Dear Law-libbers,
A while back (in May), I asked you to respond to the following three
questions on cost recovery:
1. Does your firm bill clients for use of online resources other than
Westlaw and Lexis?
2. If so, does the firm bill for use of online resources that track and
report actual usage with an invoice (e.g. CourtLink, Accurint,
CourtExpress, ChoicePoint AutoTrack XP, PACER, etc.)?
3. Also, does the firm bill for use of online resources which don't
track actual usage because the firm is simply charged an annual fee
(e.g., BNA services, CCH services, etc.)?
I also said I would post the answers, sans identifying info. So, going
with the better late than never theory, here are the responses. I hope
you find them helpful. I certainly did.
The consensus was 1. Yes, 2. Yes, and 3. No.
Thanks again to all who responded!!
Kelly A. Devlin
<<Kelly Devlin (E-mail).vcf>>
--------------------------
Yes to questions 1 and 2. No to question 3, although the cost may be
reflected in the attorney's mark-up/mark-down of the client's bill.
-------------------------
Yes to 1 and 2. No to 3.
----------------
Yes.
Yes, if the use of those resources can be identified as being for a
particular client.
No. No more than we bill for books.
--------------
We charge back costs for online resources which the vendor tracks and
reports actual usage with an invoice.
-------------
We do not charge back for those online resources billed on an annual
basis -- yet. There have been discussions of using a software
product,
such as ResearchAgent, that would measure usage of particular sites and
enable us to recoup at least a portion of the annual subscription fees.
I
suspect that as more and more information becomes available on paid net
sites, this is the route we'll go.
-------------
1. Yes we bill clients for non-Wexis resources.
2. Yes we bill back charges for those resources that you mentioned via
the monthly/quarterly invoices. We also contact users when possible to
try to recoup costs for searches not billed to a client at the time the
research was done.
3. No we do not try to recover charges for what we call "flat annual
fee" services. In fact we use that as a selling point in training -
that these services can be used without the worry that these services
will be billed back to their client (at least directly). The firm eats
the cost of these types of services as administrative costs. In fact,
we're seeing a trend that the attorneys prefer these "flat fee"
providers because clients don't directly see these types of online
research charges on their bills like they do for Westlaw, Lexis, or the
other resources that you mentioned. And some clients have flatly
refused to pay for Westlaw or Lexis Research and have negotiated these
terms into their agreements with us.
--------------
We use Client Validator to track charges for departmental Lexis online
research costs and client billable costs. Getting the client billables
higher then department charges is still a work in progress.
All Westlaw costs are passed on to the client.
All CourtLink charges are charged to client development, litigation
department, or passed on to the client.
Every Pacer user in the firm has their own Pacer id. Users are required
to charge their department or a client for the usage. Getting the
client billable higher then the departmental charges is still a work in
progress.
Only librarians have access to Accurint and costs are passed on to
clients when ever possible. Accurient is a very small part of the
library budget because it is an inexpensive service.
--------------
1) Yes
2) Yes
3) No - If I'm understanding the question correctly. We bill for the
time spent, of course, but no charge for the use of the service.
--------------
1. Does your firm bill clients for use of online resources other than
Westlaw and Lexis? Yes. 2. If so, does the firm bill for use of online
resources that track and report actual usage with an invoice (e.g.
CourtLink, Accurint, CourtExpress, ChoicePoint AutoTrack XP, PACER,
etc.)? Yes. 3. Also, does the firm bill for use of online resources
which don't track actual usage because the firm is simply charged an
annual fee (e.g., BNA services, CCH services, etc.)? No.
-------------
1. We do not bill for other online resources (only WL and Lexis).
2. We use Pacer. We do not bill the client for using it.
3. We do not bill the use of online subscriptions. They are considered
library expenses, like journal subscriptions.
--------------
Yes.
Yes, CourtLink, ChoicePoint, Pacer.
We don't at this time, but CCH has given me the option to track time
online to a matter number, so it may be a possibility. I'm not sure
it's something I really want to deal with tracking, and I'm not really
sure that clients will go for it anyway, since they've never seen a
chrage like it from us before.
--------------
Yes to 1 and 2. No to 3.
--------------
I am in a 50 attorney office of a large firm.
We bill for on-line resources besides Westlaw & Lexis when there is
monthly invoice - Accurint, CourtLink & CourtExpress. We do not bill
for PACER because of the combination of the quarterly invoice & the
staff time required to get these mostly very small charges submitted to
our accounting dept.
BNA, CCH & other services are considered library products & are not
billed.
--------------
Yes.
Yes.
No. However, we do recover $1 for each document printed using Lexis
E-research or Westlaw's E-library. These services are used in place of
hardcopy books and the rationale for the charge is that the clients
would be paying photocopying charges if we still had the books.
--------------
Yes.
Yes - Accurint, CourtLink, PACER.
No.
--------------
1) Yes.
2) Yes, we bill clients for identified usage of Courtlink, Accurint,
AutotrackXP, and any other invoiced service from which we either
receive, or have access to, a detailed list of usage by client-matter
number, such as Delphion. We have not, in the past, billed back the
PACER usage because that is invoiced on a quarterly basis and that
causes a problem for us. On June 1st we are launching a new program
from APS, called Precision Lookup, that will aid in capturing the PACER
usage on a timely basis thereby allowing us to bill it to clients.
3) We do not bill clients for the annually invoiced materials such as
BNA, CCH, etc., because we view these as replacing the print materials
in order to allow all our offices access to the same materials. A fine
line, I admit, but the use of such services usually came about as a
result of adding attorneys in offices that didn't have the topical
materials they needed or didn't have shelving for such materials, hence
the rationale on billing such services.
---------------
1) yes
2) yes
3) no
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Yes. Yes. No.
---------------
1.Yes
2. Yes: Courtlink, Pacer, accurint, MOBARNet(local court/driver licenses
database) GSIonline (securites database), trademark.com, NERAC
(patents), accesskansas (Kansas state page, online services), Dun &
Bradstreet, Choicepoint (public records). Any services that invoice or
statment includes our c/m as entered, will bill to client
3 We do not charge for CCH, BNA, LOISLAW, Sorkinsonline (local business
directory) or other firmwide contracts, with no online access fees.
--------------
We bill for all online resources that track and bill by actual usage,
but not for services charging an annual fee. For our purposes these are
treated in the same manner as print subscriptions.
--------------
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No
--------------
My answers are 1) Yes; 2) Yes; and 3) No. For items that are billed on
a subscription basis (versus a Pay-as-you-Go basis), we do not bill. We
consider that overhead just as a subscription to the print equivalent
would be handled.
--------------
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No
--------------
We bill for any online service that tracks actual usage. Currently,
we're billing for Westlaw, Accurint, PACER, and Factiva. We don't
generally use the other resources you mention, but we on occasion we
will use CourtLink and that will also be billed to the client. Any
resource that doesn't track usage is not billed.
--------------
We bill out the actual charges for PACER, Courtlink, Court Express,
Choicepoint, and any other online service. We have not billed out for
usage on the annual subscription services of BNA or CCH.
-------------
Yes. Yes. No.
-------------
We don't charge clients for Lexis, Westlaw, BNA, CCH, or any other flat
rate services.
-------------
1) yes
2) yes (we have Accurint, Courtlink, PACER...)
3) no (we have, among other smaller, misc. things, one BNA reporter
e-subscription)
-------------
Yes. Yes. No (not yet?)
-------------
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No. We avoid such services because of the difficulty of cost
recovery.
-------------
Yes. Yes. No.
-------------
1. YES 2. YES - at cost. 3. NO. And for what it's worth: where
applicable, we have been charging subscription fees for the electronic
resources that are "non-recoverable" to the practice/department that
uses it (e.g. CCH Healthcare gets charged to the health practice;
Checkpoint to the tax/fiduciary dept., etc.).
-------------
We definitely bill for online services whenever possible. We have our
users enter client/matter numbers which we can then charge when the
invoice comes out. We don't bill for online services which we subscribe
to on an annual basis, which, as you say, don't track actual usage.
Those are just part of non-billable library expense. I also have one
service, Delphion, which one attorney uses exclusively for a single
client. The monthly cost of that service is charged to the client.
-------------
We do charge for services other than Lexis/West.
We do use the invoices for services like PACER to bill the client for
those services
We do not bill for our CCH, BNA, RIA accounts. Not because it is too
complicated, but because those were purchased specifically to substitute
print. We did not feel that we should start billing for those services
simply because it was more convenient for us to have it online.
We also have simplified our Lexis/West billing. It was so hard for the
attorneys to understand what it cost and how we were billing clients -
that we just simplified the entire process. We do not charge for many
items - such as printing, pulling cases or statutes, validating case
laws. This was to appease those who thought we should not bill clients
for online research at all. Then we decided to charge a single price
per search - no matter where you searched. We charge $xx per search -
based on a bunch of data. Basically we made sure that we were not going
to charge more than we were paying - and then choose an average price
per search. It is so much easier. The attorneys like it better - and
it is so much easier to explain to clients. You can do this on either
West or Lexis fairly easily.
--------------
We bill actual amounts on all invoices that report actual usage and
charge us varying amounts each month. We do not bill for any of the
fixed fee subscriptions like CCH, BNA or CD-ROMs. We have a few
exceptions regarding vendors that charge a set yearly fee. We track
usage using the monthly statement in one case and self-reporting in the
other case and charge back a fee we have established ourselves to recoup
some of the costs.
--------------
1) Yes - we do for other online services besides Westlaw and LexisNexis
2) Yes - we bill for online services with invoices
3) No - cch.com and bna.com are two examples that we take as an overhead
expense.
--------------
Yes. Yes. No.
--------------
Yes, but only rarely. About 85% of the time we eat these costs as
overhead.
Yes. We bill (rarely) for PACER, Accurint, and OPENonline.
No. We would consider the costs of such resources to be overhead
--------------
Yes, Yes & No.
--------------
1. Yes, we do.
2. Yes. We bill actual costs as shown on the invoice. No markup. The
only expenses we estimate are for OCLC/Ill function.
3. No, we do not track usage of these services.
--------------
Yes-Courtlink, Pacer, D & B, LiveEdgar, STN---not BNA, CCH or RIA yet.
Yes
Not yet. We are in process of reviewing the benefits on purchasing
LookUp Precision that will allow us to at least track the usage of the
BNA, CCH & RIA materials.
--------------
Yes. Yes. No.
--------------
We do bill for online other than Lexis/Westlaw
We bill for the ones listed in 2
We don't bill for BNA/CCH etc. products we used to have on CD
--------------
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No
--------------
Yes, when those resources permit us to login at a screen to capture
client numbers.
Yes - but for PACER, we only bill when the charge equals or exceeds $10;
we didn't want to waste our time billing for 7 cents.
No.
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