Legal billing software can improve your law firm’s bottom line in multiple ways.
Law firm billing software saves time for attorneys and staff, freeing them to focus on client work. It also helps ensure that you get paid for more of your billable time and reduces errors.
The American Bar Association estimates 22 percent of law firms still aren’t using legal billing software. If your law office is among that number, you probably know it’s time to make the investment.
But whether you’re choosing billing software for the first time or looking to upgrade, the selection process can be daunting.
Below, we explore what you need to know about billing software for lawyers. We also cover the most important features to look for and how to choose the best legal billing software for your law firm.
What is Legal Billing Software?
Legal billing software automates and integrates elements of a law firm’s billing processes, time tracking, and even case management.
Depending on the software you choose, this may include functionality such as
- time and expense recording
- branded invoices
- credit card processing
- online payment processing
- trust account management
- financial performance reporting
- secure client portal for accepting payments
- and more
Some billing software products are standalone, covering only a legal practice’s billing needs. Others are one piece of more comprehensive law practice management software.
Standalone Billing Software vs. Legal Practice Management Systems
Some law firm billing software options are dedicated products for that purpose alone. These solutions do not include other features, focusing instead on the functionality we discussed above.
Some standalone billing software platforms integrate with separate legal practice management software. They may also be compatible with other tools such as a law firm’s accounting software.
The alternative is law practice management software that includes billing software for law firms. This type of product is more robust and puts a wide range of functions in a single application.
This sort of solution typically includes
- digital case files
- client relationship management tools
- document assembly
- task assignments and tracking
- time and expense recording
- broader reporting to help you run a profitable legal practice
Many case management platforms offer ways to communicate directly with the client through the platform.
Which type of solution you choose depends on your budget, your needs, and your long-term growth goals.
Best Legal Billing Software
Sorting through the options for law firm billing software can be overwhelming. Lawyers often lose sight of what matters most to their law firms as they navigate a sea of sales pitches.
We’ve collected information about the best legal billing software options to get you started.
LawPay
LawPay is one of the oldest legal-specific, bar-compliant payment processors and is endorsed by many bar associations.
The platform includes
- time and expense recording
- invoicing
- payment processing for flat fees, contingency fees, and more
- custom reporting
- some unique options like legal financing
LawPay can integrate with legal technology and accounting management software.
As of February 2025, pricing starts at $19 per month, plus a percentage-based fee for payment processing.
Clio
Clio is a full legal practice management solution that has been in business since 2008. The company offers tiered pricing based on the features you choose.
All tiers include
- time and expense recording
- invoicing
- payment processing for e-checks, credit cards, and debit cards
- trust accounting
- branded bills
- payment plans
- automated payment reminders for contingency, flat-rate, and hourly billing
As of February 2025, pricing ranges from $39-$139 per user per month plus a percentage-based fee for payment processing.
MyCase
MyCase was founded in 2010 and offers legal practice management software with tiered options.
All three options include
- time and expense tracking
- invoicing
- trust ledger and reconciliation
- online payments
MyCase’s payment processing runs through a LawPay integration.
As of February 2025, pricing ranges from $39-$99 per user per month plus a percentage-based fee for payment processing.
Rocket Matter
Rocket Matter was the first fully cloud-based legal practice management platform, launched in 2008.
The platform offers tiered options, and all levels include
- time and expense recording
- invoicing
- trust accounting
- payment processing
Higher tiers offer some more advanced billing options, such as applying interest and discounts or split billing.
As of February 2025, pricing ranges from $49-$129 per user per month.
Smokeball
Smokeball is a multi-faceted legal practice management platform founded in 2011.
The platform offers tiered pricing, with every tier including
- time and expense tracking
- invoicing
- accepting online payments
- trust accounting and reporting
- accounting integrations
Smokeball’s payment processing runs through a LawPay integration.
As of February 2025, Smokeball does not make its pricing publicly available.
Soluno
Soluno is a dedicated financial platform that provides more in-depth accounting features and reporting.
The platform covers
- time and expense tracking
- invoicing
- trust accounting
- reporting
Soluno integrates with some legal practice management software, as well as with tools like Microsoft 365. Payment processing runs through a LawPay integration.
As of February 2025, Soluno does not publish pricing information.
CaseFox
CaseFox is a legal practice management platform that offers two paid tiers of features.
Both include
- time and expense recording
- invoicing for hourly, flat rate, and contingency billing
- integrations with legal accounting software and payment processing platforms, including LawPay
Uniquely, CaseFox offers a free “solo” version that allows you to try out all features for up to four cases.
As of February 2025, pricing ranges from $39-$79 per user per month not including payment processing.
CosmoLex
CosmoLex bills itself as a tool to run your legal practice from a single platform.
The company offers two tiers, but both are full practice management systems – there is no stripped-down tier. Both tiers do include relatively sophisticated time and invoicing features, including options like
- interest
- discounts
- split billing
- pre-bill approval processes
CosmoLexPay, for payment processing, is an optional add-on.
As of February 2025, CosmoLex pricing ranges from $99-$129 per user per month, not including payment processing.
Benefits of Legal Billing Software
Legal billing software reduces the amount of manual effort your staff has to dedicate to billing.
This can allow your staff to dedicate their time to other projects and reduces the opportunity for human error. It also helps you more accurately bill clients and get paid faster for your work.
The impact of those changes is more significant than you might expect.
Bill for More of Your Attorneys’ Time
A survey done before the rise in passive time tracking showed that the average attorney spent more than three hours each month tracking time.
If each of your attorneys charges $300 per hour, that means you’re losing out on $900 a month in billables for that attorney. If you have ten lawyers in your firm, that number grows to $9,000.
This estimate doesn’t account for the additional hours that slip through the cracks with manual reporting. The ABA has estimated that legal professionals lose up to 10 percent of billable hours to time tracking errors.
Your non-attorney staff can also wind up spending huge chunks of their time on billing. This leaves them less time to tend to other administrative tasks to keep your law firm running smoothly.
Good legal office billing software can automate many of these time-consuming tasks and reduce human error in your law firm finances.
All these time savings can have a significant impact on your law firm’s bottom line.
Boost Law Firm Profitability
A law firm can also reduce its costs and increase revenues by analyzing the profitability of different variables.
These can include types of clients, types of cases, and certain legal professionals.
Many law firms don’t take the time to delve into those analytics. Managing all those variables is a lot of work, and it isn’t always clear up front what the key influences will be.
Many legal billing systems include automated reporting. You can see how much time you spent on different types of work or view collection rates by client and case type.
This allows you to easily determine what’s most profitable for your law firm and what may be a drain on your resources.
Factors to Consider When Shopping for Legal Billing Software
The search for lawyer billing software doesn’t start when you open your browser or reach out to colleagues for recommendations.
The first step in the process is assessing your own needs and priorities. Think through these items (and any others important to your law firm) before you shop.
Budget
Most legal billing software, used correctly, will more than pay for itself. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore costs or pay for more than you need.
Providers typically charge by the user, so you’ll want to decide in advance which attorneys and staff members will need access. The answer will change depending if you’re using standalone billing software or a full legal practice management platform.
Many billing software providers offer different subscription tiers. This allows you to find an option that fits your budget and pay only for the functionality you need today.
Pain Points
One of the biggest mistakes law firms make when adopting legal technology is failing to consider their specific needs.
To find the best lawyer billing software for your law firm, you must know what problems you’re trying to solve.
Are your attorneys spending too much time manually tracking hours? Are you missing billable hours when you generate invoices?
Is manual invoicing putting too much strain on your non-attorney staff, or competing for time with client work?
Are legal invoices going out inconsistently based on when someone has time to assemble them? Are your collection rates failing to keep pace with your invoices?
If you’re the managing partner of a law office, be careful not to make assumptions about these pain points. Talk to the people managing the legal billing process and ask them where their obstacles, time drains, and frustrations lie.
Scalability
Another common mistake is choosing technology that will serve your law firm’s needs today without regarding the future.
Of course, you don’t want to waste money on features that you may never use. But you also don’t want to have to replace your entire system and migrate all of your records again in a year.
When you’re assessing your pain points, factor in the future.
Would what you’re planning today continue to work well if you significantly increase your volume? What if you opened a new practice area or hired more attorneys?
While you don’t want to pay for unneeded features, you should ensure that your software can grow with you. That may mean a selecting more robust platform from the start or choosing a tiered system that you can upgrade as you expand.
Customer Support
When problems arise with your law office billing software, you want to make sure that you can address them quickly. If your attorney billing software provider doesn’t offer adequate customer support, you could find yourself losing money and clients.
When choosing time and billing software, make sure you know exactly what support you’ll receive.
Will you have a dedicated point of contact? During what hours will you be able to count on reaching someone?
Is there an onboarding process that walks you through set-up and making the most of the software?
Will you and your staff have access to training videos? Will you have to pay extra to receive live support?
The level of support you need will depend on your law firm’s specific circumstances. You must understand what you can expect from your legal billing software provider – and what you can’t – before you make a choice.
Essential Features of Legal Billing Software
There are several core features that any law firm billing software tool needs to include.
Time and Expense Tracking
Time and expense tracking is obviously mission-critical when you’re looking for billing software.
While it’s a standard feature, it’s important to look at exactly what each provider is offering. Time tracking features may range from manual entry or transfers from case files to automated tracking as you work on a matter.
Invoice Creation and Sharing
Most platforms offer some functionality to generate invoices, but this process, too, can vary in sophistication.
Look for the ability to customize invoice templates with your law firm’s logo and other personalization. You should also consider if the software can accommodate multiple billing models.
Ask if there are options for applying discounts or interest and if you can set up automated reminders.
Payment Processing
When you’re choosing a payment processing provider, the key issues are pricing and funding time.
Pricing can be confusing. Providers may use
- a flat monthly fee
- a percentage-based transaction fee
- or a flat per-transaction fee.
Funding time is the amount of time that passes between processing a payment and funds hitting your account. This can range from hours to several days.
Before you decide on a legal billing system, you need to understand what these fees and funding times will look like.
Flexible Billing
Offering flexible payment options to your clients can increase the likelihood that they’ll pay you in full and on time. Flexible billing options can include payment plans and recurring billing, among others.
But those options can be time-consuming to manage manually. The inconsistency inherent in that flexibility may lead to payments slipping through the cracks.
Legal billing solutions with flexible billing functionality allow you to accommodate clients and improve collection rates without significant time investment.
Trust Accounting
Most lawyer billing software offers some level of trust accounting, but they’re not all created equal.
Trust account management is a danger zone for many law firms. Legal professionals must comply with several regulations that govern trust accounts. Failing to do so could lead to disbarment.
IOLTA sets legal industry regulations for client trust account management.
Certain non-compliant payment processing systems may violate IOLTA regulations. The standard method of charging transaction fees, chargebacks, and other costs to the same account where funds are deposited breaks IOLTA rules.
Law firms also have to supply regular reports about their trust account management practices to ensure they’re following regulations.
You must be confident that your software is handling all trust transactions appropriately and providing the required reporting.
Financial Reporting
Financial reporting options range from a few simple reports to numerous customizable reports.
Look through the financial reporting options each legal billing system offers. Reports you may never have considered could help you improve profitability, cut out waste, save time, and enhance compliance.
Integrations
The importance of integrations may vary depending on whether you want full legal practice management software or standalone billing software.
As a general rule, though, you want to maximize integration. Any time you have to transfer information from one system to another, you waste staff time and increase your risk of errors.
At a minimum, you want your billing software to integrate with your accounting tools. If you’re choosing a full service legal practice management tool, that should extend to other tools like word processing and email as well.
Security and Compliance
In addition to IOLTA compliance, law firms must maintain PCI compliance. PCI is a security standard that protects your clients’ credit card information and other sensitive data.
You must ensure that your billing solution meets PCI and IOLTA standards, along with any other pertinent regulations.
The Impact of AI on Legal Billing Software
Artificial intelligence is just beginning to impact law firm billing tools, but law firms are already seeing some of the benefits.
AI-based time tracking and invoicing has the potential to further minimize “lost” time. These tools can already
- track legal payments
- automatically follow up on past-due client accounts
- predict payment turnaround times for particular clients
- and more
AI also has the potential to make data more usable and generate more sophisticated reports. And thanks to recent advancements, you won’t have to deal with predetermined tagging or specific language in your data.
AI can also be helpful in managing multiple billing models and, in fact, may make these setups more common for law firms.
The advent of AI-powered research and document generation is moving certain types of work toward flat-fee models. More small law firms may be able to expand their scope with the help of these tools.
Currently, these are only the applications that are clearly on the horizon. AI technology is developing rapidly, so its full impact isn’t yet known.
Top Tips for Selecting Legal Billing Software
The key to finding the best legal billing software for your law firm is to know yourself.
Before you even start comparing products, take inventory of your operations. Figure out exactly how your billing currently works, where the bottlenecks are, and what you would like to change.
Once you know what you need,
- Ask colleagues about the billing solutions they use and what they do and don’t like about it
- Determine whether you want a full legal practice management solution or a standalone billing system
- Compare features on some of the top options and rule out any that are missing a critical capability
- Check reviews on the remaining options
- Schedule demos of your top two to three choices, and include the staff members who will be most involved in using the software
Stay methodical; it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of options and possible feature combinations of features.
Start Getting More for Your Money
The right legal billing software can help you save staff time, easily track billable hours, and improve your collection rate. The options we’ve discussed here all offer fantastic features and functionality for law firms. Decide what your firm needs and establish your budget before you settle on a new law firm billing tool.
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