From intake to invoice: The new standard in Outside Counsel management
How do you bring structure, control, and extra value to something as complex as outside counsel management?
That’s what PERSUIT and Apperio set out to solve in their recent joint webinar.
If you missed it, here are the six biggest takeaways from the conversation between David Falstein (Head of Product, PERSUIT), Chris Perry (VP Sales, Apperio), and moderator Will Holman (Senior Manager, Legal Advisory, PERSUIT).
📺 Watch the full webinar recording
📘 See how clients use it: Case studies
#1. Align early and monitor continuously to fix the outside counsel disconnect
Outside counsel management often breaks down at the handover points: between scoping and spend tracking, between agreeing a fee and enforcing it. That’s the gap PERSUIT and Apperio are closing.
PERSUIT helps legal teams scope matters and agree on pricing upfront. Apperio builds on that by tracking spend as the work progresses. This enables teams to enforce fee structures, monitor deviations, and intervene before the invoice lands.
“People are trying to tackle something with their law firms that happened 90 days to 6 months in the past, and that's acutely painful both for law firms and for in-house teams,” said Chris Perry. “That kind of delay is generated by an upstream failure to align on value earlier in the process. And I think that's what we're looking at here as a really, really powerful approach in PERSUIT: is getting that alignment early on and then ensuring that things are on track with Apperio.”
He continued: “When you get those two things right, you solve a lot of the problems that we see emerging between in-house teams and the law firms that they work with.”
By combining both capabilities—early engagement and in-matter tracking—teams can bring more structure and speed to legal workflows. “You can track and report on spending by geography, department, and practice area,” Chris added. “This data then drives critical workflow processes throughout your organization: budget management, accruals, invoice review and approval. It's a fundamentally different, streamlined approach.”
#2. Without in-matter tracking, your agreed fees mean very little
Many teams still operate with disconnected tools: one to scope and agree fees, another to manage spend, and little visibility in between. That gap has long created friction between what was agreed upon and what actually gets delivered.
“Ultimately, you engage, you set your budget, and then you're off and running… and the question has always been, well, how do you know that the firm stuck to what they agreed to in PERSUIT?” said David Falstein.
While PERSUIT could push data into other systems via APIs, what was missing was visibility — the ability to track how firms were performing against those agreements in practice, especially when it came to phase-based AFAs.
“Starting to get into the visibility and enforcement and tracking of what you agree to in PERSUIT with your firms downstream has been a problem that we’ve… contemplated solving,” David added.
Traditional e-billing tools haven’t been built to solve this effectively. “Many of them aren’t set up for true AFA-based billing,” he explained. “You’ve got systems that don’t allow you to break down fees by phase. They don’t allow you to enforce by phase.”
Apperio gives legal teams a way to continuously monitor firm adherence to agreed fee terms long before the invoice lands. “Once you engage and set your budget in PERSUIT, we then will be able to seamlessly track and enforce how the firms are interacting with that AFA within Apperio, before they ever even submit an invoice,” said David.
#3. Stop reacting at invoice time. Spot fee drift as it happens
During the webinar, a poll showed most legal teams are still tracking outside counsel budgets in Excel and email. Some use tools like Apperio or e-billing platforms, but very few had an integrated approach.
David and Chris highlighted why e-billing systems struggle. “With a traditional e-billing solution, you're waiting for an invoice to come in. And then the firm's already billed you. And you're saying, ‘Hey, you know, 90 days ago you did something wrong.’ We don't think that's the right approach,” said David.
Instead, both platforms are working to solve the problem proactively by giving legal teams continuous spend visibility and early alerts.
“The second the firms start to enter time and start to deviate from what you've agreed to… even before they submit the invoice… we should flag that for you and give you a way to come to some sort of change in the agreement with that firm,” David explained.
Chris reinforced this move from reaction to prevention: “People are trying to tackle something with their law firms that happened 90 days, 6 months in the past… and that’s acutely painful… A lot of that friction is actually generated by an upstream failure to align on value earlier in the process.”
#4. When scope changes, visibility helps you stay in control
Scope drift is one of the most common (and costly) challenges in outside counsel management. It tends to happen not because of poor planning, but because legal work rarely follows a straight line.
“Things change. The scope changes, requirements change… what’s really critical then is that there’s a process for how clients adapt around those changes,” said Chris.
Apperio helps by making those shifts visible through continuously monitoring legal spend. As work deviates from the original plan, clients can see how it affects budget and scope, keep internal teams informed, and work with law firms to agree on changes before the invoice lands.
“You can keep that alignment with your finance team around what costs are likely to be. You can keep that alignment with your law firm about what work they’re doing and ultimately what you’re going to be paying for that work at the end of the day,” Chris added.
#5. Use historical data to drive strategy from day one
The benefit of Apperio isn’t limited to future matters. It also unlocks insights from years of historical legal spend, helping teams make smarter decisions from day one.
“Typically for new clients, we recommend we get 2 or 3 years of historical data uploaded, which gives you a really powerful starting point in Apperio… You can actually get that historical visibility really early on in the process, in a matter of one or two weeks,” said Chris.
He shared the story of one UK-based energy client: “They’ve been working with a law firm for 15 years… and it was brilliant for them. In Apperio, they were able to see way back to 15 years ago, when planning permission started for some of their new energy infrastructure.”
Chris also described how clients use this insight at board level. “Jason, General Counsel at Marex… will often bring up top matters by law firms so he can show, at board level: this is why we’re spending so many millions on great outside counsel advice because this is the project they’ve delivered for us, this is the last case they’ve just won for us, this is the acquisition they did for us.”
➡️ Keen to see more examples? Take a look at more client case studies
#6. Make smarter decisions without disrupting how firms work
One common concern for in-house teams is how quickly law firms can adapt to new systems. But implementation is fast, and firms are often enthusiastic participants.
“The reality is, most law firms already have time tracking,” said Chris. “They already have budget tracking. This is not new. Apperio is just taking that data and making it transparent to the client and making it useful for the client. The law firm doesn’t have to change anything they do.”
The platform is also free for law firms to use, which removes a major barrier to collaboration.
A brighter future for outside counsel management
The key message from the webinar was this: outside counsel management is no longer just about invoices. It’s about value. About visibility. And about managing relationships with the same discipline and insight as any other business-critical function.
By bringing together upfront engagement with real-time tracking, PERSUIT and Apperio are giving legal teams a smarter, more integrated way to manage spend (without the spreadsheet sprawl).
📺 Watch the full webinar
To hear more from the team and see the integration in action, catch the full session on demand:
👉 Watch the recording
Ready to see Outside Counsel management best practices in action? If you’re looking to bring more structure, clarity and control to your outside counsel management, we’d love to show you how the combined PERSUIT + Apperio platform works in practice. Book a demo with Apperio today.
Outside counsel management FAQs
Here are some of the questions participants asked during the webinar:
Will clients themselves do the tracking and forcing of work in progress, reviewing the invoicing, analyzing, spend, or will that be done by Apperio / PERSUIT?
There are tools within Apperio and PERSUIT to help you automate that process… So, AI invoice review provides smart alerts on matters where there's a deviation from what you're expecting, or an alert to warn you.
If a matter requires a bit more attention, the goal is to address the issue on the in-house team's side, and technology will enable that. So you've got the data from your law firms. You've got the ability to monitor and take action intelligently.
Is Apperio intended to run in parallel with an e-billing system, or work within the PERSUIT platform?
You can do both. Apperio has full billing capabilities. In fact, we’ve replaced traditional e-billing systems for some clients. We’ve seen teams come to us early in their e-billing journey who didn’t find the traditional model appealing, and they’ve found real value in using Apperio instead. But there are also options to use Apperio strategically alongside an existing e-billing system, running them in parallel.
If a client makes an amendment in an ongoing matter or scope of work, how does a law firm get notified? Do they get notified?
Right now, that capability isn’t live, but it’s on the roadmap. The vision is to give both clients and firms a shared, living document that evolves over the life of a matter. Today, firms already have access to the initial proposal in PERSUIT. The goal is to allow either side to suggest edits to that document, similar to tracked changes in Google Docs, creating a collaborative process for amending scope or terms. Once agreed, those changes would automatically flow into Apperio, updating the budget so that tracking continues seamlessly.
Are law firms reluctant to give Apperio access to their work-in-progress or pre-invoice time, since internal bill review often happens before the invoice is sent?
It’s a really common question and an important one. Actually, this is a problem we’re solving for both clients and law firms.
On the client side, teams want more visibility into their legal spend, and they’re spending too much time manually tracking costs, asking for updates, and requesting accruals.
On the law firm side, they’re often asked to report progress matter by matter or respond to ad hoc budget updates, which usually means using spreadsheets and duplicating effort.
What Apperio does is automate that whole process by using the data firms are already recording internally. Firms don’t have to change how they work — they just provide better transparency with less manual effort. That helps their clients, and it also solves internal BI challenges.
As for the review process itself, firms often conduct extensive internal reviews before invoices are sent out. But the proactive partners actually want to show that to their clients. They want them to see the judgment calls: what’s billable, what isn’t, and all the effort that may not get charged. Clients love that. It helps build trust, shows value, and provides a better understanding of what’s truly required to complete the work.
If clients can see work-in-progress (WIP) before it’s reviewed by the law firm, is there a risk of overreaction when something looks misaligned with the agreement? How does Apperio address that?
It’s a great question. In the UK and EMEA, most general counsels are quite familiar with WIP. They know it hasn’t been reviewed yet. However, in the US, where there is a heavier focus on e-billing, a more aggressive stance has traditionally been taken regarding invoice reviews, which can make this process feel more sensitive.
There are two important things to know here:
- Apperio gives law firms the controls they need to manage how and when visibility is shared with clients. They can be confident that the information is being presented appropriately.
- Even unreviewed WIP is incredibly valuable for clients. It gives them early insight into likely upcoming bills, simplifies accrual processes, and, importantly, it’s clearly marked in Apperio as unreviewed. You can always see what’s draft WIP and what’s actually moving toward being billed.
That transparency benefits both sides. A lot of invoice friction stems from mismatched expectations: what firms thought they were delivering versus what clients expected. The more aligned both sides are with the review process, the less administrative tension and back-and-forth there is at invoice time.