Capped Fee Enforcement for LEDES Invoice Submissions: for Brightflag Customers (Clients)

Do you have agreed capped fee arrangements with your vendors for certain types of legal work? If so, you can use the Brightflag capped fee feature to monitor compliance with your capped fee arrangements.

Brightflag's Capped Fee feature can automatically monitor compliance with your capped fee arrangements with vendor law firms. Many clients have a capped fee agreement in place for certain types of legal work.

Contained within this article:

• Why use Brightflag's Capped Fee feature?
• How to configure your company's Capped Fee guidelines?
• LEDES Invoice Template Fields
• What do my vendors need to know?
• What will I see on my Invoices?
• FAQs

Why use Brightflag's Capped Fee feature?

Capped fee agreements can be checked against clients' rate cards at the upload point of a LEDES invoice. It also helps vendors to identify any errors prior to completing their invoice submission, and also allows vendors to upload invoices for the agreed fixed fee amount.

How to configure your company's Capped Fee guidelines?

Your designated Brightflag Customer Success Manager (CSM) will assist you in configuring the Capped Fee feature. They will provide you with a template that you can populate, similar to the example below:

LEDES Invoice Template Fields

Task Code (required)

• • These codes can be specific to your organization or based on a standard like UTBMS
  • The task code on the LEDEs invoice must be an exact match to the task code on the customer capped fee rate card

Task Description (required)

• • The task descriptions can be specific to your organization
  • The start of the task description on the LEDEs invoice must be an exact match to the task description on the customer capped fee rates card - the vendor can add additional detail in the line item
    • Example: "US Prov Application - Revised and submitted the application"

Vendor A - Billing Amount (required)

• • Enter the specific amount agreed for each vendor and stipulate the currency in the capped fee rate card
    • Currency format: ISO. For exact currency symbols, please reference the list here: https://fixer.io/symbols

Vendor X - Billing Amount (optional)

• • If you have different rates for different vendors, provide a specific rate for each vendor where the capped fee arrangement is agreed
  • You can have as many vendor billing amounts as required

What do my vendors need to know?

• For this to be successful, you must communicate this requirement with your vendors. Your customer success manager can provide you with guidance on communication with your firms.
• If your vendor fails to include the correct details while uploading their LEDES invoice, they will receive an error message. For more details click here: Warning Errors Uploading a LEDES Capped Fee Invoice
• For steps on uploading a LEDES invoices with capped fees, see this help article: Uploading a LEDES Invoice with Capped Fees Enabled

What will I see on my Invoices?

You will get a flag on your invoice when the vendor charges greater than the agreed capped fee threshold for a specific task code and task description. See example flag below.

In the above example, the line item total specified in the LEDES file was USD 675. The agreed capped fee was USD 500.

You can configure auto rejection of these invoices for all scenarios or for specific departments or invoice thresholds.

FAQ's

Q: How is the feature activated?

A: Work with your CSM to enable this functionality for your account.

Q: Can I come up with any kind of billing description?

A: Yes, but the Billing Description must link back to a specific task code. Your vendors must use an exact match of the billing descriptions in submitted LEDES files in order for this functionality to work, so we recommend concise descriptions. They can add additional narrative after that billing description, but the initial text must be an exact match.

Q: Is an exact description required?  

A: Yes, the LINE_ITEM_DESCRIPTION on the LEDES file should match the billing description on the rate card exactly. After that exact billing description is included, additional narrative text can also be added.

Q: Are the codes themselves checked at all? 

A: Yes, we look for exact matches to LINE_ITEM_TASK_CODE. A match to both the LINE_ITEM_TASK_CODE and the LINE_ITEM_DESCRIPTION is required for the check to be performed successfully.

Q: Could we check for the exact description as part of a longer description (or does the field have to match exactly)? 

A: Yes, but the exact billing description on the rate card has to be included as part of your description in the LINE_ITEM_DESCRIPTION field of the LEDES file. After that exact billing description is included, additional narrative text can also be added.

Q: Could we use another field in the 98BI template to house this info, or does it have to be the description field? 

A: No. Currently, the functionality is mapped to the LINE_ITEM_DESCRIPTION only. 

Q: Is there any way to report on the entries?

A: The invoice report in the report builder will show you when and by how much the fee exceeded what you specified. The line item report will allow you to search for specific lines but it will not highlight if the line was part of the fixed/capped fee checks.