There is a lot of this sort of routine business communication the review of which can be automated. I'm thinking of invoices, etc, of all sorts. I wonder about their privacy story: if I'm CC-ing my bills to SimpleLegal, how are they protecting that data? Are they aggregating between customers, etc? Sensitive information about legal strategy can appear in bills, so it's important to have a good story for potential customers of this service.
Also, there might be a business opportunity on the flip side. One of the things law firms worry about is collection rate: the percentage of bills that are paid. Industry-wide, the rate hovers in the mid 80% range. Could this technology be used to get clients and firms on the same page and boost collection rates (even if it resulted in discounts elsewhere)?
Co-Founder here - Security and privacy are one of our highest priorities. Our encryption, storage and transfer policies are as good as you'd expect with any other provider dealing with sensitive information (banking, contracts, etc).
CC'ing the bills is a convenience we provide since most companies already receive their invoices by PDF via email (or by snail mail), we also support direct upload by the firm or by the customer. No human eyes, except the customers, see the data unless absolutely necessary, and that access is limited to select, named, screened individuals.
We currently do not aggregate data or share data in any way. There may come a time where we provide insights into billing practices or fraudulent activities in aggregate, but that is a ways out.
While we agree that incremental billing (in 6 minute increments) [edit] is a pain for both lawyers and customers[/edit], it's not a model that can be wholly abandoned. However, we do plan to be in the forefront of fixing the headache and process.
rayiner makes a great point about (and possibly created customer demand for) the security of your service being a selling point. I'm wondering if billing firms could fall under client-attorney confidentiality, but I doubt it.
On the other side, your firm has placed itself in the unique position of being able to price-compare different law firms, and even different customers of the same firm. You could pivot/expand into a price-shopping service (kayak for law firms), a law-firm analytics provider (giving a/b testing results and other demographic info to law firms, leading to better price stratifying), or a service for law firms to gain pricing information about their competitors.
Co-founder here. Legal bills are not considered "work product" so the client can share them if they choose.
The content of legal bills is very important to protect. We have technical safeguards as well as management/process safeguards. The most important of which is limiting the number of people with access to actual content.
We have data and can price compare across geographies and law firms. But it is important to remember that each transaction is unique. That's why we don't release any of that information currently. If we find the right way and the right venue to share that aggregated information, we will do so if we think it is in the best interest of our customers.
Great concept, but not sure about the claim that legal bills aren't "work product" - it depends on what they say. And it's quite probable that the most effective legal bills for data analysis purposes (i.e. detailed ones) would contain work product or attorney-client privileged information. When I was a practicing lawyer, I always redacted bills before filing them in court to support fee petitions.
Separate issue whether disclosure of the bill to you as vendor, with a documented expectation of confidentiality, would constitute waiver either of WP or A/C privilege. No obvious reason that disclosure to your service would be different than disclosure to TyMetrix, Serengeti, or Sky Analytics, assuming your T&Cs are well-crafted. But obviously check with your lawyers on that.
Also, purely from a business standpoint, you can bet that some lawyers will raise the confidentiality objection to discourage/resist adoption.
All is to say, the issue is an important one. Glad to see you're taking it seriously. Good luck!
Also, there might be a business opportunity on the flip side. One of the things law firms worry about is collection rate: the percentage of bills that are paid. Industry-wide, the rate hovers in the mid 80% range. Could this technology be used to get clients and firms on the same page and boost collection rates (even if it resulted in discounts elsewhere)?