In-House Counsel

Multiple recipients of payments at each law firm retained, and the administrative costs to a department

By Rees Morrison

A very large financial institution wanted to know how many different payment destinations it was paying to the 40 law firms it paid the most. Although using Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, the institution nevertheless was shocked to discover that among those law firms there were nearly 400 different accounts being paid. An average of 10 per firm! Keeping up with all of them was a chore in itself that demand time and aggravation so the institution requested each firm to choose one payee source. If the law firm did not choose a single payee source, the institution told the firm that it would send all payments to whichever source had received the most money in the previous year.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on April 06, 2008 (boomark / email).