Alan Dershowitz, a law professor at Harvard, said: 'I don't think innovation has been one of the main qualities of giant law firms. This is something they had to be nudged to do.' But, when asked if organisations such as Viewabill - a cloud-based legal billing comparison system - will drive down bills, the professor said: 'It's hard to know. The impact on legal cost is hard to measure.' He emphasises the creation of 'better relations between lawyers and clients' as a result of this kind of system. He said: 'The greatest tension lawyers and clients have is over billing. This eliminates all of those problems.'

Shift of obligation

Instead of lawyers being told weeks after the event that they clocked up too much time, the system gives real-time information on how the legal costs are developing. Professor Dershowitz added: 'This shifts the obligation to monitor what is going on [in the bill] from the lawyer to the client'.