In this article:

External Legal service providers are a vital resource for In-house legal teams.

Simply get in touch with your contact at LawVu. They will assist you in setting up the Spend Management capabilities, so you can invite your preferred Legal Service Providers to collaborate with you in LawVu. There is no cost to the Legal Service Provider for doing so.
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Note: You must be a LawVu Administrator to perform these actions.

In this article, the terms Legal Service Providers, Law Firms, and Outside Counsel are used interchangeably.

There are two ways to add a Legal Service Provider in LawVu : through the Legal Service Providers tab or from the Directory, both options being equivalent.

From the LawVu Home page, click on Organization settings and select Legal Service Providers and then Settings.

If you already have legal service providers in the Directory, you will find them listed here, along with their connection status.

If you don't have any legal service providers, you will be presented with the below screen and have the option to Add a legal service provider.

In the popup that opens, you can first search for the legal service provider you need to invite. In this example, I have searched for and found "Legal 123".

Click on Add next to the name to send the legal service provider an invitation. If the search reveals no matches, click the Add a new legal service provider button.

You'll be asked how you would like to connect to the legal service provider:

Once you have selected the appropriate access level, you'll be prompted to input further information for the legal service provider such as the address (for new legal service providers being added to the directory) and details of your key contact at the firm to whom you can send the invitation.

Note: If the legal service provider is already in the global directory, it's likely that the external counsel already has an assigned organization admin(s). If you are sending the invitation to someone who doesn't have LawVu access yet, the current organization admin(s) will be notified to accept the invitation to connect and add your designated key contact as a new user. Once the current admin has accepted the invitation and accepted the request to add your key contact, the new user will subsequently receive the invitation.

If you select the Collaboration access level when connecting to a legal service provider, you will need to enter the email address of your key contact at the firm to whom the invitation will be sent. The legal service provider will receive an email to set up their login to the LawVu portal.

Once the invitation to collaborate has been accepted, the legal service provider can be added as a member to matters and contracts, upload invoices, and appear in Spend reporting.

However:

For more information on how to assign and collaborate with your legal service provider on a particular matter, check this article.

If you select the Billing only access level when connecting to a legal service provider, you will need to enter the email address of your key contact at the firm to whom the invitation will be sent.

Once the invitation has been accepted, the legal service provider can upload invoices in LawVu but will have no visibility of any matters and contracts.

By choosing this level, the legal service provider will not have access to other details or participate in any other activities beyond being able to upload invoices.

They will not have access to:

To enable them to upload invoices, you will need to include the legal service provider to the matters as Billing Only member.

From the Members tab of the selected matters, search for the legal service provider in the dropdown and add them as Billing-only member:

From here on, the legal service provider will be able to upload invoices against the matters you added them to.

By selecting the 'No access' level for the legal service provider, they will be listed in your Directory, however, they won't have access to any matters, contracts, or invoices.

They will simply not know you exist. The benefit of this access level is that you can still upload invoices for them and assign expenses to them.

Here's an example of how I upload invoices for my Legal Service Provider - whom I have added as No access:

If your legal service provider has not yet accepted your invitation to collaborate, the system will display them as Pending. To resend the invitation, go to the 'Legal service providers' tab found under Settings and click on the envelope icon beside the law firm's name:

In the event that you have wrongly sent the invitation to an incorrect email address or wish to modify the invitation recipient, simply click on the legal service provider name. From there, click on the key contact first name and use the people picker to search or add a new user.

If you have sent an invitation to a legal service provider and have since decided that you no longer want then to have access to LawVu, you can click on the Pending invitation icon beside the legal service provider's name and change the access to "No Access" and click on Continue. Doing this will still keep them in the system, and you can still attribute spend to them, but they will have no access to your data or see you in their directory.

However, do note that some law firms may be working with multiple clients in LawVu, so they will still have access to the LawVu platform but they won't have any visibility into your specific data.

Note: At the moment, you can only change the 'Pending' status to No access.

Selecting the appropriate collaboration level with your legal service provider is crucial for effective access, communication, and invoice management while maintaining confidentiality and control. Here are some pointers:

⤑ Choose the Collaboration level if you want the legal service provider to have full access to matters, contracts you add him to, and the ability to upload invoices. They can actively participate in matter-related activities.

⤑ Choose the Billing Only level If you only need the legal service provider to upload invoices without them having any visibility over matters and contracts, select this level. They won't have access to other details or participate in other activities.

⤑ Choose the No access level if you don't want the legal service provider to access matters, contracts, or be able to upload invoices, but you still want to handle invoices on their behalf.

No worries, if you later change your mind, you can modify the access level of your legal service provider at any time by following the instructions outlined in this article: LawVu Customers, Article 3: Change the access level of your legal service providers

You also have the ability to view detailed information of legal service providers added to your directory. Navigate to the Legal Service Provider section under Organization settings and click on the legal service provider name to view their profiles and update necessary details if needed.

Clicking on the existing legal service provider access at the top right-hand side of the page allows you to modify the legal service provider access level. For more details on changing the access level of your legal service providers, click here.