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Budgets

Law Firm Budget Formats | Fiscal Year and Phased

Tracker provides two preset budget formats for law firm matter budgets:
  • Fiscal-year budgets, which can be broken down monthly, quarterly, or annually
  • Phased budgets, which are broken down into phases specific to patent or litigation matters

Choosing between a fiscal-year budget and a phased budget

The type of budget format for a matter—fiscal-year or phased— is determined by the configuration of the matter template. However, company users with appropriate permissions can change the budget format for an individual matter when the matter is created or at any time during the life of the matter.
This table compares the features of a fiscal-year budget and a phased budget (whether litigation or patent).
Feature
Fiscal-Year Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual
Phased Budget (Litigation or Patent)
Type of Matter
Can be selected for all matter types.
Should be selected only when appropriate for the matter type (in other words, the phased patent format should be selected for patent prosecution matters).
Budget View
There is little difference between the budget views.
N/A
Editing Budget
When you create or edit a budget, you must enter both a total matter budget and a breakdown for each time period (month or quarter).
When you create or edit a budget, you must enter all phases of the budget. For more information, see All Budgets: Creating and Editing. Note: Secondary (non-lead) firms never enter phased budgets. They are always required to enter fiscal-year budgets.
Phased litigation budget format
This format contains the following phases:
  • Initial Case Assessment and Handling: May include fact investigation, case evaluation, initial pleadings/motions, and settlement.
  • Discovery and Post Discovery Motions: May include written discovery, document production, depositions, expert discovery, discovery motions, dispositive motions, and settlement/ADR.
  • Trial Preparation: May include preparation of fact witnesses and expert witnesses, trial motions and submissions, and settlement/ADR.
  • Trial and Post-Trial Motions
  • Appeal
These phases are structured chronologically—each phase is identified through a designated month. The number of phases can't be modified, but the description of activities for each phase can.
Phased patent budget format
This format contains the following phases:
  • Preparation: Review of the disclosure, interview with inventors, preparation of application and filing papers, drafting of formal drawings, drafting of claims, etc. Includes filing expenses.
  • Waiting period for Office Actions: Filing an IDS, Replying to Notice of Missing Parts, Filing Assignments, etc.
  • Prosecution: Replying to one or more Office Actions, drafting claim amendments, examiner interviews, answering restriction requirements, appeal before BPAI, etc.
  • Post Allowance: Review of allowed claims for continuation determination, file wrapper clean-up, reviewing issued patent, filing request for Certificate of Correction, ordering copies of patent, citations of prior art, etc.
  • Maintenance and Annuities: Payment of annuity amounts.
These phases are structured chronologically (i.e. each phase is identified through a designated month). The number of phases, and the description of the activities in each phase, can be modified.

Changing a matter's budget format

You can change the budget format for an existing matter.
Important:
 If you change the format from fiscal-year to a phased budget, all budget data will be deleted because it is not technically possible to convert the data. If the change is from phased to fiscal-year, there is no loss in data because phased budgets use straight-line averaging.
  1. Open the relevant matter to the Profile page.
  2. Click the
    Edit Options
     tool bar button.
  3. Under
    Law Firm Matter Budget Options
    , for
    Law Firm Matter Budget Type
    , select the appropriate budget format.
  4. On the toolbar, select
    Save & close
    .
Phased budget straight-line averaging
Whenever you save a phased budget, Tracker actually uses a straight-line average to save the budget in a monthly format.
Example
Assume you created the following phased patent budget:
Phase
Months of Phase
Budget Amount
Preparation
March - October 2007
$20,000
Waiting Period for Office Actions
Nov 2005 - June 2009
$1,000
Prosecution
July - Dec. 2009
$25,000
Post Allowance
Jan. - June 2010
$5,000
Tracker would actually save the budget in the back-end (non-visible) tables in this monthly format:
Phase
Number of Months
Budget Amount/Month
Preparation
8 months
$2,500
Waiting Period for Office Actions
20 months
$50
Prosecution
6 months
$4,167
Post Allowance
6 months
$833
By saving all phased budgets in a monthly format in the back-end tables, Tracker can still calculate budgets for fiscal years or for specific time periods designated by users in reports. Although the straight-line averaging may not perfectly represent the actual time in which the outside spending will occur, it enables more flexible reporting capability.

This article applies to:

  • PRODUCT: Legal Tracker
  • Subject: Budget
  • Audiences: Firm