Invoicing Software for Law Firms

Law firms bill in tenths of an hour — 6-minute increments that are the universal standard across legal billing. Every phone call, document review, court appearance, and client conference needs to be captured at this precision level across dozens of active matters daily. Rounding errors or missed entries compound into thousands of dollars of lost revenue per attorney per year.

Billed logs time by matter number, responsible attorney, and UTBMS task code so every entry carries the metadata that corporate billing guidelines demand. When a senior associate spends 0.3 hours drafting a motion to compel on matter 2024-0847, the time entry includes the task code (L230 — Motions Practice), a narrative describing the specific work performed, and the attorney's billing rate. No re-entry, no reformatting, no reconciliation against a separate timekeeping system.

For firms where multiple attorneys work the same matter in a single day, Billed aggregates entries by timekeeper while preserving the granularity that outside-counsel guidelines require. Partners reviewing pre-bills can adjust narratives, reclassify task codes, or write down individual entries before the invoice reaches the client — catching the issues that trigger rejections before they leave the firm.

Bar associations in every jurisdiction require strict separation between client trust funds and earned attorney fees. Commingling trust money with operating funds — even accidentally on an invoice — is one of the most common causes of disciplinary action against practicing attorneys. Your billing system must enforce this separation structurally, not rely on manual formatting.

Billed structures legal invoices with distinct sections for earned professional fees, trust account draws, IOLTA disbursements for costs advanced on the client's behalf, and retainer replenishment requests. When you draw $2,500 from a client's trust account to cover filing fees and court reporter costs, that transaction appears as an itemized trust disbursement separate from the $8,400 in earned fees for legal work performed during the billing period.

For firms managing dozens of client trust accounts simultaneously, Billed tracks running trust balances by matter so you always know the available funds before initiating a draw. When a trust balance drops below your firm's minimum threshold, the system flags it for replenishment — ensuring you never overdraw a trust account or continue work on a matter where the retainer has been exhausted without client authorization.

Corporate legal departments increasingly require outside counsel to submit invoices in LEDES 1998B format through e-billing platforms like Legal Tracker (Thomson Reuters), Tymetrix, CounselLink, or BrightFlag. These platforms parse structured data files — not PDF invoices — and automatically reject submissions with missing matter codes, non-standard task codes, or formatting that deviates from the LEDES specification.

Billed generates LEDES 1998B-formatted files that map your time entries, expenses, and matter references into the pipe-delimited structure these platforms expect. Each line item carries the UTBMS task code, activity code, timekeeper ID, matter reference, and narrative in the exact field positions that e-billing systems validate on import. Firms that previously spent hours manually formatting LEDES files in spreadsheets eliminate that overhead entirely.

For firms serving both corporate clients (who require LEDES submissions) and individual clients (who receive standard PDF invoices), Billed handles both formats from the same underlying time and billing data. Switch between output formats per client without maintaining parallel billing workflows — the same time entries, the same narratives, and the same matter structure produce whichever invoice format the recipient requires.

Retainer agreements are the financial foundation of most law firm client relationships, but managing them is deceptively complex. A client pays $10,000 upfront, the firm draws against that retainer as work is performed, and when the balance hits a threshold the client must replenish. Multiply this by fifty active matters across different practice areas and retainer management becomes a full-time administrative burden.

Billed tracks retainer balances by matter in real time. As you log billable hours and the corresponding fees are drawn against the retainer, the running balance updates automatically. When the balance drops below a configurable threshold — say $2,000 remaining on a $10,000 retainer — Billed flags the matter and can trigger a replenishment invoice requesting the client bring the retainer back to its original level.

For evergreen retainer arrangements where the client pays a fixed monthly fee for ongoing availability, Billed generates recurring invoices on whatever billing cycle the engagement letter specifies. Track hours worked against the retainer value to monitor whether the arrangement remains profitable, and flag matters where actual time invested consistently exceeds the retainer amount — a signal that the fee needs renegotiation before the firm absorbs losses quarter after quarter.

Not every legal matter bills by the hour. Personal injury firms work on contingency — typically 33% of the settlement pre-litigation and 40% post-filing — where the firm's fee depends entirely on the outcome. Other practices offer flat fees for predictable work: $1,500 for an uncontested divorce, $3,000 for forming an LLC with an operating agreement, $750 for a trademark application.

Billed supports contingency, flat-fee, and hourly billing on the same platform. For contingency matters, track the costs your firm advances — filing fees, medical record retrieval, expert depositions, process server fees — as disbursements against the matter. When the case settles, generate the settlement statement showing the gross recovery, your contingency percentage, advanced costs to be reimbursed, and the net amount to the client. Every dollar is accounted for in a format that satisfies both the client and the bar's trust accounting rules.

Flat-fee matters invoice the agreed amount on completion or in installments tied to milestones — half at engagement, half at closing. For firms that blend billing models across practice areas — hourly for litigation, flat-fee for transactional work, contingency for PI — Billed handles all three from a single client and matter database without workarounds or duplicate records.

Complex litigation and multi-party matters frequently involve split billing arrangements where costs and fees are divided between co-counsel, referring attorneys, or multiple responsible parties. An insurance coverage case might split fees 60/40 between lead counsel and local counsel. A mass tort engagement could allocate common-benefit costs across a dozen participating firms based on their proportional interest.

Billed supports split billing by allowing you to define allocation percentages at the matter level. When you generate an invoice for a co-counseled matter, each party receives a statement reflecting only their share of the fees and costs. The lead counsel invoice shows the full billing detail with the allocation clearly noted; the co-counsel statement shows their proportional share with a reference to the originating invoice for reconciliation.

For referring attorney arrangements — where the originating attorney receives a percentage of fees under the applicable jurisdiction's referral fee rules — Billed tracks the referral split separately from the client-facing invoice. The client sees a single bill from the handling firm. Internally, Billed calculates the referral fee based on collected revenue (not billed amounts), ensuring the referring attorney's share is computed on actual cash received rather than amounts still outstanding in accounts receivable.