to roll them up into higher levels to make real comparisons. In an attempt to meet the needs of all parties, however, the Board of Directors of LEDES approved a UTBMS E-Discovery Code Set Committee, to be chaired by Cathi Collins, LEDES Board Secretary, and includes members outside of LEDES — a unique approach to tackle the problem. This committee is charged with pulling together an expanded e-discovery code set that is more granular and fits within the existing UTBMS schema so that it does not totally undermine the UTBMS codes. The committee begins its work with an extensive code set of over 350 codes provided by George Socha, and they will work from there. The committee's challenges include: creation of a numbering schema that works within • the existing utMbs code set and which can be accommodated by time and billing vendors, matter management vendors, electronic billing vendors and all the newly established e-discovery vendors that might have an automatic time or activity capture built into their systems already. Determining if there is value or need to match • resource plans with invoices, and, if so, to what extent. Evaluating the effect of changes in court rulings to • the code set over time. factoring in the changing landscape of e-discovery • vendors. These are just some of the issues the committee faces currently, and more issues will certainly be presented when UTBMS Taskforce Quells the Perfect Storm "The taskforce determined that the existing UTBMS Litigation Code Set needed to be modified to be more descriptive of, among other areas, litigation and current discovery rulings."

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