Wolters Kluwer has launched a new tool to help both sellers (law firms) and buyers (inhouse legal teams) figure out what legal work should cost.
The new tool is called LegalVIEW DynamicInsights and allows you to ‘benchmark law firm rate trends, build data-driven budgets, and support strategic firm management with transparency’.
It’s based on the already established LegalVIEW database of more than $200 billion-worth of anonymous data from actual billed legal invoices.
Key features include, as described by the vendor:
- ‘Fast Access to Critical Insights: Mean and median rates as defined by timekeeper role, practice area, industry, city, country and AmLaw tier are expressed as a series of interactive visualizations. Additional context is provided by graphs charting the change in rates across categories. We also provide insights to help you better understand changes and trends in the market.
- Chart Historical Rate Trends: Dynamic visualizations make it easier to track hourly rate trends and year-over-year changes. Intuitive filters also enable users to quickly focus the data according to strategic factors such as law firm role or years of experience.
- Insights for Strategic Planning: Rate trends and analysis provide a strong foundation for strategic decision-making. Corporate legal departments can strengthen cost controls and align with budgetary goals. Data-driven insights allow firms to analyze their industry standing, compare pricing across key market segments, and uncover new opportunities for growth.’
Brian Jorgenson, Vice President, Product Management at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions: commented: ‘Corporate legal departments and law firms alike face demand to create greater transparency around the delivery of legal services and drive competitive rates. With the launch of LegalVIEW DynamicInsights, Wolters Kluwer has made it easier than ever for legal professionals to connect with the data-enriched insights needed to enhance spend visibility, build cost effective legal strategies, and grow strong corporate legal department and law firm relationships.’
The big question is this: will this help buyers and sellers make better decisions around fixed fees – which will be essential if genAI tools are to be used at scale? I.e. speed and efficiency doesn’t go well with time-based billing, so you need to scope out fixed fees. And data transparency, even on billable hours, can help to lead us to a more structured approach.
That is to say, you can look at the rates data, then consider from past deals the amount of time taken on various sections of work, and then come to an agreement on a fixed fee for the parts of the work that will have a strong AI component.
Of course, the real hope over the long-term is that anything other than really complex and high value work is always on a fixed fee. And that the legal sector can build a public database of fixed fees for different types of matter, or parts of a matter. Then, we finally get to real pricing transparency, which as noted, will be essential for legal AI tools to really be used at scale. But, we are a long way from that.
In short: adopting tech is one thing, adopting a business model (and having the data to do so) that accommodates AI tools, is something else entirely.