Time Tracking Software for Law Firms and Lawyers

A law firm's time records are not just a payroll input; they are what the client is billed and, if a fee is ever questioned, what the firm will point to. Professional-conduct rules modeled on the ABA's put time first: Minnesota's Rule 1.5, for example, lists "the time and labor required" as the first factor in whether a fee is reasonable, and asks that the basis or rate of the fee be communicated to the client, preferably in writing. A tracker has to make those records clean and billable. It does not have to, and should not, hold client money.

For whom: a solo lawyer or a small firm that bills hourly and wants something lighter than a full practice-management suite. Not for: a firm that takes retainers into a trust account and wants billing, matter management and trust accounting in one place; see the counter-case.

What a law firm needs from the tool

The six-minute increment is a billing convention, not a rule in the statute or the conduct rules we read; what the rules require is a reasonable fee and a clear basis for it. Rounding that changes only the display, as Clockify documents, keeps the actual minutes available if a bill is ever questioned.

Our pick

Clockify Standard. It is the only one of the three whose documentation covers all of the billing basics a small firm asks for: six-minute rounding that carries into exports, invoices from tracked time, approvals and locked timesheets, at $5.49 per seat a month billed annually.

• Pick Harvest instead for a solo lawyer who wants to invoice from time immediately: invoicing is on every plan, and the free plan (one seat, two projects) is enough to test it on two matters. Check its rounding options inside the product before relying on them.
• Pick Toggl Track instead if the firm already exports time to a separate billing system and wants the lightest timer for lawyers who hate timers.

Counter-case: trust accounting. Under Rule 1.5 as Minnesota adopted it, fees paid before services are rendered are presumed unearned and must be held in a trust account under Rule 1.15. The plan and help pages we read for these three trackers describe time, rates, rounding and invoicing; they do not establish trust-account ledgers of the kind those rules contemplate, and a retainer feature for invoicing is not the same thing. A firm that takes retainers should keep trust accounting in a legal practice-management or legal billing system built for it, and treat the tracker as a time-capture front end. Check your own state's versions of Rules 1.5 and 1.15.

Set it up for billing, not just tracking

1. One client per client, one project per matter, so time cannot drift between matters.
2. Turn rounding on in reports, not on entries, so the original minutes survive.
3. Lock past periods once invoices go out.
4. Write each entry description as it will read on the invoice.

For other professional firms, see time tracking for accounting firms.