26 Apr 2021

DaHui Lawyers contributes to localization of LEDES UTBMS billing codes for legal services in China

In a milestone for international legal services, the unified billing codes - so long standard in the United States – are now ready for effective use in the market for Chinese legal services, due in part to the contribution of MSI's Chinese law member DaHui Lawyers.

Compared with the rest of the world, billing for legal services has achieved higher levels of transparency and efficiency in the United States and a few other jurisdictions, thanks in large to the LEDES Uniform Task-Based Management System (“UTBMS”). China’s billing practices have not kept pace, in volume and quality, with the development of the legal services offered by China-based firms. Neither the UTBMS, which has until now been available in English only, nor any other system of billing codes has been widely adopted in China. DaHui Lawyers, one of the first PRC firms to have fully adopted the UTBMS and developed a billing system that connects seamlessly with the major e-billing platforms, recently worked with the LEDES Oversight Committee (“LOC”) to translate the code sets into Chinese and harmonize the LEDES system with PRC law and practice. It is hoped that this will be a step towards not only raising the bar for Chinese billing practices to rival the most advanced jurisdictions and comport with China’s own legal practice, but also to promote the further internationalization of the UTBMS, now to be converted into Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, French, and Italian.

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