Serengeti Tracker is the top rated and most widely used system for matter management and e-billing among both corporations and law firms.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
E-billing: Serengeti accepts legal invoices in the industry standard LEDES format common in the U.S., as well as non-LEDES formats such as Microsoft Word and PDF from firms outside the U.S. This flexibility ensures that a company can connect with all of its law firms—international and domestic, large and small.
Invoice Auditing and Approval: With Serengeti invoice auditing tools, companies can easily enforce timekeeper rates, expense compliance, and other billing guidelines. Invoices are automatically routed to pre-determined approvers (including approval authority thresholds), and other approvers can be added ad-hoc.
Currency Conversion and VAT: Individual users set their preferred currency, in which all financials are displayed, and any other currencies in bills, budgets, etc. are automatically converted. For international legal bills, value-added and other taxes are tracked separately.
Budgeting: Companies can require law firms to submit budgets, and if a required budget is overdue, then the firm’s bills are held until the budget is provided. The system provides automatic spending-to-budget comparisons, and it can produce over-budget spending alerts for month, fiscal year, life of matter, or phase. In addition, companies can create and track separate internal departmental budgets.
Accruals for unbilled time: The accruals module in Serengeti provides an integrated, efficient, and auditable process for collecting accrual data online from law firms (work in progress, unbilled amounts, and estimates of spending through the end of the accounting period) and sending it to your company's finance department.
MATTER MANAGEMENT
Customizable Information Tracking: Each user’s dashboard shows alerts of key developments and upcoming deadlines. Users can customize the information that is tracked for different types of projects.
Matter Templates: Companies can create custom matter templates to ensure that when a new matter is created, the correct information is entered and tracked by the law department and any firms involved. For example, IP-specific templates can include fields for filing dates, inventors, status, etc., while litigation templates can include FAS 5 contingency exposure tracking.
Enforcement of requirements: If a company chooses to make certain information required from its outside counsel (case plans, budgets, periodic status updates, etc.), then Serengeti’s patented technology ensures that the required information is kept up-to-date. Law firm bills are not processed for payment until after the system has confirmed that all required information has been provided.
Calendaring: Users can opt for automated email reminders, and the system integrates with Outlook and Lotus Notes. There is also a master calendar that can be used by individuals or practice groups.
Contract and Document management
Collaboration: Request that others review documents and set dashboard alerts and send automatic email requests.
Collect and store key information about contracts: Store drafts, notices, correspondence and amendments in organized, searchable folders. Collect key data about parties, terms, renewals, notices, etc., all of which are searchable and reportable.
Dates and events notifications: Set notifications for key dates and events, such as renewals and deadlines.
REPORTING AND TRENDING
Produce reports that analyze budgets and spending, summarize key information, and identify developing trends. Serengeti provides hundreds of pre-configured reports with easy-to-use filters, including one-click drill-down reporting for additional detail and trend analysis that shows changes over time. Users can also create custom reports and save the criteria so that periodic reports can be generated quickly.
Serengeti Law produces Serengeti Tracker, the industry’s highest rated and most widely used system for matter management and electronic billing. Tracker is our only service, and it has earned unprecedented acceptance for a new technology in the legal profession. Since its release in the fall of 2001, over 110,000 in-house counsel and outside firm users in more than 180 countries have come together to work on Serengeti. Unlike most legal technology vendors, we are wholly owned by our employees, have no debt, and are not controlled by a parent company or outside investors who could disrupt funding or distract us from our mission to continue to provide the world’s best system for the management of legal work.
When we set out to develop the profession’s first collaborative matter management and e-billing platform for both law departments and law firms, we searched for a name that reflected a vibrant and inter-connected community. The Serengeti plains in Africa, with their constant activity, diverse array of wildlife, and dynamic landscapes invoked these images and ideas. Along the way, we've enjoyed working with legal professionals from around the world, many of whom share our fascination with the Serengeti and its wildlife.
For more information, visit www.serengetilaw.com
