LexisNexis Launches CounselLink Insight, Powerful Benchmarking and Cost Analysis Application for Corporate Legal Departments

CounselLink Insight Leverages More Than $6 Billion of Aggregated Legal Fees and Invoices

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional (www.lexisnexis.com), a leading provider of content and technology solutions, today launched LexisNexis^® CounselLink^® Insight, a powerful cost analysis and benchmarking application for corporate legal departments. CounselLink Insight, a new feature of LexisNexis^® CounselLink^® – a leading web-based matter management, e-billing and legal hold software solution – gives inside counsel a means to analyze and compare their own matter-specific legal costs and budgets against aggregated industry data within CounselLink. This valuable information helps companies better control legal spend, manage risk, make more informed budgeting decisions, and guide negotiations with outside counsel.

“CounselLink Insight enables users to slice and dice relevant industry data within CounselLink to see how they stack up in terms of time, total cost and types of fee structures on comparable legal matters.”

“Using CounselLink Insight can help corporate legal teams create more reliable budget forecasts, drive more effective rate negotiations and generate insightful department metrics that demonstrate how their results compare to nationwide averages and trends,” said Jonah Paransky, vice president and managing director for LexisNexis CounselLink. “CounselLink Insight enables users to slice and dice relevant industry data within CounselLink to see how they stack up in terms of time, total cost and types of fee structures on comparable legal matters.”

CounselLink Insight compiles system data from nearly $6 billion worth of legal invoices, 6,000 law firms, and 1.2 million invoices covering 200,000 matters processed through the CounselLink application, and provides a cohesive, representative and ever-evolving picture of actual legal expenditures on actual matters across the country.

Access to this data gives inside counsel a clear picture of industry averages and benchmarks so they can determine:

• Average duration and costs of different matter types
• Types of legal matters that lend themselves more readily to the use of alternative fee arrangements
• Law firm partner versus junior staff billable hours ratios for different matter types
• How different fee arrangements, vendor negotiations, and management strategies might affect legal costs over time
• Variations in industry averages by region, size of law firm, and other parameters

“Most benchmarking solutions are centered around individual attorney hourly rates, which is akin to focusing on the trees instead of the forest,” Paransky continued. “The industry as a whole is moving past this. CounselLink Insight lets corporate legal departments leverage the power of CounselLink data to benchmark total matter costs, not just attorney rates. This empowers much more meaningful comparisons of overall and matter-specific efforts against those of comparable businesses to track how various fee arrangements, vendor negotiations, and management strategies are affecting the bottom line.”

Today’s announcement follows the launch earlier this year of LexisNexis^® CounselLink^® Analytics, a data-driven consulting service designed to help corporate legal departments improve the predictability of their legal costs, manage their budgets with more certainty and derive greater value from their work with outside counsel. This service offering is led by the director of Analytics Consulting for LexisNexis CounselLink, Kris Satkunas, and delivers specific recommendations for cost management and fee arrangements with outside legal counsel.

Click on the following link to watch a video to gain a better understanding of how you can drive value, manage costs and leverage alternative fee arrangements with the use of analytics and benchmarking: http://www.lexisnexis.com/counsellink/AnalyticsVideo/counsellink_analytics_video.html

LexisNexis^® CounselLink^® enables corporate law departments to more effectively and efficiently manage their matters and legal spend, while at the same time optimizing their outside counsel relationships. The service consists of comprehensive matter management functionality, robust e-billing capabilities, actionable reporting and analysis tools, and various outside counsel collaboration features. More information about CounselLink matter management and e-billing software can be found at www.counsellink.com.

About LexisNexis Legal & Professional

LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of content and technology solutions that enable professionals in legal, corporate, tax, government, academic and non-profit organizations to make informed decisions and achieve better business outcomes. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis^® and Nexis^® services. Today, LexisNexis harnesses leading-edge technology and world-class content, to help professionals work in faster, easier and more effective ways. Through close collaboration with its customers, the company ensures organizations can leverage its solutions to reduce risk, improve productivity, increase profitability and grow their business. Part of Reed Elsevier, Inc. LexisNexis Legal & Professional serves customers in more than 100 countries with 10,000 employees worldwide.

LexisNexis helps professionals at law firms and legal departments of all sizes manage the business element of their practice with innovative software and mobile solutions for customer relationship management, competitive intelligence gathering and assessment, time and billing management, matter management, client analysis, legal holds and more.