Serengeti Enhances Top-Rated System For Matter Management and Electronic Billing

Serengeti Tracker 7.0 Released to Over 30,000 Legal Professionals Worldwide

Bellevue, WA – October 31, 2005 – Serengeti Law today announced the release of Serengeti Tracker 7.0, which adds more than fifty new enhancements to its Web-based electronic billing and matter management system. The features in this release are available for immediate use without additional charge for the more than 30,000 in-house and outside counsel in over 125 countries who currently work together on Serengeti Tracker.

“Our 7.0 release adds unmatched flexibility to Tracker to handle the complexities of the world’s largest law departments, while preserving the ease of use that has made us the top-rated system for law departments of all sizes,” said Tom Melling, Serengeti’s Vice-President of Product Development. “We earn top grades from our customers by taking the time to understand their daily challenges, and then providing practical ways to streamline their work.”

Tracking Just the Information Needed
Different types of legal projects require the tracking of different types of data from multiple sources. Tracker 7.0 gives the client virtually unlimited options to specify the types of information that they want to track, to designate who is responsible for providing specific information, and to set deadlines for providing specific information. This allows large law departments with many different types of legal work to capture exactly the information that is most important to them for each type of project on the system.

For example, although FAS 5 loss contingency estimates are not needed in intellectual property filings, they may be critical in complex litigation for legally required financial disclosures. Therefore, in complex litigation the client can use Tracker to require a contingency estimate from outside counsel within a specified time period after commencement of the litigation. All such requirements are enforced with automatic alerts to those responsible, and ultimately by system refusal of billings if deadlines are not met. For the first time, law departments can tailor the collection of key information to the many specific types of work that they are handling, and automatically enforce their requirements to ensure that they have complete, reliable management reports.

Pulling Together Accurate Law Department Budgets (and Reforecasts)
An essential, but time-consuming activity for most law departments is the creation of the annual budget, predicting not only internal spending but also spending on outside counsel and other vendors. In addition, law departments must provide periodic reforecasting during the budget year to reflect actual performance against budget. In the past, these activities have required collecting spreadsheets assembled by various groups in the law department, and combining them into an overall budget, a cumbersome process that had to be repeated for reforecasts throughout the year.

Tracker 7.0 gives the law department one organized online workspace for quickly collecting budget forecasts from the various areas of the law department. The budget template automatically includes essential information already in the system, such as budgets submitted by outside counsel. The law department administrator can quickly review the budgets submitted, make adjustments, and secure agreement upon a final budget.

For reforecasting during the year, Tracker provides the actual spending history during the relevant periods, so that appropriate budget adjustments can be made if spending departs from the budget. With this additional functionality, Tracker 7.0 gives law departments efficient new ways to assemble budgets, to track budget performance, and to create reforecasts based upon actual results—giving law departments more complete budgets in less time.

Intellectual Property Tracking
Tracker 7.0 permits law departments who are managing high volumes of intellectual property filings (patents, trademarks, and copyrights) to track online not only key information about a filing and its status, but also associated budgets and spending. For example, in addition to tracking inventors, patent type, filing documents, status and other key information, electronic bills associated with the matter are automatically tracked against an approved budget. Phase-based budgets for patent matters permit companies to track and compare the cost of major activities associated with patent filings across multiple firms without the use of time-consuming billing codes.

Customizing Workflows; Creating New Efficiencies
Many of the enhancements in Serengeti 7.0 give law departments unprecedented flexibility to manage their legal work. For example, electronic bill reviewers can now add new reviewers to a specific bill on the fly if there are specific items in a bill that require approval by someone outside of the normal review process. In addition, many new efficiencies are possible with functions like matter cloning, which permits the quick creation of multiple similar matters in Tracker.

About Serengeti Law

Serengeti Law provides Serengeti Tracker, a web-based electronic invoicing and matter management service for law departments to work more efficiently with their law firms. Serengeti Tracker includes electronic bill auditing, online document and contract management, automated budget management, and performance tracking. In-house counsel can also create customized management reports online to analyze trends in spending, track budgets and results, and create performance benchmarks. With only an Internet connection and an hour of training, more than 5,000 in-house counsel are able to work online with all of their law firms, including over 25,000 outside counsel more than 125 countries. More information is available at: www.serengetilaw.com.

Press Contact:
Rob Thomas
Vice-President, Strategic Development
Serengeti Law
(425) 732-5555
rob.thomas@serengetilaw.com

■ top