To automate pre-bill review, stop reviewing the entries and start checking them against the document that decides whether they get paid: the client's outside counsel guidelines. In the film above, forty-one April entries from six timekeepers in Aderant Expert are read against fourteen pages of Meridian Capital Partners' guidelines in iManage. A block-billed entry is split, a vague narrative is rewritten from the record, a wrong UTBMS code is corrected, and one entry with nothing behind it is flagged rather than invented. The billing partner gets the pre-bill, the change log, and one question.
What happens in the video
- 0:00The result
- 0:13Why proofreading misses it
- 0:30The guidelines
- 0:56Show it once
- 1:29The fixes
- 2:10The flag
- 2:23The change log
- 2:30Every pre-bill
Systems on screen
Aderant ExpertiManage WorkMicrosoft Outlook
Why proofreading misses it
The belief inside most firms is that pre-bill review is a reading job. Give the draft to somebody senior enough to spot a bad entry, and they will spot it. The scarce resource is attention, so the fix is always framed as more attention: an extra pass, an earlier deadline, a reminder.
But the reader is checking against something they do not have in front of them. Meridian's guidelines are fourteen pages. They say no block billing, task codes on every line, and nothing vague. The timekeeper who wrote the entry has never read them. The coordinator reading the pre-bill has read them once, in March, for a different client whose rules were different.
So the entries that come back are not the ones a careless reader missed. They are the ones nobody was holding the rulebook for. That is the compliance tax we take apart in outside counsel guidelines and e-billing: most write-downs are mechanical, and mechanical things are checkable before the invoice leaves.
The run, step by step
1. The guidelines (0:30)
The client's guidelines are opened in iManage, where they already live. Three rules matter for this month's bill: no block billing, a task code on every line, no vague descriptions. The agent reads the document, not a summary of it that somebody typed into a policy field two years ago.
2. Show it once (0:56)
The billing coordinator does one pass on screen and says what he checks for as he goes. What counts as block billing here. Which codes this client cares about. When he rewrites a narrative and when he asks the timekeeper instead. That recording is the configuration.
3. The fixes (1:29)
Three changes land on the grid, each one sourced:
- A block entry, split. Four point two hours covering three tasks on one line. Split into three entries with three task codes and the same total, from the timekeeper's own calendar and the documents worked that day. The hours are moved by the record, not by a guess about a plausible ratio.
- A vague entry, rewritten. “Attention to matter” becomes what actually happened that day, drawn from the document history. Meridian rejects the first version on sight.
- A wrong code, corrected. Deposition preparation sitting under case assessment becomes L330 instead of L120. That is a UTBMS code lookup against what the work was, done on every line rather than on the lines somebody happened to notice.
4. The flag (2:10)
Half an hour with nothing behind it. No calendar entry, no document, no email. The agent does not rewrite it and does not delete it. It flags it and asks the timekeeper. Inventing a defensible-sounding description for work it cannot source would be the single most damaging thing a billing agent could learn to do.
5. The change log (2:23)
Every change is listed in the order it landed, in the past tense, with who it is stamped to. Split into three entries. Task code corrected. Flagged, not rewritten. The partner is not asked to approve a queue of suggestions. The work is done, and the log says what was done.
6. Every pre-bill after that (2:30)
The next month runs the same way, against that client's guidelines. A second client with different rules is a second recording, not a second project.
Why this is worth doing before e-billing
Almost every e-billing rejection is one of these three things: a task code that does not match the client's rules, a block-billed entry, or a description that fails the client's own vagueness test. Once the pre-bill is clean, the LEDES file stops coming back. Fixing it at the pre-bill is fixing it before the client, the appeal, and the sixty days.
It also depends on time entries that exist in the first place, which is the job just before this one in the order: automated time capture and contemporaneous time entry.
What you need to run this in your firm
- The guidelines, wherever they are. iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, or a PDF in the billing folder.
- Read and write access to the pre-bill. Aderant, Elite 3E, Clio, or whatever draws your draft invoices.
- One recording of your review pass. Yours, not a generic one, because a good coordinator checks things that are not written in the guidelines either.
- A place for the questions to go. The timekeeper, by Outlook or Teams, with the entry attached.
The rest of the series
Six films, each one a real run in the tools the work already lives in. Nothing sped past what you can read.
More for law firms
- Legal automation: what to automate first (2:27). The six jobs every law firm back office runs, in the order each one pays back, with two of them shown end to end.
- How to run a conflict check automatically (2:23). Clio contacts and matters across every spelling, then full text search inside iManage documents, then the memo and the hold.
The advisory firm track
- RIA back office automation: the six workflows (2:31). The six jobs that grow with the book, in the order they give hours back, with two of them shown end to end.
- How to auto-fill custodian forms from your CRM (2:39). Two forms, forty-two fields, eleven facts already in the CRM. One field left empty on purpose.
- How to turn a client meeting into CRM notes (2:21). A forty minute review becomes a note in the firm's format, four dated tasks, a logged recommendation, and a draft the advisor sends herself.
Pre-bill review
Show Caddi what you check for
Once. It reads the guidelines, reads every entry against them, and sends the partner a change log instead of forty-one lines.
Frequently asked questions
What is pre-bill review in a law firm?
Pre-bill review is the pass a firm makes over draft time entries before an invoice goes to the client: checking descriptions, task codes, rates, staffing and totals against what the client's outside counsel guidelines allow. It is usually done by a billing coordinator and a billing partner, by eye, at the end of the month.
Can pre-bill review be automated?
The checking can. Reading fourteen pages of guidelines and testing forty-one entries against them is mechanical work that a person does inconsistently at eleven at night. Splitting a block entry, correcting a UTBMS task code, and rewriting a vague narrative from the day's actual record are all sourced changes. What stays with a person is the entry nothing can source, which should be asked about rather than rewritten.
How does the agent fix a block-billed entry?
It splits it from the timekeeper's own record. In the film a 4.2 hour entry covering three tasks is split into three entries with three task codes and the same total, using the timekeeper's calendar and the documents worked on that day. The hours are not invented or reallocated by guess. If the record does not support a split, the entry is flagged instead.
What happens to an entry the agent cannot source?
It is flagged and a question goes to the timekeeper. In the film that is a half hour entry with nothing behind it. It is not rewritten, not deleted, and not quietly written off. The change log shows what was changed and what was only asked about.
Which billing systems does this work with?
The run shown uses Aderant Expert for time entries, iManage for the client's guidelines, and Outlook to send the pre-bill. The same pattern applies to Elite 3E, Clio, Centerbase or a LEDES export: the agent is shown the review once against your screens, and works those.