It is a truth universally acknowledged that a lawyer in possession of an online service must be in want of an electronic means of billing.
One of the barriers to e-billing is the lack of a known standard in the UK. The Legal IT Innovators Group (LITIG) is attempting to address this issue by developing an e-billing standard for use by legal firms.
The group plans to adapt a widely used US standard, LEDESTM (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard), for use in the UK. The format was specifically developed for legal e-billing.
Although an XML version of LEDESTM is available, it is anticipated that the older ASCII version of the standard will be utilised, since this format is likely to be accessible to more law firms.
LITIG has published a consultation paper on the development of the e-billing standard, and has invited comments by 15 December 2003. The consultation paper is available on LITIG’s website: www.litig.org.
References: Propert-e News 5/11/03
