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CounselLink Answer Center for Law Firms

Managing Your Billing Guidelines

  • Updated

Billing Guidelines outline your client’s business practices and establish a framework for maintaining a consistent and equitable relationship with external legal counsel. This legally binding document defines your client’s expectations regarding billable and non-billable activities, including:

  • Policies and provisions related to confidentiality, record retention, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, media interaction, company travel, diversity, and the use of the client’s name.
  • Processes and procedures for matter acceptance, conflict checks, case assessment, status reporting, matter resolution, and staffing.

This article covers the following:

Find Billing Guidelines

  1. Click the Billing Guidelines tab at the top of the page. The Billing Guidelines and Other Information is displayed.
  2. Click on the link under the Document Name column. A window appears displaying the contents of the guidelines or providing you an option to download the guidelines as a separate file.
  3. Optional Step: Click the Print button in the upper right corner of the screen.
  4. Once you have viewed the Billing Guidelines, click Close.

Accept Billing Guidelines

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When a client needs you to accept Billing Guidelines, your firm's name is added to a tracking list and the review period for acceptance is set.

During this period, notification messages will appear on the Matter Overview, Invoice Overview, and Fee Offer Overview pages to remind you of the pending acceptance. If the deadline passes without acceptance, the client may choose to restrict matter assignments and block invoice creation or upload until the guidelines are accepted.

A sample acceptance message is shown below.

Only law firm users with the Law Firm administrator role can accept billing guidelines.

  1. Click the Billing Guidelines tab at the top of the page. The Billing Guidelines page displays.

  1. Perform one of the following:

    • Under the Document Name column of the Billing Guidelines, click on the name of the Billing Guideline required to be accepted.

      The Acknowledgment screen displays.

    • Click the Accept link under the Accepted By column of the Billing Guideline required to be accepted.

      The Acknowledgment screen displays.

  2. Click Download File to download the file as appropriate.
  3. After reviewing the Billing Guidelines, acknowledge the file by placing a check mark in the associated Acknowledgment check box.
  4. Click Accept to accept the Billing Guideline or Decline to decline them.

The Info Center page updates to reflect the action.

Print Billing Guidelines

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You can print Billing Guidelines at any time.

  1. Click the Billing Guidelines tab at the top of the page. The Billing Guidelines and Other Information is displayed.
  2. Click the guidelines name in the Document Name column. A window displays providing you an option to download the guidelines as a separate file.
  3. Perform one of the following:

    • Click the Print button in the upper right corner of the screen.

      - or -

    • If a Download File link is provided, click the link to download the file, then open it in its native program.

      CounselLink supports Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and HTML formats.

  4. Click Close when finished.