A leading liquidity provider had doubts about how much one of their law firms were charging. Find out how their use of Apperio led to trusting relationships with their law firms and how they identified savings on their legal budget worth 3x the value of their contract with Apperio.
The Challenge
It’s no secret in any business that legal spending can be opaque, untimely and require a lot of bureaucracy. For this particular client, the problem needed a fresh approach, provided by Apperio. With operations across numerous asset classes and hundreds of billions of dollars in daily volume, staying on top of rapid changes is part of the business. So when this isn’t reflected in the budgetary relationship with legal firms, things can become complicated. From the untimely submission of invoices to doubts as to the cost breakdown of services, the client was unhappy with the lack of visibility they had over their legal spend.
In one example, the client cited that a fee estimate hadn’t been agreed before a project started. When the billing arrived, it seemed disproportionate to the work undertaken.
After onboarding Apperio, these problems were mitigated.
The Solution
Apperio’s legal spend tracking software enabled the client to have a transparent conversation with their legal firm and reach a mutually-satisfactory understanding. They could at once control legal billing and simultaneously improve the efficiency of the relationship.
As well as empowering the client to query the spend, the law firm could also offer a transparency to their billing that they were unable to provide previously.
But it didn’t stop with budget tracking. The client offered suggestions as to customisation options to Apperio which were implemented, creating things like budget notifications and helping the business to take ownership of the product they were using.
The Results
The win-win nature of Apperio was summed up by the client, who told us that they have identified savings on their legal budget worth 3x the value of the contract with Apperio. A key benefit is visibility across the entire legal spend, with the client saying that they hadn’t realised how interconnected some of their legal firms were.
They liked how speedy the onboarding process was for their law firms, getting the ball rolling quickly and effectively, and helping them take control of an area that had often seemed distant and changeable.
Bringing clarity and confidence to in-house legal teams
This is empowering for businesses and legal firms alike: a relationship with transparency is a relationship with trust. But whether it’s deepening the understanding of a legal budget or just keeping an eye on things in real time, Apperio have helped this client streamline a crucial area of their business.