Friday Feature – OCG Live Summary Acknowledgement

Welcome to our “Friday Feature” series: a space to highlight exceptional features unique to Aderant products. Check back every Friday as we introduce new ways to improve your firm’s efficiency and ease of operations.

Today, Angela Huffman, Senior Business Consultant at Aderant, is highlighting the Summary Acknowledgement feature within OCG Live.

What is the OCG Live Summary Acknowledgement Feature?

The Summary Acknowledgment feature in OCG Live is a method by which firms can verify that their timekeepers have reviewed the OCGs (“outside counsel guidelines” sometimes referenced as “billing rules”) for each matter that they are working on using the Summary feature. The Summary feature allows the billing department, or whoever within the firm is responsible for compliance with billing rules, to pull all the pertinent information from the voluminous full set of guidelines and condense it into a Summary that is then made available to the timekeeper.

Law firms often struggle to ensure that their attorneys know the outside counsel guidelines (OCGs) for each client they are entering time for. It is not unusual for guidelines provided by clients to be very robust, sometimes amounting to upwards of 100-200 pages; the Summary feature is used to create an abridged version of the OCGs pertaining to each client. There are multiple ways to distribute the Summary, whether that involves a specific department directly sending it out or an email alert being generated the first time that an attorney enters time for a client. The Summary email contains a link to review the guideline summary and requires timekeepers to sign a Summary Acknowledgement. Once acknowledged, the guidelines can be reviewed as needed in the timekeeper view within OCG live. Firms are able to customize when the Summary Acknowledgement is required and oftentimes choose to do so on an annual basis.

How can the Summary Acknowledgement feature impact the legal industry as a whole?

If attorneys understand the billing guidelines and budget limitations for each client, timecards will be more compliant thereby reducing the number of write-downs and rejections. With this improvement in compliance, firms will be able to make fewer appeals in order to be compensated.

In my own experience working at a law firm, we had instances where we had delays in invoicing because a client would write down or appeal line items, and the firm then had to appeal or accept them before the invoice could be paid. So, I set up a meeting with the attorneys and shared a presentation that went over OCGs and billing expectations. Timekeepers cannot be expected to follow the guidelines if they do not know what they are, so communicating those guidelines can prevent a significant number of compliance issues. The Summary Acknowledgement feature handles this in a way that allows your firm to focus less on OCGs and more on the substance of matters.