Lawyer time tracking that captures the hours you already worked

Time leaks in small amounts, which is why it is easy to ignore. A short call with opposing counsel, a review of an email chain before a meeting, a quick look at a draft a paralegal prepared, a revision to a letter after the client's comments. Each takes a few minutes. Each is real work the client benefits from. And each is the kind of task most likely to go unrecorded when entries are written at the end of the day or the end of the week.

Reconstruction makes it worse. When a lawyer rebuilds a week from a calendar and an inbox, meetings and long drafting sessions survive, while short tasks between them disappear. Reconstructed entries also tend to be rounded and generic, which invites write-downs from the client.

• Short calls and emails that never get their own entry.
• Review of other people's work that feels too brief to record.
• Work done from a phone, outside the office or after hours.
• Entries written days later, with durations estimated from memory.
• Narratives too vague for the client to accept.

A contemporaneous entry is one recorded at or near the time the work is done. It is more accurate, more detailed and easier to defend. Courts deciding fee petitions in fee-shifting cases regularly look for contemporaneous records and reduce awards when entries are reconstructed, block-billed or vague. Many outside counsel guidelines require entries within a set number of days. And the ethics rules point the same way: ABA Model Rule 1.5 requires reasonable fees, and ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 makes clear that a lawyer may bill only for time actually spent, not for time the lawyer wishes it had taken or time spent on another matter at the same moment.

The practical rule is simple. Record the work the same day, ideally within the hour. If that is not realistic for every task, keep a running note of what you did and turn it into entries before you leave.

The narrative is what the client reads. A good one says what was done, on what document or issue, and why, in one or two sentences. It does not need adjectives or legal reasoning. It does need enough detail that someone outside the matter understands the task.

Compare two entries for the same work. "Attention to file, 1.2" tells the client nothing and is a likely write-off. "Review and analyze defendant's responses to first set of interrogatories; draft deficiency letter identifying incomplete answers to interrogatories 4, 7 and 12, 1.2" describes the work, the document and the result.

• Start with an action verb such as review, draft, revise, analyze, prepare or confer.
• Name the document, issue or person involved.
• State the purpose or outcome when it is not obvious.
• Use one entry per task instead of block billing several tasks under one total.
• Avoid internal shorthand the client will not recognize.
• Keep privileged strategy out of narratives, since invoices can end up in front of third parties.

Most US firms bill in tenths of an hour, six-minute increments. Some clients require quarter hours to be replaced by tenths, and some outside counsel guidelines set a minimum or cap for certain tasks, such as reviewing short emails. Rounding should follow a written firm policy and the client's terms, and it should never become a way to add time. A lawyer who works three minutes records 0.1 under a tenth-of-an-hour policy, but does not record 0.2 because the task felt harder.

The Uniform Task-Based Management System, usually called UTBMS, is a set of standard codes that classify legal work. Insurance companies and many corporate legal departments require them on invoices so they can compare costs across matters and firms.

Each entry typically carries a task code and an activity code. In the litigation code set, task codes are grouped by phase, such as L100 for case assessment, development and administration, L200 for pre-trial pleadings and motions, L300 for discovery, L400 for trial preparation and trial, and L500 for appeal. Activity codes describe what the lawyer was doing, such as A101 for plan and prepare, A102 for research, A103 for draft or revise, A104 for review or analyze, and A106 for communicating with the client. Expenses use their own E codes. Other code sets exist for counseling, project work and bankruptcy matters.

Coding takes seconds when it is done at the time of the entry and much longer when it is done for a whole month at invoicing. It is also where entries get rejected, because a task code that does not match the narrative is a common reason for an e-billing system to flag a line.

LEDES is the file format most e-billing systems accept. LEDES 1998B, the most widely used version, is a plain text file in which each line is one fee or expense entry and fields are separated by a pipe character. It carries the invoice number and date, the client and matter identifiers, the timekeeper, the date of work, the hours and rate, the UTBMS codes and the narrative.

Most billing systems can produce a LEDES file, but the file is only as good as the entries inside it. Missing codes, inconsistent timekeeper identifiers and narratives that exceed the field rules all lead to rejected invoices and delayed payment. Clean entries at the source save the billing team from fixing the same problems every month.

AI is useful for the part of time tracking lawyers dislike most: turning a list of what they did into clean entries. Given a work note such as "call with client about settlement, then revised demand letter and sent to adjuster", an assistant can propose two separate entries, each with a narrative in the firm's style, a suggested duration from the note and the related activity, and a suggested UTBMS task and activity code. It can also scan a day's documents and messages on a matter and suggest work that has no entry yet.

What AI must not do is decide what gets billed. Durations are suggestions until an attorney confirms them against the time actually spent. A tool that adds time, pads narratives or bills a task the lawyer did not perform creates exactly the problem Formal Opinion 93-379 warns about. The right design produces drafts, shows where each one came from, and records who approved it.

• Draft entries from notes, emails and documents worked on that day.
• Split block descriptions into one entry per task.
• Suggest narratives in plain language and UTBMS codes for each line.
• Leave every duration and every entry for attorney approval.

A routine beats a tool. Here is one that takes less than ten minutes a day.

• Keep a running note of tasks as you work, one line each.
• Before you leave, turn the note into entries, one per task.
• Check each narrative against the action, object and purpose test.
• Add or confirm UTBMS codes for clients who require them.
• Review the day's documents and emails for any work you forgot.
• Approve the entries so billing can export them on schedule.