Spend reporting offers legal teams a clear understanding of their expenditures and invoices with outside firms, allowing them to manage their budget better and make informed decisions when working with external counsel.
In this article:
Overview
Spend reporting helps in-house legal users view all legal spend, inside and outside, in one spot. This shows the big picture of legal work and can help teams:
decide where to put resources and staff for different jobs.
follow ongoing tasks, keeping budgets on track, and planning well.
monitor expenditures against the budget, ensuring financial plans are well-managed and aligned with goals.
Access the Spend Management metrics from the Reporting icon / Spend section.
If you do not see the Reports icon, then your Administrator needs to enable this permission for you:
The Spend Management page is organized into 3 sections: Summary, Fees, and LSP Users & Permissions.
Important to note is that this report is defaulted to your fiscal year, but you can still change and filter the data by calendar year or month.
To select the calendar year, please first clear the selection on the fiscal year.
Best practice reports
In this section, we go through our top 5 best practice metrics in Spend Reporting and how they may help your team
Total Spend, fees, and disbursements
Invaluable metrics for an in-house legal department that you can filter by fiscal, calendar, or monthly basis and compare them to the same period last year. They offer a straightforward way to track expenses, predict costs, and make smart budget choices.
Available from the Summary page
Budget vs Spend
Compare budgets for in-house and outsourced legal work against actual spending. This helps estimate future budgets and manage spending effectively.
Available from the Fees page
See how much is spent externally based on matter type, LSP, department, team, or region
For example, it helps understand if a practice area has high spending. Or if you're spending a lot due to lack of skills, consider training or hiring. Such insights guide better decisions.
Available from the Summary page
Ratio of Outsourced to In-House Work
This shows the outsourced work compared to in-house work so you can keep track of the volume of matters that are associated with LSPs.
Available from the Summary page
Overview of the number of Legal Service Providers, type of collaboration, status, and number of users
Offers insights into how legal services are being utilized. This breakdown helps to understand the nature of collaborations, the progress of ongoing work, and the level of engagement from various teams.
Available from the Legal Service Providers tab
Drill deeper into your reports
When you select a particular attribute in a visual, it triggers a filtering of the entire dataset based on that attribute. For example, if you choose "Approved," all the dashboards will display data related to approved invoices.
To view the filters affecting the visual, you can access the Filters on Visual icon, which will show you a list of applied filters.
To remove all filters and refresh all dashboards, simply click anywhere outside the same graph you filtered on initially.
Hover over a bar and hold for a second to see the Drill through option to get a more detailed view of the data :
Select the Ellipses icon to Export any graph as a .xlsx or .csv file.
Easily sort, filter, view data as a table or graph, and delve into detailed reports to find the insights you require.
You can save the Spend reports as a PDF file to preserve the current report view. You also have the option to download all pages, merging data from Matters, Contracts, and Spend sections into a single PDF document.
Visit this page for more tips and tricks on how to work with your metrics: Navigation tips