Modest penetration of e-billing and modest requirements of firms to comply

Data collected by Altman Weil, reported in InsideCounsel, Feb. 2007 at 58, pushes back at the prevailing sense that e-billing is sweeping through law departments. The piece does not explain the survey’s population, but only 13 percent of the law departments who responded use an “e-billing system allowing outside counsel to submit legal invoices electronically.” Thus, close to seven out of eight departments have no e-billing capabilities.

Of those relatively few departments that have e-billing software or a service provider, consider the percentage of outside counsel fees they processed that way: 25 percent or less of fees handled by e-billing was checked off by 22 percent of the departments; 26-50 percent of fees was right for 11 percent of the departments; 51-75 percent was for 28 percent; and 76-100 percent was 39 percent. Thus, enforcement of e-billing was selective even among the adopters of the technology.