The Path to Profitable Legal Pricing
Embracing Data Visibility and Financial Transparency
A guide to implementing BigHand Matter Pricing
Introduction
The legal industry has gone through a number of changes in the last few years in response to evolving economic landscapes. BigHand research has found that client demands for financial transparency, detailed matter budgets, and alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have increased year over year through its annual surveys of 800+ senior legal professionals. Law firms need more accessibility to legal pricing and budget data to meet client demands and remain profitable in the long term.
This data can come from a lot of different sources and without a dedicated legal pricing solution, it can be time-consuming to come up with real-time reports and analysis. This kind of technology helps law firms accurately estimate the price of legal work and optimize profitability by giving the ability to track against original estimates.
With 45% of firms now using a dedicated legal pricing and budgeting solution and a further 19% are planning to introduce it in the next 12 months, implementing legal pricing and budgeting technology is essential to remain competitive. The first step to implementing legal pricing technology is to understand the project goals and plan how you can achieve them. BigHand has years of experience in helping firms use technology to gain more insight into their financial strategies and safeguard their profitability.
Let’s explore the specific stages of implementing legal pricing and budgeting technology so firms can be successful in their financial goals.
Establishing Project Goals and Planning
BigHand Matter Pricing is a solution that has made pricing and budgeting much more efficient for firms globally. The BigHand team works with your law firm’s finance and pricing departments to set up the solution to meet your needs. In the planning stage, there is a kick-off meeting to establish timelines and contact roles for those involved in implementation.
This is also the stage where we work through the server requirements and take a look at your practice management system (PMS). BigHand Matter Pricing connects to a lot of different PMSs and platforms that house pricing and budgeting data. As there are a lot of variables in what firms use, it is important that your team and BigHand establish your firm’s unique set up in the beginning so that the right data is pulled.
The team at BigHand will talk through different configurations you wish to see in the solution to prepare for the later phases of implementation. This stage is all about preparation to ensure that the following stages can go smoothly.
What about Cloud?
For clients who are implementing BigHand Matter Pricing Cloud, the process is the same. For law firms that are upgrading their previous BigHand Matter Pricing Solution to the one with Cloud capabilities, you will still go through the planning phase. There will be meetings to make sure that connections are in place and the BigHand development team ensures that the upgrade goes smoothly.
Reconciliation of Data
BigHand Matter Pricing has an out-of-the-box connector for all the different major PMSs available to law firms. This connector pulls the data from your PMS and transforms it into BigHand’s data structures and tables.
“Firms oftentimes have their own special customizations to their data that they’ve done a particular way.
Part of the reconciliation process is ensuring the data that is flowing from the connector matches what the firm is expecting to see.” says Truman Chan, Vice President Products Operations, Financial Productivity at BigHand.
Reconciliation includes matching hours, fees, and rates at various levels, such as timekeepers’ matters and time. The amount of time this takes varies by firm. For some firms, the out of the box connector provides them with exactly what they need. For others with more complex rate structures, it can take a couple of weeks to reconcile the data.
What about Cloud?
For clients who are implementing BigHand Matter Pricing Cloud, this process is the same. For law firms that are upgrading to Cloud, reconciliation still occurs. However, the timeline can be sped up depending on if you have BigHand Business Intelligence (Revenue Module) already. The data and connections needed will be in place.
Configurations
With the solution connected to the right servers and pulling the data you need, it’s time to configure the solution to meet your goals. In this phase you decide the different toggles and data you’d like visible. The solution is accessed through your browser, so you will have the ability to rename the site and relabel the reports and tables, so it is relatable to your firm. You can also hide elements that your firm does not need and reorder the layout of the elements.
This is also a time to identify different budget types, identify alert configurations and implement them, and determine access by role. Before piloting the technology, there is still one more stage in implementation to make sure the solution is set up for how your firm operates.
Deploying User Acceptance Testing and Pilot Group
BigHand Matter Pricing at this stage can pull the data needed and it’s time to see if the configurations work for your firm configured to your firm’s needs. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) allows the firm to make any changes they see fit now that the solution can show you the data you wish to see. The main contacts at your firm for implementation will be the users that go through this testing process.
The team at BigHand sets up a training session to help your team understand an overview of the tool, how to create budgets, and the different functionalities available. As part of UAT, we will get into the details with you and discuss further configurations and training needed as you get more familiar with the tool and the business needs it can help with.
This stage allows the BigHand developers to work through the changes that your users come up with after using the technology in a way that won’t cause any disruptions. Both sides, BigHand and your firm, are involved in this testing to ensure that it goes smoothly, and you are seeing the correct data in your configurations.
Once the solution has been configured and tested by both BigHand developers and your project lead, it’s time to pilot the solution to a select group of users. Regular communication between the pilot group, your project lead and the team at BigHand is needed to make sure that the feedback gathered is incorporated. This is the final stage where feedback and changes are made before the solution is deployed firm wide.
“It’s very obvious that the matters we have tracked with BigHand have had better recoveries than those we have not. We also know that we are making a better margin on some matters that otherwise would not have been economic for us as a business; using the insight from BigHand, we’ve been able to change the delivery model to make these matters viable, while ensuring client satisfaction. Ultimately, BigHand Matter Pricing allows us to have better conversations with clients.” - Chris Oddy, Head of Pricing & Commercial Development, Womble Bond Dickinson
The table shows how two different firms have saved partner hours by using BigHand Matter Pricing to budget matters. Both figures are taken from the same calendar year.
Final Product Rollout
Reviews of server capacity and performance before the final product rollout can begin. This is also a time where you can finalize internal marketing and training materials for easier adoption around the firm.
Once all of the preparation above is ready, the final product rollout can begin. Access is granted to users in phases, and you can train them on how to use the solution to meet your firm’s needs. It is important to closely monitor all end user feedback or any issues that arise so it can be fixed early on. Your firm can continue to make changes over time if your pricing structures evolve or your PMS changes.