A Primer on the Bottomline Legal Exchange: An In-Depth Overview

What Is Bottomline Legal Exchange?

The Bottomline Legal Exchange is a listing of Web-based application service providers (ASPs) that specifically meet the operational needs of law firms and legal departments. The Bottomline Legal Exchange offers a co-branded Web site where law firms can find solutions to their back office operations (practice management, time and billing, etc.) as well as any other need an enterprise or business professional may have: client relationship management, document & records management, case management, and matter management.
"For every area of a law firm, there is someone out there developing a solution," said Todd Frey, Bottomline’s general manager for Legal Solutions. "When you look at it that way, the Bottomline Legal Exchange is a pretty powerful offering."
The Bottomline Legal Exchange offers exactly what you would expect to see on a traditional marketplace where buyers and sellers transact for goods and services, so if you’re looking for a new practice management application, you can see screen shots, read case studies, and download product sheets for the solution that’s right for you, all before you actually try it out.
"We provide a single source where you can go and compare multiple vendors, all equally ranked with no favoritism or prejudice," added Frey. "We are not here to sell them, we are really here to sell you (law firms) and make it easy for you."
Bottomline Legal Exchange also offers free demos of many of the applications as well as the opportunity to read customer success stories about how law firms have implemented some of the applications. Some of the applications on the Bottomline Legal Exchange are offered on a subscription basis, while others have a one-time fee for set up and a recurring monthly fee. Some of the applications require a two year commitment as well .
The Bottomline Legal Exchange is an online solution, which means that there is no software to buy, install, or maintain. However, Bottomline does offer ASP (application service provider) services, so that attorneys and firms can use their existing systems as they want.
"It’s really a full menu service," said Frey. "That’s the great thing about the Bottomline Legal Exchange – it’s just that, it’s a marketplace. We are really capturing the big systems for the bigger firms and the smaller firms for the smaller systems. We allow enterprises to jump into the same marketplace with the big players."
By offering products from other providers, Bottomline hopes to expand its current customer base, which consists primarily of corporations. Many corporate customers are large legal departments for fortune 500 companies that hire outside counsel and buy their software packages, while other corporations use Bottomline’s technology for other portions of their business.
"Bottomline Legal Exchange really helps us target the 30,000-plus law firms in the U.S. that have a client base that requires that they invest in technology," said Frey. "Out of those firms, we believe that there is an untapped market of 100,000 attorneys who will be looking for technology services over the next few years."
The Bottomline Legal Exchange is open to all vendors, regardless of whether they already work with Bottomline Technologies.
"The Bottomline Legal Exchange doesn’t prevent anyone from partnering with us in the future or vice versa," said Frey. "If you’re already a partner with us, you can certainly continue to do that, and if you’re not a partner, you can choose to become one."
Bottomline Legal Exchange is intended to be the first technology marketplace for the legal industry.

What’s In It for Legal Professionals?

For legal professionals, the Bottomline Legal Exchange boosts workflow efficiency, drives optimal billing practices, and ensures the highest compliance standards. With Bottomline’s cutting-edge eBilling technology, law firms can seamlessly manage billing guidelines and processes. The Bottomline Legal Exchange facilitates invoice review, allocation of time and expenses, and tracking of credits — all with greater accuracy and more thorough detail than was ever possible before. The ability to digitally manage billing activities across the entire firm is a major benefit for law firms that embrace the Bottomline Legal Exchange. Attorneys can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time focusing on the practice of law. In fact, according to Bottomline, some firms report that by using the Bottomline Legal Exchange, their timekeepers are able to complete the billing process in as little as 15 minutes. The Bottomline Legal Exchange provides compliance and security that lawyers and law firms have come to expect. The platform is ISO 9001 and 27001 certified, which means that they meet the process and information management standards set forth by the International Organization for Standardization.

How It Works to Simplify Legal Processes

The Bottomline Legal Exchange helps to automate and optimize the entire legal function by streamlining the collection, analysis, and reporting of legal work. With numerous automations across critical legal functions, the Bottomline Legal Exchange suits both legal departments and law firms.
By automating many routine tasks, Bottomline Legal Exchange allows for corporate legal departments to run more efficiently. Specifically, Bottomline Legal Exchange provides automations at the following legal workflows:
In each of these workflows, Bottomline Legal Exchange integrates with the existing systems of clients or the law firm, so it’s easy to implement. In addition, the Bottomline Legal Exchange integrates with current accounting, Matter Management, and DMS systems to provide matter specific spend insights.
The Bottomline Legal Exchange supports corporate counsel and law firms through streamlining, centralizing, and automating the data collection and reporting process. Both corporate counsel and law firms can easily analyze outside counsel data and automate regular reports used for:
The Bottomline Legal Exchange is flexible and can be nurtured into a company’s existing system. As such, tailoring its capabilities to fit the needs of the business can help to streamline processes and reduce costs.

Security and Compliance in Bottomline Legal Exchange

The Bottomline Legal Exchange is underpinned by military-grade security certifications, including standards such as PCI (Payment Card Industry), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and SSAE (Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements). These industry standards reassure buyers that they are choosing software that is both secure and compliant.
Encryption technology safeguards data in transit and at rest against the current wave of cybercrime. The Bottomline Legal Exchange also protects sensitive data against malicious attacks using SSL encryption technology and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) for data storage.
User permissions are designed to proactively protect against audit issues, with configurable user roles to restrict user access to sensitive data. The Bottomline Legal Exchange enables the management of users’ roles and access rights to documents, forms and other securities.
To avoid the risk of unauthorized users having access to documents, the Bottomline Legal Exchange also uses a digital vault where all user credentials and sensitive personal information are securely stored. All password details are encrypted, and in the event of a cyber-attack, hackers will be unable to view password details. All stored data is encrypted using AES-256 encryption and constantly protected by multiple firewalls and intrusion detection systems.
When sharing information with third-party services that have no privacy assurance, the Bottomline Legal Exchange strengthens the layer of security and privacy with an Enterprise Paste system. With Enterprise Paste, sensitive data is encrypted at the user’s machine, so even if third-party services are compromised, the information is of no value.

The User Experience and Interface

The Bottomline Legal Exchange offers an intuitive interface, with user experience at the forefront of its design. Upon logging into the platform, users are met with a user-friendly overview screen that provides essential details such as tasks, important deadlines, and open transmittals, all in one place. This central dashboard allows firms to prioritize their activities and navigate the system with ease.
The platform’s dashboard is customizable, allowing users to modify the layout and content according to their practice’s specific requirements. Administrators can manage user roles and permissions, ensuring that the right individuals have access to vital information and can perform necessary functions. This flexibility caters to diverse practice areas and jurisdictions, accommodating the varying needs and workflows of ediscovery lawyers , case managers, financial assistants, and other team members.
One of the standout features of the Bottomline Legal Exchange is the seamless integration of electronic billing tools, file sharing capabilities, and collaborative tasks. These functionalities are easily accessible from the dashboard, making it simple to manage documents, communicate with clients, and collaborate across teams without jumping between programs or interfaces. This streamlining of processes minimizes the risk of errors and enhances productivity.
The Bottomline Legal Exchange also offers help sections and video tutorials, which guide users through the platform and help them adjust to the new system. Overall, the Bottomline Legal Exchange prioritizes the end-user experience, delivering a platform that is both functional and easy to navigate.

Bottomline Legal Exchange vs The Competition

When evaluating the various options for meeting law firms’ e-billing and LEDES invoicing needs, Bottomline Legal Exchange is one of several choices. Here we present a brief comparison with some of its leading alternatives.
When discussing Bottomline Legal Exchange in the context of alternatives, it is important to understand exactly what type of solution this tool is and to help qualify it appropriately against the other solutions that are available on the marketplace. So the question that I would usually ask clients or prospects is what do they want to do? So within the whole space that you can describe called matter management, just to use one space, we know that there are solutions – or to be really accurate, there are tools – that are scanning the firm e-bill; in other words, they read the file as you would with your eyeball. There are systems that do that. Does that meet certain clients’ needs? Yes, it does. It meets the needs of some clients. It doesn’t meet the needs of some other clients. You can buy generic online access to LEDES invoices from the big clearinghouses – you know who I’m talking about – and that’s pretty much all that you get. Does that meet other clients’ needs? Yeah. It meets the needs of some clients. It doesn’t meet the needs of some other clients. And then becomes the third wheel in this discussion, you have the hosted e-billing and LEDES invoice solution, which typically means that you’re either paying a monthly cost or you’re paying a monthly cost plus a per invoice charge or a per invoice and user charge, and you have access to a range of features that allows you to do quite quickly what you intended when you started down that process. So there’s a sentence long qualification of what Bottomline Legal Exchange is, namely an alternative to some of these systems in two areas: LEDES invoicing and e-billing submission.

How to Implement Bottomline Legal Exchange In Your Law Firm

Integrating the Bottomline Legal Exchange into your Firm
As with any new technology, a carefully planned deployment strategy is necessary to ensure that the Bottomline Legal Exchange is implemented efficiently, with minimal disruption to your business.
In terms of integration with existing systems, Bottomline makes it easy to connect by providing two options. If you are using a matter management system other than PCLaw or Timeslips, it can be integrated using web services APIs. Alternatively, Bottomline can create a custom integration for you.
You may want to have Bottomline assist you with registration for your firm. This means that your firm would not need to do any heavy lifting in this area, as Bottomline can automate the process of issuing LawPay accounts, client email addresses, and file folders.
We have been impressed with Bottomline’s responsiveness to customer needs while we have worked with them to create the Bottomline Legal Exchange. We find them very open to constructive feedback and suggestions for improvements of their products and services. We have certainly seen this in action since Bottomline acquired CheckSoft in 2016. There is also plenty of materials available from Bottomline for all of their solutions, including their professional resources page (which is thoughtfully provided by Bottomline for partners like us), and what are increasingly comprehensive FAQs for Bottomline Legal Exchange.
With regard to staff training, this can be customized into a learning track ranging from beginner to advanced for all levels of users. This helps ensure that every employee gets the most out of the platform. There is also good improvement in the user experience here, as the platform has a clear layout that organizes tasks and applications into relevant folders, and provides easy-to-access context-sensitive help when hovering over the "i" icon next to any task. For example, hovering over the "i" next to "Request Trust Payments" would provide an overview of how trust is handled in the exchange, with links to further information.
All of this makes it fairly simple to implement Bottomline Legal Exchange in your firm, and transition it into a central part of your everyday business. There is no need for a massive software upgrade or major infrastructure changes – you can even access the exchange from a web browser on your phone.

Conclusion: The Next Generation of Legal Tech

In addition to offering immediate tangible benefits, tools like Bottomline Legal Exchange can have a net positive even on general counsel’s legal spend, given the expected efficiencies and improved negotiations they promise. It may be assumed that as this tool becomes more widely adopted, legal fees will drop, resulting in cost savings for corporate clients.
And that is just the beginning. With the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, these tools are only going to get smarter and better. AI could be used to track negotiation history, and analyze the results of thousands of similar contract negotiations in order to make more educated suggestions to those on the front lines.
"With current developments, you’re not far off from having a ‘do this and don’t do that’ (type of) feature or function," Hammer says. "It is not years away."
The existing version of Bottomline Legal Exchange already promises to save multiple hours by allowing lawyer-to-lawyer communication. Over the next few years, though, Hammer believes we’re going to see financial tools become more and more integrated into the decision-making process.
"Lawyers are already talking about time-savers and trying to get to a place where they measure their efficiencies," says Hammer. "The next step is putting a value to it; we’re looking at return on investment… Whether you’re the client or the law firm, how much time will this save me? What additional value can I get from this?"
As AI improves in its ability to analyze and respond to data, these tools will be able to make predictions about long term legal benefits, and provide even more foresight when it comes to determining the exact value of any legal step.
Bottomline Legal Exchange is just one tool at our disposal during this new period of disruption for the legal market. This period of rapid development and innovation is sure to have a transformative effect on the industry over the next few years, eventually leading to the types of efficiencies and cost savings that corporate clients crave.
But this is just one step. The future of legal tech won’t be founded on just automating existing processes. Instead , it will be managed by a new set of tools that can analyze and interpret existing data, and best advise lawyers and corporate clients alike on how to approach complex issues and processes. These tools will allow us to do things faster, and better, in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before.
The private markets might treat this like every other period of disruption, and expect that it will pass in a few years, and we’ll eventually return to business as usual. But the reality is that this time, things won’t go back to the way they used to be.
There’s a growing advantage to be found on the public side of the market, especially as private parties start to take advantage of the tools available through public markets. In an era when we’ve seen the IPO window shut on large companies, it’s worth remembering that many of these tools will be available to both larger and smaller companies.
And if you’re using them, then the person next door to you should be using them, too.
Everybody has access to the same tools. And once everybody has used them, they’ve become commodities too, and won’t drive any increased value to your business. Now is the time to act.
"Be a leader in adopting these tools now, instead of being a laggard," Hammer says. "There are so many opportunities out there… the reality of effective business now requires adapting to the changes and being on top of the market."
Acting fast is important because the capacity of these tools to transform the market is actually beginning to be realized. We all saw this transformation coming; now it’s happening. As a mature industry goes through its change, the public markets want to grab as much early value as it can, and increase its differentiation as much as it can, before everyone else catches on. Early adopters will still see the greatest returns on investment. If you’re a law firm right now, or a corporate client, you’ve waited long enough. Now is the time to use these tools, to invest in legal technology. Tomorrow may be too late.