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Tech-Savvy Companies Leverage Datacert Solutions to Enforce Alternative Fee Arrangements in Response to Tough Economic Times

The Home Depot uses the Datacert Advanced Invoice Management System to enable cost-effective fee arrangements

HOUSTON, April 13, 2009 – Datacert, Inc., the leading global provider of legal operations management solutions, is driving the effort to enable Fortune 500 companies to respond to the current challenging economy by providing their corporate legal departments with solutions to establish, enforce, and report on alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) with their outside counsel.

With the current state of the economy, more and more corporate legal departments are embracing AFAs, such as contingency/success fees, retainer fees, ceiling fees, etc., as part of creative new strategies to reduce outside counsel spend and control costs. While these types of arrangements can indeed be cost-saving alternatives to the hourly billing rate, without the right technology in place, AFAs can prove difficult to enforce, their value can be hard to measure, and they can diminish the legal department’s ability to fully analyze and understand the value provided by its outside counsel firms.

Datacert’s core solutions, Advanced Invoice Management System (AIMS^®), a legal spend management solution, and Corporate Legal Desktop (CLD^®), a fully-integrated matter and legal spend management solution, are each being used by Fortune 500 legal departments, like The Home Depot’s, to support and enforce diverse alternative fee arrangements.

"Without AIMS we would have no way to validate the savings from the alternative fees arrangements," noted Libby Troughton, senior manager, legal IT, The Home Depot. "We get the cost-savings of a flat-fee without losing the valuable detail captured in a normal AIMS invoice."

With the introduction of AFAs, Troughton was challenged to quantify the specific savings resulting from the use of AFAs, justify the AFA program to senior management, and ensure that her department’s attorneys had continued access to detailed data regarding outside counsel’s management and staffing of matters. Using the technology provided by the Datacert AIMS solution, Troughton has been able to successfully achieve each of these objectives.

"Datacert recognizes that our customers are increasingly seeking new billing strategies to manage costs," stated Mark Poag, general counsel and senior vice president, marketing, Datacert. "The Home Depot is one of many Datacert customers that leverage our advanced rules engine and industry-leading legal spend management solutions to implement and enforce a variety of sophisticated AFAs."

To read the complete case study regarding The Home Depot’s use of AIMS to implement AFAs, please visit www.datacert.com/Resources/Success_Stories_HomeDepot.asp.

About Datacert, Inc.

Datacert is the leading global provider of software and services for the legal industry. Offerings include its technology platform, Passport, and legal and IP spend and matter management software and services. Clients look to Datacert solutions to strategically manage their departments, reduce legal costs, and optimize operational efficiencies. Datacert has law firm, vendor, and agent connections in more than 150 countries and its customers include 71 Fortune^® 500 corporations, 53 Global Fortune^® 500 corporations, and 100% of the AmLaw 200. Visit www.datacert.com for more information and follow us on Twitter for real-time updates http://twitter.com/Datacert.
 

About The Home Depot

The Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer, with 2,278 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces, Mexico and China. In fiscal 2008, The Home Depot had sales of $71.3 billion and earnings from continuing operations of $2.3 billion. The Company employs more than 300,000 associates. The Home Depot's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: HD) and is included in the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 index.