Compliance review is a vital component of legal spend management. Compliance review, in terms of legal spend management, examines law firm invoices and compares them with how completely they conform with the client’s billing guidelines. In depth compliance review requires knowledge of the law firm, the law firm’s billing experience, the common practices of the legal industry, as well as insight into the particular body of law that is being practiced. Although the specifics of the tasks and costs vary between clients, there are a few consistent methodologies used to review legal invoices for compliance with client’s billing guidelines, including the objective and subjective review of invoices. The objective review is usually a surface level review that looks at the basics of whether the bill itself is complete and made without errors, and the subjective review digs into the meat of the work being completed to see how appropriate it is in light of the client’s overall litigation goals.
