This post is part of a series of posts that discusses lessons learned through analysis of bankruptcy fee data. This post explains Workflow Efficiency which, as it sounds, refers to how efficiently work is being performed. The first post discussed Billing Hygiene which refers to the clarity and conciseness of work narratives in line items which can be viewed here.

Bankruptcies are fast paced with many attorneys, consultants, and other professionals billing for their services. Controlling costs is paramount to ensure creditors can claim their payments from the estate and should be done whether a fee examiner has been assigned or not. Unfettered billing can cost the estate or cause a firm to return fees through clawbacks . Using technology to assist with fee review is a requirement in the changing environment of bankruptcy filings.

Legal Decoder’s (LD) Compliance Decoder flags line items that trigger Workflow Efficiency rules which may surface inefficient or drawn-out work. The goal of Workflow Efficiency is not to mandate lawyers to work like robots but to identify and monitor areas where inefficiency could delay work products or milestones. Workflow Efficiency can also be used to benchmark and compare other firms within a bankruptcy case to gauge how each firm is performing.

Excessive Time and Research

One area of inefficiency concerns excessive time spent on repeated or routine tasks. This could be the result of working out of scope, having someone underqualified perform these tasks, or just padding billable hours.

Excessive legal research generally involves a more senior attorney who is billing a high number of hours performing research. Experienced attorneys should be able to perform legal research faster than less experienced attorneys. While legal research or relevant research is justified case work, it is important to keep a close eye on time spent researching and who is performing the research because costs can up quickly.

Office Communication

Excessive internal office conferences, meetings, or other communications between outside counsel are one of the biggest issues in workflow efficiency. Over 29% of all line items flagged as inefficient by the LD Compliance Decoder involved some sort of office communication. Office communication can be:

• Calls, emails, or any other communication between outside counsel of the same firm

• Internal calls and teleconferences with multiple attorneys and staff of the same firm

• Follow-ups with internal staff

• Weekly, monthly, or any other regularly scheduled communications with internal staff (clients and staff should approve these meetings beforehand or be aware of them)

Remedial Work

Remedial work is defined as corrective work due to law firm errors. While not common (less than 1% of Workflow Efficiency issues flagged by the Compliance Decoder were identified as remedial/corrective work), this is an issue that should be discussed with firms if it occurs.

Remedial work can range from reorganizing binders to redrafting documents or filing corrected documents. Some remedial work can be innocuous and results in just extra hours billed on a task (would be worth asking for a review or discount if these tasks are numerous) but some remedial work have dependencies that can affect timeline and additional effortsoutcomes.

Workflow Efficiency Ensuring Predictable Fees

An appropriate level of workflow efficiency can help fee examiners, creditors, and other interested parties predict fees for certain tasks. Firms ensuring appropriate workflow efficiency levels can help set expectations for fee examiners and show good- faith effort when tasked with matters. LD has analyzed billions of dollars of legal fees and our analysis shows that workflow efficiency issues can quickly become uncontrollable if not addressed early on. The best course of action is to assess the workflow analysis and proactively have discussions on improvement with outside counsel.