Why aren't More Govt. Agencies Using Legal Spend Management Tools?

A US Treasurey watchdog report, set for issue today, points to inadequate or vague descriptions of time by law firms representing the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. The report notes that The Treasury Department's Office of Financial Stability (OFS) failed to question the fees and paid the invoices which totalled some $27M paid to five law firms as of December 31st, 2010. "[]OFS paid without questioning, fee bills that contained block billing, vague and inadequate descriptions of work, and administrative charges not allowed under the contract,” the audit report says. “As a result, in many instances OFS could not have adequately assessed the reasonableness of the fees.”

This blogger has to ask why government agencies aren't keeping up with their private sector peers who have been adopting Legal Spend Management applications since the late 1990s. These applications have an incredibly high ROI and are able to automatically check each and every invoice for exactly the kinds of violations that the Treasury watchdog noted in its 35-page report. These systems are far less expensive than the $677,000 in questionable charges in the $1M worth of invoices that the auditors screened; a 94% "potential" violation rate. Who knows what the auditors would have found in the remaining $26M in billed and paid invoices.

As a taxpayers, perhaps we should be asking the Treasury department directly. As a vendor selling, implementing and supporting the most advanced legal spend management technology available, doeASCENT, I think our sales team may have to spend more time inside the beltway.

Is doeLEGAL a Game Changer?

See the article in American Legal Technology Insider. http://www.americanlegaltechnologyinsider.com/

If serving the world's largest corporate legal departments with the most innovative use of next generation collaboarative technology for legal spend management is the benchmark, then the answer is yes.

If the implication is that doeLEGAL's business model allows flexibility in how it serves its clients, then the answer is yes.

If uncompromising support is required, the answer is yes.

The game is changing and doeASCENT is leading gthe way.