Former Pillsbury partner Joe Tiano has sent clients millions of dollars worth of invoices, some for DC tech companies. He recently left the firm to launch a startup to possibly make law firm invoices have a few less digits. His company has developed statistically validated algorithms that detect inefficiencies in legal services. Should an 8th year associate be handling what a second year could do? And does industry data support an employment agreement taking 10 hours to draft?

Legal Decoder launched in October and targets companies that spend $500k to $10M a year on legal services. They send their legal invoices to Legal Decoder, and its technology checks it against industry data using built-in domain expertise on what things should cost, who should be handling certain legal services, and how long certain tasks should take. Clients get insight  and Joe says it’s up to them what to do with the results.