ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Orion Law Management Systems, Inc. (www.orionlaw.com), a leading provider of financial and practice management software for law firms, announced the results of its inaugural Orion Prebill Survey today. The Survey found that, despite a legal industry-wide drive toward efficiency and technology use, law firms of all sizes are still heavily burdened by a paper-based prebilling process. Prebilling is the stage at which invoices are drafted for attorneys to review based on their time entries, providing them a chance to edit, correct or write-down fees before bills are sent to clients.
Orion Prebill Survey finds majority of law firms are burdened by a highly manual, paper-based prebilling process that delays invoicing
According to the Orion Prebill Survey:
- More than 71% of law firm accounting/billing departments were still circulating paper printouts and collecting handwritten annotations to capture lawyers’ input before finalizing invoices. Only 12% were using electronic PDF prebills.
- 82% of respondents said their prebills are currently marked-up with lawyers’ handwritten notes which are frequently illegible. At some firms, the review and annotation phase alone could take 20 days to complete.
- 46% of respondents said prebills were sometimes misplaced, requiring an additional copy to be produced.
- The abovementioned contributing factors caused the prebill phase to take 2 weeks or more for 39% of firms.
Paul Yelton, President of Orion Law Management, said: “Since the efficiency of law firm billing is quite literally linked to a firm’s cash flow, having an onerous, primarily manual prebilling process full of delays is costing these firms both time and money. This problem adds up each billing cycle, month-after-month, and can cause significant financial damage over time.”
Yelton announced that an internal initiative has been underway to directly address the problems revealed by the survey. The company will be launching its Orion ePrebill Manager software module at Legaltech New York later this month.
“The Orion Prebill Survey confirmed that the prebilling process at law firms must be modernized,” commented Yelton. “Orion’s development team has been working diligently on the Orion ePrebill Manager and we look forward to launching it at Legaltech. We expect this technology to completely transform law firm prebilling, bringing much-needed efficiency to a cumbersome area of legal workflow that definitely needs to be updated.”
Register to view the complete Orion Prebill Survey report here. For more information about the Orion ePrebill Manager or to become a beta test site, please email info@orionlaw.com.
About Orion Law Management Systems, Inc.
Founded in 1985, Orion Law Management Systems, Inc. is dedicated to providing law firms with proven law practice management software. Utilizing a complete practice management approach, Orion is a fully integrated law management system employing the very latest in reliable technology. Orion centralizes your Financial Management, Firm Management and Practice Management delivering the competitive advantage that law firms need to succeed. Orion Law Management Systems, Inc. is headquartered in Atlanta. For information visit www.orionlaw.com, call 1.800.305.5867, email info@orionlaw.com or follow us on Twitter @Orion_Law.