LEDES 1998b is an electronic invoice format used throughout the legal profession. Law firms and insurance companies alike produce and process LEDES invoices, and big-name billing software like QuickBooks is LEDES-compatible. MerusCase can also produce LEDES invoices from time users bill in cases, enabling invoices to be created, sent, and reconciled without having to switch to another billing application.

Specific case fields in MerusCase correspond MOSTLY one-to-one with LEDES fields, and we also provide some extra fallback matching if fields in MerusCase are left empty. For example, the CLIENT_ID column in a LEDES invoice will pull data from the Electronic Billing ID field set in one of the case parties in Merus...but if that field is empty, then it'll pull from the Carrier Billing Identifier field in Injuries, then it'll pull from the unique contact ID number for the bill-to party in the case, and then it'll pull from the case's unique ID number. While putting data where LEDES specifies, we observe other parts of the LEDES specification, such as per-field formatting and length restrictions.

Once a LEDES invoice is sent off to, say, an insurance carrier's billing department, they typically process it through their billing software. LEDES invoices specify certain formats of content within certain column names, but the actual desired content of the columns can vary from carrier to carrier. Fields like LINE_ITEM_EXPENSE_CODE and INVOICE_DATE are pretty explicit, but one carrier might ask for the case name in INVOICE_DESCRIPTION, while another might request a special identifier in the same place. Since these invoice processing details vary, successful invoice processing depends a great deal on how well carries document their invoice requirements and communicate those requirements to their client firms.

As an example, one of our clients found that their carrier had rejected their invoice for a certain column, INVOICE_DESCRIPTION, being blank and lacking required information. The carrier's documentation didn't go in to any more detail, but their technical support was able to shed some more light on what they wanted to see there (case caption followed by claim number). Armed with this information, the client came to us asking where to enter information in a case for it to populate in the INVOICE_DESCRIPTION column of their LEDES invoice. Due to the specificity of the client's request, we were quickly able to point them to the matching field in MerusCase.