KEY ADVANTAGES OF SERENGETI

Serengeti connects you with all of your firms, not just the largest ones
Serengeti does not impose charges on your law firms, which generally come back to you
Serengeti’s entire system costs less than what other vendors charge just for basic e-billing
Serengeti completely implements the world’s largest law departments in less than three months
Serengeti provides e-billing and matter management in a single system
Serengeti handles foreign currency bills, reporting, and user preferences
Serengeti is the most widely accepted e-billing platform among law firms, and is growing quickly, both in terms of users and new functions

Serengeti connects you with all of your firms, not just the largest ones

Many vendors can connect you only with your largest law firms because their systems require the generation of complex data formats, and they charge law firms large usage fees. As a result, they take many months or even years to connect only a minority of a company’s firms. Once implemented, they still require that the company maintain a separate system to process paper bills from smaller firms, and they can't produce complete reports that include all spending.

Companies on Serengeti generally connect all of their law firms regardless of size or location. The largest corporations with law department offices and firms around the world (such as Amazon.com and Alcatel Lucent) have been up and running in less than three months, from contract signing to complete implementation of all of their offices and firms worldwide. We can commit to a quick and complete implementation because: (1) our system is designed for ease of implementation, with no requirements that law firms customize their software to generate non-standard LEDES bills and other special data; (2) we can efficiently process non-LEDES billing formats such as Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, etc. (facilitating implementation of foreign and smaller law firms); and (3) we do not charge law firms to use Serengeti. If an efficient, low-risk implementation is a priority for you, then Serengeti is the best option.

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Serengeti does not impose charges on your law firms, which generally come back to you

Most e-billing vendors impose significant charges on your law firms for the privilege of sending in electronic bills (assuming they can generate the required outputs). These charges are generally $1,000-$3,500 per year or more per firm. Some vendors charge a percentage of the bills submitted by the firms, generally in the range of 1-2% of their billing, which can create huge costs for some firms. It is unrealistic to expect law firms to absorb all of these charges for a system they didn't select, or to spread them across their other clients that don't bill electronically; instead, they recover these costs from the clients who require them to use these systems.

Sometimes these charges are recovered explicitly as expenses on your bills; other times they are indirectly recovered through lower discounts, higher hourly rates, rounding up, etc. Therefore, when comparing pricing, it is prudent to determine what other vendors will charge your law firms, assume that any such charges will make their way back to you in some form at the end of the day, and include law firm charges in your total system cost. In order to accomplish complete implementations, and to make it easy for law departments to know exactly what the system will cost them, Serengeti has chosen not to charge law firms. Taking law firm charges into account, Serengeti costs significantly less than other comparable systems.

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Serengeti provides e-billing and matter management in a single system

Many vendors provide only e-billing or only matter management (and most matter management systems do not connect to law firms). Some systems claim to “integrate” with each other. This means that you are dealing with two different vendors, two sets of charges, two different systems for your users and law firms to learn, and limited interplay between the systems (along with potential finger pointing when problems arise).

Because Serengeti is a single system, there is complete integration of financial and matter management—not just limited sharing of selected information. For example, no other system allows you to require status updates, budgets, and liability estimates and enforces deadlines by holding firms' bills on that matter until they provide the required information. In-house counsel on Serengeti are enthusiastic about this unique tying together of matter management and e-billing, which ensures that companies have up-to-date information without having to repeatedly ask their law firms. In addition, integration means that reports include not only detailed spending data, but also current status, exposure estimates, and results achieved, all pulled from the different functions in Serengeti.

Training, system configuration maintenance, upgrades, and cost all involve much less time and expense with Serengeti than with multiple systems. The so-called “integrations” of other e-billing and matter management systems do not provide the clear advantages of having all legal management functions in a single system.

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Serengeti’s entire system costs less than what other vendors charge just for basic e-billing

Serengeti charges a fixed monthly fee to the law department, which is generally less than what most vendors charge a company and its law firms just for e-billing. The minimum term is only one year. During that term, there is a fixed monthly use charge that does not fluctuate due to changing numbers of users, amounts of bills put through the system, etc. Unlike other vendors, we do not charge law firms to use the system, because such charges often result in higher legal bills for the client.

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Serengeti completely implements the world’s largest law departments in less than three months

Unlike other systems that involve time-consuming, difficult implementations that drag on for many months or years, the average Serengeti implementation is ten weeks. This includes the upload of existing databases, system configuration, and training of in-house and law firm users. Training takes place by phone and is accomplished in only an hour.

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Serengeti handles foreign currency bills, reporting, and preferences

Unlike other systems, Serengeti has long been used by multi-national companies to process electronic bills from foreign firms and view financial data in any currency. In Serengeti, each user can choose a "Preferred Currency" for viewing financial information in the system. Once selected, all incoming bills, budgets, liability estimates, and reports are displayed in both the user's preferred currency and the original currency (if they are different).

For example, a lawyer in the Singapore office of a U.S.-based law department may want to see all bills and reports in Singapore dollars regardless of the denomination submitted by the firm (Japanese yen, Thai baht, etc). If needed, the lawyer can change their preferred currency at any time and all of the financial data will instantly change to the new currency. This data is also automatically displayed in U.S. dollars back at the home office in the United States.

In addition, each company can configure Serengeti to automatically match their accounting department's schedule for updating currency rates from the inter-banking exchange. This ensures that spending amounts in Serengeti and the AP system don't vary due to currency fluctuations.

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Serengeti is the most widely accepted e-billing platform among law firms, and is growing quickly, both in terms of users and new functions

With over law firms in more than countries, Serengeti maintains the largest e-billing network in the world. The new law departments joining Serengeti each month are finding that a vast majority of their law firms are already working on the system with other clients.

Serengeti also has more than in-house counsel using the system and sharing their best practices and suggestions for new functionality. In addition, we were chosen by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) to conduct an annual survey of their members, and to write a 160+ page report summarizing the latest techniques used by in-house counsel to manage their work with outside counsel. We incorporate all of this user feedback and survey data into useful new Serengeti features, including an average of two major upgrades per year (all of which are free to customers).

Our leadership, industry expertise, and close partnerships with clients have resulted in no law department ever leaving Serengeti to go to another system, but many have come to Serengeti from other systems. With our unique insights into what law departments are doing, Serengeti will continue to provide a cutting-edge system that evolves to meet the changing needs of the in-house profession, and the law firms that they manage.

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SELECTING A SYSTEM

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KEY ADVANTAGES OF SERENGETI

Serengeti connects you with all of your firms, not just the largest ones

Serengeti does not impose charges on your law firms, which generally come back to you

Serengeti provides e-billing and matter management in a single system

Serengeti’s entire system costs less than what other vendors charge just for basic e-billing

Serengeti completely implements the world’s largest law departments in less than three months

Serengeti handles foreign currency bills, reporting, and preferences

Serengeti is the most widely accepted e-billing platform among law firms, and is growing quickly, both in terms of users and new functions

SELECTING A SYSTEM

Sales materials and data sheets