CounselGO is the vendor portal from SimpleLegal, an Onit company, through which outside law firms and legal vendors submit invoices, propose matter budgets, manage timekeeper rates, and track approval and payment status for their corporate clients. It is the outward-facing half of an Onit eBilling deployment: the corporate legal department works inside SimpleLegal, and its law firms work inside CounselGO. Understanding how the two connect is essential to running an eBilling implementation well.
What is CounselGO used for?
The portal gives law firms a single, structured route for everything connected to billing a corporate client. Four capabilities carry most of the day-to-day use.
- Invoice submission. Firms create, upload, and track electronic invoices in the formats their client requires.
- Budget proposals. Firms propose matter-level budgets and review spend against them.
- Timekeeper management. Firms submit timekeepers and rates for client approval before billing against them.
- Status visibility. Firms follow an invoice through review, approval, and payment without emailing the legal operations team to ask.
That last point is the one legal departments feel most. When firms can see where an invoice stands, the volume of status inquiries reaching the legal operations inbox falls substantially, and the team gets its time back for spend analysis.
The platform’s quality here is externally recognized. LegalTech Breakthrough named CounselGO “Vendor Management Solution of the Year”, citing the improved coordination and communication it gives legal teams with their vendors.
What invoice formats does CounselGO support?
The portal supports the LEDES family of electronic billing formats alongside PDF submission. According to the CounselGO portal, supported formats include LEDES, LEDES1998B, LEDES98BI, and LEDES XML, together with accruals and budgets.
Format breadth matters more than it first appears. Large firms usually generate LEDES files directly from their practice management system, while smaller firms and non-legal vendors often have no LEDES capability at all. Supporting both ends of that range is what allows a legal department to bring its entire vendor population onto one billing route during a rollout.
How do law firms get access to CounselGO?
Access begins with the corporate client. A firm cannot register independently; the client adds the firm to its SimpleLegal environment, and the firm’s users are then invited in.
Onit’s own documentation sets out the sequence. The CounselGO QuickStart Guide describes the portal as the route for submitting invoices to clients using SimpleLegal, with the client designating initial firm administrators who then invite and manage their own colleagues. Login uses two-factor authentication through a six-digit email verification code.
This client-initiated model is deliberate and it is good design. It keeps control of the approved vendor list with the legal department, which is exactly where spend governance belongs. It also means vendor setup is a real workstream in any implementation plan, with an owner and a schedule.
How does CounselGO fit into an Onit eBilling implementation?
The portal is where an eBilling rollout meets people outside the organization, which makes it the part of the deployment that depends most on coordination. Internal configuration determines what the platform will accept. Firm onboarding determines whether anyone submits correctly.
A workable eBilling implementation therefore runs on two tracks at once:
- Inside the platform. Billing guidelines, rejection rules, approval routing, budget thresholds, and the timekeeper rate approval process all need configuring and testing against real scenarios.
- Outside the platform. Every firm needs adding, its administrators identifying, its users inviting, and its billing staff briefing on what the client’s guidelines actually require.
Jurisdiction count drives the effort on both tracks. Basla has supported matter management and eBilling programs spanning more than ten global jurisdictions, and each additional jurisdiction tends to bring its own tax treatment, currency handling, and billing guideline variations. For a fuller picture of how these programs are structured, see what an Onit ELM implementation actually involves.
What makes outside counsel onboarding succeed?
Successful onboarding treats the law firm billing coordinator as a user who needs training, because that person decides whether invoices arrive clean. Legal departments that invest in this stage see rejection rates fall quickly after go-live.
Four practices carry most of the value:
- Brief firms on the guidelines before go-live. A firm that understands the rejection rules in advance submits a compliant first invoice.
- Sequence the onboarding. Bring the highest-volume firms on first so the largest share of spend is flowing correctly early.
- Test with real invoice data. A LEDES file from an actual firm exposes formatting issues that a synthetic test file will not.
- Give firms a named contact for the first billing cycle. Questions arrive in the first month regardless of preparation, and a clear route for them protects the legal operations team.
Testing deserves particular attention here, since rejection logic only proves itself against non-compliant submissions. The same principle applies across an Onit deployment, which is why role-based security testing before go-live belongs in the plan alongside the billing scenarios.
How does CounselGO relate to BillingPoint?
Both serve the same function of outside counsel invoice intake, and which one applies depends on the Onit product a client runs. CounselGO is the SimpleLegal portal. BillingPoint is the equivalent used with OnitX deployments.
The distinction matters at scoping time, because vendor onboarding instructions, training material, and support documentation all differ between them. Swiftwater’s practitioner guide to CounselGO covers the platform picture in useful detail for teams mapping this out.
Onit continues to invest across this area, with an AI-native Unity eBilling foundation for automating billing compliance and consolidating vendor data.
What happens to invoice data during an eBilling migration?
Historical invoice data moves with the implementation, and its condition determines how much of the platform’s reporting value is available on day one. Clean spend history produces immediately useful analytics, so data preparation earns its place in the plan.
This is consistently the most underestimated element of an eBilling rollout. Invoice history carries years of accumulated inconsistency in vendor names, matter references, timekeeper records, and currency treatment. Resolving it before migration is far cheaper than correcting reports afterwards, a pattern covered further in why messy legacy data can ruin a perfect platform build.
What support do firms and legal teams need after go-live?
Both groups generate questions in the first weeks, and the volume is predictable enough to staff for. Planning that support explicitly keeps the configuration team free to resolve genuine defects.
On one Onit rollout, Basla’s team handled roughly two hundred tickets in the first week after go-live. Around sixty percent were users asking how to complete a task, and the balance were genuine defects requiring a developer. The hypercare window ran for eight weeks with every report triaged and replication steps validated before anything reached the configuration team. The reasoning behind that model is set out in why launches fail without a dedicated hypercare triage desk.
Conclusion
CounselGO is the point where an eBilling deployment stops being an internal configuration exercise and starts depending on people outside the organization. The platform side can be configured perfectly and the rollout still struggles if law firms have not been added, briefed, and given a route for their questions in the first billing cycle.
That is the practical lesson from eBilling implementations. Budget for vendor onboarding as a workstream with an owner and a schedule, sequence the highest-volume firms first, test rejection logic with real LEDES files before go-live, and plan the support model for the first month. Legal departments that treat CounselGO onboarding as a communications exercise as much as a technical one see cleaner invoices sooner and spend far less reviewer time on rework.
How Basla can help
Basla provides the delivery capability behind Onit eBilling implementations, covering business analysis, configuration support, billing guideline setup, testing coordination, vendor onboarding support, documentation, and post-go-live support. Basla has delivered legal technology across more than a hundred jurisdictions, with hands-on experience supporting Onit matter management, eBilling, legal service request, and contract workflows.
Frequently asked questions
What is CounselGO?
CounselGO is the vendor portal from SimpleLegal, an Onit company, through which outside law firms and legal vendors submit invoices, propose matter budgets, manage timekeeper rates, and track approval and payment status for their corporate clients.
How do law firms get access to CounselGO?
Access starts with the corporate client. A firm cannot register on its own. The client adds the firm to its SimpleLegal environment and designates initial firm administrators, who then invite and manage their own colleagues. Login uses two-factor authentication through a six-digit email verification code.
What invoice formats does CounselGO accept?
CounselGO supports the LEDES family of electronic billing formats alongside PDF submission, including LEDES, LEDES1998B, LEDES98BI, and LEDES XML, together with accruals and budgets.
What is the difference between CounselGO and BillingPoint?
Both handle outside counsel invoice intake, and which one applies depends on the Onit product a client runs. CounselGO is the SimpleLegal portal. BillingPoint is the equivalent used with OnitX deployments. The distinction matters at scoping time because onboarding instructions, training material, and support documentation differ between them.
Is CounselGO free for law firms?
Firms reach the portal through their corporate client’s environment. The client controls who is added, which keeps the approved vendor list with the legal department where spend governance belongs.
How long does CounselGO onboarding take?
It depends on the size of the vendor population and how many jurisdictions are in scope. The work runs in parallel with platform configuration, and sequencing the highest-volume firms first means the largest share of spend is flowing correctly before the long tail is complete.
*This article is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Basla Solutions provides legal technology implementation and support services and does not practice law.*