Law departments don’t educate firms about their selection of task-based codes

A survey last month by Legalbill, a provider of cost-management software for legal departments, obtained data from more than 600 U.S. law firm lawyers about their use of UTBMS codes. One survey question asked “To what degree have you changed the amount of attention given to selecting the most appropriate UTBMS code as a result of client feedback?”

Two-thirds of the lawyers said not at all or to a small degree. That could be because their clients agreed already that the codes the firms selected properly characterized the services billed for. If the firm does it correctly, no feedback from the client would be needed. Or, in a darker interpretation, it could mean that clients don’t say anything to the firms about their bills and coding. Feedback is meager to non-existent.

If you would like the fuller set of the data results, write Legalbill’s Managing Partner, Stephen French.