Managing Confidentiality When Paying Legal Invoices
A common challenge for in-house legal teams involves managing the flow of information when legal invoices are sent to accounts payable. These invoices often contain sensitive details – notes on litigation strategy, M&A activities, or employee matters – that are essential for legal review but may not be appropriate or necessary for AP processing.
Exposing this level of detail outside the legal department can raise concerns about confidentiality and attorney-client privilege. Yet, outside counsel needs to provide sufficient narrative for the legal team to validate the charges effectively. This puts legal teams in a difficult position.
The Limitations of Current Methods
Existing workarounds often fall short:
Manual Redaction: Team members spend valuable time manually redacting PDFs. This process is not only time-consuming but also carries the risk of inconsistency or human error.
Requesting Revised Invoices: Asking law firms to prepare separate, less detailed invoices for AP adds administrative burden and potential delays for both sides.
Given the workload pressures on in-house teams, these manual steps are frequently bypassed, meaning sensitive information often reaches AP systems where access controls might not be designed for legal confidentiality.
A New Capability Coming to Poppy Legal
At Poppy, we focus on practical solutions for the operational challenges faced by in-house teams. To help address the issue of invoice confidentiality, we are developing an upcoming feature for our legal spend management platform.
Poppy already streamlines your legal invoice management: ingesting PDF invoices, leveraging AI for faster review and analysis, and managing approvals. Soon, you'll be able to enhance the final step – forwarding invoices to AP – with intelligent, automated redaction.
How the Feature Works
The goal is straightforward control for the legal team:
Configuration: Within Poppy's settings, you will be able to define settings for automatic redaction.
Flexibility: Choose whether to redact detailed line-item narratives, matter names, or both, based on your team's requirements.
Automation: Once configured, Poppy will automatically apply these redactions to the version of the invoice forwarded to AP, directly from the platform. The original, unredacted invoice remains securely stored within Poppy for the legal team's records.
Practical Advantages for Your Team
This capability is designed to offer several benefits:
Reduces Manual Work: Frees up team members from the tedious task of manual redaction.
Supports Confidentiality: Helps protect sensitive or privileged information by limiting its exposure during the payment cycle.
Promotes Consistency: Ensures a standard approach to redaction based on rules set by the legal team.
Streamlines Information Flow: Provides AP with the necessary information for payment processing without extraneous sensitive details.
Maintains Original Records: Legal retains easy access to the complete, original invoice within the Poppy system.
Focused on Practical Solutions
This upcoming redaction tool reflects our ongoing commitment to providing functional, easy-to-use technology that helps in-house legal teams operate more efficiently and manage risk effectively. It's about addressing real-world workflow challenges with sensible solutions.