Lawyers Spend Way Too Much Time Dealing With Expenses
New product launch from AffiniPay/MyCase looks to address this problem.
Entering expenses might be the only task lawyers dread more than entering time. At least entering time involves reminiscing about actual legal work. Expenses involves corralling crumpled receipts for the Hilton room service burger you nabbed after a marathon deposition in Topeka and the box of pens you bought at Staples because the partner refuses to use anything but Pilot G2s. It’s a soul-crushing activity.
It can also be a financially crucial activity because every unremimbursed dollar comes out of the firm’s pocket.
And a time-consuming one. According to a study commissioned by AffiniPay, 89.6 percent of respondents reported spending more than 1 hour a month on expenses.
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The roughly 4 percent in the 20+ range also devote around 80 hours a month to seriously reevaluating their life choices while staring into the middle distance.
This morning, MyCase announced the impending launch of MyCase Smart Spend, an expense tracking feature that will eventually expand to all products in the AffiniPay universe. AffiniPayaverse? Whatever. MyCase Smart Spend bundles a corporate Visa card that feeds expense information directly to the firm’s MyCase dashboard.
With this new offering, the firm can issue physical or virtual cards to attorneys and staff, set spending limits, capture receipts, and add reimbursable expenses to client invoices.
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AffiniPay is partnering with Visa and Marqeta to bring this product to the large market of legal professionals. Marqeta is a global modern card issuing platform that enables embedded finance capabilities and is a trusted platform for building card programs that are dynamic, flexible and tailored to customer needs.
The description of the expense workflow couldn’t be more straightforward. An attorney makes a purchase (presumably within the set spending limit) and gets a text or email notification with all the purchase data and a link to provide additional expense information. Just jot down more detail, click a drop-down menu to provide a category, and even take a picture of the physical receipt if you want. Tie it to a client and matter number through MyCase and it just gets slapped on the next bill.
And, of course, the offering provides detailed analytics allowing the user to track spending in real time.
MyCase will offer a Beta release in Q2 with general availability slated for Q3. CASEPeer is on track for Q4 and LawPay for Q1 2025.
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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
