The LEDES Oversight Committee is pleased to announce the ratification of a new Mergers and Acquisitions UTBMS code set.
The new code set was originally proposed by a task force on legal project management within the ABA M&A Committee in 2015.
The final code set ratified by the Board of the LEDES Oversight Committee in February 2016 represents a joint effort between the ABA M&A task force and the LOC M&A UTBMS Standards Development Subcommittee and includes input from law firms, corporate legal departments, legal technology vendors, and consulting firms around the world.
The codes are available here.
Interesting to see this new M&A code set. Just wondering where this leaves the “P” Project code set (i.e.the revised LOC Project code set as ratified in 2007?) As many LOC members will recall this code set was defined to meet the needs of all project/transactional work (incl. M&A work) as this type of work – as undertaken by many of the large international firms was not covered by any UTMBS codes at the time. The Project codes were designed to be a generic, simple to use set – at a mainly phase level – as it was considered that any further breakdown of the work would be counter-productive. Look forward to seeing how the new M&A set is received.
In the last four years the LOC has been contacted by several legal organizations that are either interested in working with us to create new UTBMS code sets or that have created a code set they would like the LOC to review and endorse. We forsee the number of UTBMS code standards to continue to increase as the use of BI increases.
It is worthwhile to point out that we continue to see articles in the UK about the “declining” use of UTBMS in legal ebilling. This is not representative of our experience. If anything, use of BI has increased the focus on how different types of matters should be considered, hence more types of UTBMS codes.
As for the Revised Project Code Set being usurped by the new M&A Code Set, clients still need to require use of the codes. It will be interesting to see whether global clients want the specific categorization afforded by the new codes, or whether the uniformity and ease of use provided by the Revised Project Codes wins out. We also look forward to seeing what the future brings.
Many thanks Jane. As a UK based e-billing consultant I agree that in practice the use of UTBMS codes has not declined and I find that many clients are requesting that their outside counsel still use them. I note your comments about the new M&A code set vis-a-vis the 2007 Project code set – and also look forward to seeing what transpires!