) to load the story into this menu for later reading
Uniform Task-Based Management System
Overview
The Uniform Task-Based Management System is a budgeting and billing system designed to provide clients and law firms with meaningful cost information on legal services. The first major area of legal work addressed by the System is litigation. This document presents the Litigation Code Set and definitions developed by a tripartite effort of the American Bar Association Section of Litigation, the American Corporate Counsel Association, and a group of major corporate clients and law firms coordinated and supported by Price Waterhouse LLP. The System enables lawyers to budget and bill by litigation task, aiding client and counsel in understanding, managing and conducting litigations. It is intended to cover all contested matters, including judicial litigation, binding arbitration and regulatory/administrative proceedings.
The goals of the Litigation Code Set are to:
- Enable client and counsel to plan and maintain an efficient and effective litigation.
- Facilitate effective communication of the tasks and costs of litigation and any variations from the expected or the norm.
- Provide each client and law firm with a means to individually understand and compare the cost of litigation, for greater efficiency and as a foundation for use of alternative billing arrangements.
- Harmonize the various task-based efforts to ease widespread adoption of a simple, concise and flexible task-based management approach.
The Litigation Code Set is grouped into five basic phases or aspects of a litigation, plus expenses:
- Case Assessment, Development and Administration
- Pre-Trial Pleadings and Motions
- Discovery
- Trial Preparation and Trial
- Appeal
Each phase consists of a number of tasks, such as Written Discovery, Document Production and Depositions. In total, 29 tasks comprise the Litigation Code Set.
All work associated with a task should be included in that category. For example, Depositions (L330) encompasses all time spent on depositions including deposition notices and subpoenas, deposition scheduling and logistics, planning for and preparing to take the depositions and any deposition summaries. The intent is to provide a true picture of the labor cost of each task. (Out-of pocket expenses, such as witness fees and transcripts, are treated under Expenses.)
For each billing period, the time charges by attorney or other professional are recorded by task. The System also allows for accumulation of the time charges, providing a comparison at a glance of the cost of each phase and each task for the month, for a specified budget period, and cumulatively for the litigation. Expenses can also be reported on a period and cumulative basis on request.
For those desiring, a budget can be prepared for each phase, and within that, each task for the whole case and/or by quarter (or other time period). The monthly bills would then compare that month's bill and the cumulative total with the budget.
The System also provides a long form for those wishing to capture the task-based work by specific activity. The activity identifies how the work is being performed (e.g., communicating in firm, researching, drafting, and reviewing). For this purpose, any or all of eleven activities can be used with any or all of the tasks of the System.
The intention of the Litigation Code Set is to minimize multiple interpretation and options for coding time. It is recognized that not all litigation work will fit neatly in a particular category. Work can overlap tasks, categories may be imprecise, or time may be expended on the truly unusual. Users should categorize the work to its primary purpose. Definitions are provided for guidance. Where uncertainty envelops substantial or repeating work, it is best for client and counsel to agree in advance on the category to be used.
It is important to understand the considerations that went into the development of consensus around a single standard. Therefore, following the definitions is a discussion of the background of this initiative, and the guiding principles and assumptions that informed the development of the Litigation Code Set.
