Serengeti Legal e-billing & project management

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1 Serengeti Legal e-billing & project management

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3 serengetilaw.com Serengeti is the industry s highest-rated and most widely used system for managing legal projects and spending. Serengeti simplifies the collection and organization of information used by legal teams. This allows in-house counsel to monitor developing areas of activity, track budgets, create reports and select outside counsel for new work based upon performance. New corporate customers find that most, if not all, of their outside counsel are already using the system to bill to other clients. Plus, as an online Software as a Service (SAAS), Serengeti manages all maintenance, upgrades and support, so no IT involvement or new hardware/ software are required. Read on to learn more about the advantages of Serengeti and find out if it is a good fit for your law department. Then contact your local Thomson Reuters Serengeti representative or visit serengetilaw.com to schedule a demonstration north american firms central american firms south american firms african firms european firms middle eastern firms asian firms oceanic firms Today, more than 21,000 law firms in 180 countries are working on the Serengeti system (including all of the Am Law 200, the Global 100, and the NLJ 250 law firms). The figures shown above represent the number of law firm/vendor offices. See inside Is Serengeti Right for Your Department?... p. 4 What are the Key Benefits?... p. 6 What Features are Included?... p. 8 What are Customers Saying?... p. 10 3

4 Serengeti is it right for your department? Whether your company has hundreds of in-house lawyers or just a single attorney, here are answers to a few key questions to help you decide if you should take a closer look at Serengeti.

5 serengetilaw.com Is Serengeti Right for Your Department? CAN YOU EFFICIENTLY CREATE A DEPARTMENT BUDGET AND TRACK SPENDING AGAINST IT? Serengeti streamlines budgeting by providing an online workspace that includes your estimates, law firm budgets, historic spending and accruals. Throughout the year, it compares spending against the budget and helps you prepare accurate re-forecasts, if necessary. Are you concerned about data accuracy in your management reports? Serengeti employs a unique solution to help your law department meet its compliance obligations for complete, accurate reports. Because your law firm(s) must provide periodic updates of budgets, exposure, status, and more before their bills can be delivered, reports in Tracker reflect this complete and timely information. DO YOU TRACK OUTSIDE LEGAL WORK WITH PAPER, SPREADSHEETS OR INTERNAL SOFTWARE and DATABASES? Law departments often waste time dealing with paper bills, budgets, and capturing information and documents directly from your law firm(s), members of your department or registered agents. With Serengeti, you spend less time searching for and reentering data. You will always have current information at your fingertips. DO YOU spend a lot of time on compliance and auditing issues? Serengeti is the only e-billing and matter management vendor to receive a full SAS 70 Type II certification. This distinction not only validates Serengeti s security and internal controls, but also supports your Sarbanes-Oxley and other compliance requirements. Also, with Serengeti s auditing and reporting functionality, internal audits are completed in a fraction of the time it takes with manual processes. CAN YOU QUICKLY spot LEGAL PROJECTS THAT ARE OFF-TRACK, OVER BUDGET, OR DEVELOPING SIGNIFICANT EXPOSURE? Most in-house counsel doesn t have the time or tools to continuously review all of their legal work. Serengeti provides automatic dashboard alerts and reports that help you catch problems early, so you can quickly address them. IS YOUR review of legal bills EFFICIENT and effective? The process of routing and reviewing stacks of paper bills can result in wasted time and missed opportunities for bill reduction. Serengeti manages the entire invoice review process: automatically routing bills to reviewers, flagging guideline violations, presenting budget comparisons and capturing adjustments and comments. Once a bill is approved, Serengeti can automatically deliver it to your accounts payable system for payment. 5

6 Serengeti what are the key benefits? Serengeti s unique integration of project management and e-billing puts it in a class by itself. Connection to 100 percent of your outside counsel, ease of use, international features and quick implementation consistently make Serengeti the top-rated software for both in-house and outside counsel.

7 serengetilaw.com What are the Key Benefits? SERENGETI IS USED BY LAWYERS AND CAN QUICKLY CONNECT YOU WITH YOUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL. SERENGETI AUTOMATICALLY HANDLES FOREIGN CURRENCY BILLS, REPORTING, AND USER PREFERENCES. SERENGETI DOESN T IMPOSE hidden fees or law firm CHARGES, WHICH GENERALLY COME BACK TO YOU. SERENGETI regularly adds new features to meet the evolving best practices of the profession. Serengeti was built by lawyers for lawyers. With an intuitive interface, extensive online help and online training accomplished in just one hour it is one of the only matter management solutions actually used by lawyers and paralegals. Other systems are primarily for billing staff. Serengeti is the optimal system for managing multiple legal offices and firms worldwide. For years, multinational law departments have used it to process electronic bills in foreign currencies, create financial reports and separately track value-added and other taxes. Your individual users choose their currency preferences for viewing all financial information. Other vendors charge firms for e-billing (up to $3,500/year/client or two percent of your bills). Firms generally recoup these charges from you, directly or indirectly. Because Serengeti never charges firms, the overall cost often is much less than other systems. And our inclusive monthly fee covers all ongoing services, including support, new user training and upgrades. Serengeti s special relationship with the Association of Corporate Counsel and the General Counsel Roundtable, as well as its network of more than 140,000 users worldwide, gives Serengeti unique access to significant developments in the profession. SERENGETI IS PREFERRED BY BOTH IN-HOUSE COUNSEL AND OUTSIDE COUNSEL. SERENGETI PROVIDES E-BILLING AND MATTER MANAGEMENT IN A SINGLE SYSTEM. SERENGETI CONNECTS YOU WITH ALL OF YOUR LAW FIRMS, LARGE AND SMALL, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC, AS WELL AS WITH YOUR NON-LAW FIRM VENDORS. Serengeti s comprehensive SAS 70 Type II certification supports your Sarbanes-oxley compliance. According to recent surveys by major professional organizations, Serengeti is the highest-rated system for electronic invoicing and matter management. It was named the most widely used system and best value, and it earned the highest overall satisfaction rating from both law departments and law firms. As a result, the General Counsel Roundtable selected Serengeti as the first participant in its preferred vendor program. When it comes to objective measures of user preference and system performance, Tracker is the conclusive winner. Serengeti was built to manage all of the significant information generated during the life cycle of a legal project. With Serengeti, there is no need to cobble together different systems and vendors or deal with the inevitable resulting gaps and inconsistencies. The system allows you to monitor deadlines, documents, budgets, exposure, status and results, all in one place. While other systems connect only the largest U.S. firms, Serengeti connects 100 percent of your law firms big or small, foreign or domestic. With more than 140,000 users in 180 countries, Serengeti is the largest legal network in the world. As a result, you can track all your work in one system and be assured of complete management reports. Serengeti is the first and only e-billing/matter-management vendor to receive a comprehensive SAS 70 Type II certification. The SAS 70 review is an independent confirmation of the quality and effectiveness of Serengeti s overall practices in safeguarding the data of our law department customers. 7

8 Serengeti what features are included? Serengeti organizes your key information in a secure, online workspace that is shared with outside counsel, and includes all the features necessary to manage legal projects: spending, budgets, documents and deadlines. ELECTRONIC BILLING Process electronic invoices in any format (LEDES, Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF) from 100% of your firms small or large; foreign or domestic. INVOICE AUDITING APPROVAL ROUTING OVER-BUDGET SPENDING ALERTS CURRENCY CONVERSION & TAX enforce timekeeper rates, expense compliance and other billing guidelines auto-route to preset approvers; add reviewers ad hoc for month, fiscal year, life of matter or phase amounts displayed in user s preferred currency foreign and domestic taxes tracked separately INVOICE DATA TRANSFER TO AP configurable fields for extraction to accounts payable Web Services-enabled for automatic data transfer Matter & IP management Track just the information you need, collected at the source and organized for quick retrieval. DASHBOARD CUSTOMIZABLE TEMPLATES ENFORCEMENT OF REQUIREMENTS Alerts of case developments and upcoming deadlines Customize information tracked for different types of legal projects FAS 5 loss-contingency tracking IP specific fields for filing dates, inventors, status, etc. firm notified that bill will not be processed until required budget, status update, etc. is provided STATUS REPORTING optional or required captures key developments from outside counsel on a monthly or quarterly basis CALENDARING automated reminders; integration with Outlook and Lotus Notes master calendar for individuals/practice groups 8

9 serengetilaw.com What Features are Included? continued Matter & IP management (continued) CONTRACT & DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT Manage all of your documents and contacts online with one collaborative system. BUDGETING & ACCRUALS Use budgeting and unbilled time reporting to capture spending estimates directly from your firms. RESULTS EVALUATIONS FILEZONE KEY INFORMATION ABOUT CONTRACTS LAW FIRM BUDGETS PHASED OR FISCAL YEAR DEPARTMENTAL BUDGET track matter outcome, duration, predictive accuracy and lessons learned Evaluate and compare performance of outside counsel pull documents and files directly from desktop into Serengeti matters Store drafts, notices, correspondence and amendments collect data about parties, terms, renewals, etc. If required budget is overdue, firm s bills are held automatic spending-to-budget comparisons budget by time period or litigation/ip phase roll up project budgets and spending into internal budget Quick reforecasting for unanticipated events REPORTING & TRENDING Produce reports that analyze budgets and spending, summarize key information and identify developing trends. SERVICE OF PROCESS Automatically retrieve and route S.O.P. documents and information directly into your matters. INTERNAL TIME ALLOCATION Capture internal legal costs to assess department performance. ACCRUALS FOR UNBILLED TIME REPORT GENERATOR CUSTOM EXPORTS MY REPORTS AUTOMATED DOWNLOAD INTAKE Auto-ASSIGNMENT and calendaring QUICK CAPTURE REPORTING firms input unbilled time and estimated spending hundreds of reports with easy-to-use filters one-click drill-down reporting for additional detail trend analysis showing changes over time fully customizable exports for presentations, graphs and more Save criteria for quick generation of periodic reports Data retrieved directly from your registered agents Automatic routing to existing matter or delivery to new matter Assign documents to responsible user, including deadline alerts Input time by hour or percentage of week Compare outside versus internal cost; allocate to business units 9

10 Serengeti what customers and law firm representatives are saying We wanted a system that would make us significantly more efficient in managing our legal work, worldwide. It needed to be easy to use for our in-house attorneys and staff, as well as our outside law firms. Instead of paper, we now have organized online information coming in directly from our firms, keeping us on top of our legal spending and results. Steve Rosen Vice President, Alcatel Lucent Amazon.com replaced its Access-based system with Serengeti Tracker for processing payment. Tracker allows Amazon.com attorneys to efficiently review and approve bills online. It also enables us to generate up-to-date spending reports in both U.S. and foreign currencies which help to track spending across all parts of our legal department. Joanna Leinaweaver Legal Operations Manager Amazon.com Using Serengeti works from both sides. From the firm perspective, it s much better to work with clients who don t receive unexpected billing surprises. Tracker helps us avoid those situations because everyone has access to the same information. The system creates a platform for communication with clients regarding expectations and realistic conclusions to matters. It gives us a way to communicate with clients in a consistent, methodical fashion that s really beneficial to client relations. We see Tracker as more than a billing tool; it s also a great marketing tool. Carol K. Dillon Partner, Bingham McCutchen LLP Serengeti offers a number of benefits. First, the billing process is streamlined. Second, if it requires the formulation of a budget in advance of the work, you re compelled to analyze the likely cost of the litigation at an earlier stage. This both dictates strategy and provides the client with a reasonable estimate of the likely costs. Additionally, the routine status updates provide the client with both a road map and greater insight into pending work. We ve found that the more information clients have, the more satisfied they are with our work, and the stronger the overall relationship is. James Sammataro Partner, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP Serengeti s technology puts at our fingertips the critical information that we need to make better strategic decisions, and to assure optimum performance from our legal teams. Serengeti Tracker is the backbone of our strategy to remove any barriers to cooperation, collaboration, and access to information with our law firms. Jeffrey W. Carr VP, General Counsel & Secretary FMC Technologies, Inc. I love the fact that Tracker is one online system for billing, contract management and reporting it really makes my life easier. I have to justify my spending every month, so I run reports in Tracker that show exactly where and why I m over or under budget. I wouldn t be able to get that kind of detail-level reporting done with paper. Michael Fox Senior VP & General Counsel Jamba Juice To learn more, please contact your representative at or visit serengetilaw.com. 10

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12 To learn more, please contact your representative at or visit serengetilaw.com. One Corporate Plaza, 2075 Kennedy Road, Toronto Ontario Canada M1T 3V4 carswell.com thomsonreuters.com 00188DW-E80788 MM2 02/12 printed in canada 2011 Thomson Reuters L /7-11