What is CreditLex?
CreditLex is a secure, web-based clearinghouse for lawyers and law firms to view and report the payment histories of business clients. Does your new client have a history of paying lawyers as agreed?
CreditLex permits lawyers to make intelligent judgments about the creditworthiness of new or prospective clients before accepting a new engagement.
CreditLex Adds Immediate Value
CreditLex works in two ways - when an engagement starts and when it ends.
At the start of an engagement, clients will understand that failing to pay could lead to an adverse payment history with CreditLex. This helps level the playing field when a lawyer negotiates retainers and payment terms, allocating the payment risk with new and prospective clients. Clients who pay on time will enjoy the benefits of good credit, such as better terms and lower retainers. Clients who wish to maintain their reputation and standing in the legal community will have a strong incentive to pay their invoices on time.
At the end of an engagement, the lawyer decides if filing a report is appropriate. CreditLex gives you a meaningful, low-cost tool to address a client’s failure to pay, providing you with a real option instead of making empty demands for payment, threatening litigation, or writing off an unpaid balance.
CreditLex only needs to work once to provide meaningful value to a firm. Getting closer and closer to collecting 100% owed for an entire firm leads to higher end-of-year payouts for partners.
Using CreditLex
CreditLex is easy to use. Here's how:
Step 1: Subscribe to CreditLex by clicking here.
Step 2: Screen a new or potential client by clicking here (where is here?) and completing as many fields as possible. Review any "hits" for relevance and determine if you wish to accept the client. If you elect to proceed with the engagement, go to Step 3.
Step 3: At the inception of a non-consumer legal matter, have the client sign your firm's standard engagement letter that includes the CreditLex waiver. Subscribers can access waiver templates provided by CreditLex. (Non-subscribers seeking to report clients for matters pre-dating the subscription will not be permitted to file such reports). By having your client sign the waiver, your client is now on notice that failure to pay as agreed may follow them from law firm to law firm.
Step 4: After an engagement, you may elect to report former or current clients who pay as agreed by completing the appropriate fields. Concerning former clients who fail to pay as agreed, you may report such clients to CreditLex by completing as many fields as possible under "File A Report." If the former client disputes the debt, check the box "disputed," as your subscription agreement requires.
Step 5: Upon filing a report, the subscriber will receive a confirmatory email with a URL for the CreditLex site along with the pin number. The subscriber must send the URL and pin to the client, which will allow the client to review the report and mark it as "disputed" if the lawyer has failed to do so.
Step 6: Subscribers can edit, delete, or update filed reports.
Bar approvals for Credit Lex are attached here.