Whether we are self-employed specialists or employees in companies, our employers and customers want to make sure that they pay us fairly for the work we do. This approach turned time tracking into one of the essential tools of any modern professional. The same applies to individual attorneys and consultants as well as law firms.
Many lawyers who bill their customers by the hour still prefer to reconstruct their time logs at the end of the day, week, or even month when they need to bill their clients. Even if you don’t share your time records with customers, you need to keep a time log.
Modern time tracking software offers industry-related features that allow you to automate most of your daily routine, increase your productivity and gain more trust among your customers. So, what is the best time tracking software for lawyers today?
Best Time Tracking Software for Lawyers
1. actiTIME
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
- Project Management
- Reporting
Pricing: Free 30-day trial + paid plans start at $5 user/month
Best for: Individual consultants, lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitors, law firms, government institutions.
Overview: actiTIME is a time tracking software that helps law practitioners answer the following questions:
- Are my lawyers working efficiently?
- How much time do lawyers spend on each task, case, client or practice area?
- How profitable are particular tasks, cases, clients or practice areas?
- How to review the profitability of the whole legal business?
- How to improve the productivity of lawyers?
First of all, you can track time in multiple ways. One of the key interfaces is an online timesheet that you can populate with tasks, manage displayed task parameters, including estimates and deadlines, add comments to each time entry, track work and leave time, track overtime manually or automatically and more.
Online timesheet interface in actiTIME where every user can select task parameters
they want to see in their timesheets
Another time tracking interface that you might enjoy more is a weekly timeline view, where you can track hours by recording start and end times and review your work efforts visualized as time blocks throughout the week. Drag the borders of the block to change their duration, move them across the board to change their time and date. See you overtime hours calculated automatically if you specified the start of the working day and its duration and add overtime manually.
Weekly timeline interface in actiTIME where you can track time by entering start and end times of tasks, manage and review time blocks across the week
Automated time tracking features include a browser extension that allows you to capture hours across the websites and mobile apps that capture your billable hours when you are away from your desk.
actiTIME stands out from other software by allowing you to build custom work structures, like a Client – Matter/Case – Task one or any other that fits your needs. Create custom fields such as Litigation Code (UTBMS coding) or Practice Area to sort tasks according to activities or areas of law, review and sort your data using reports.
actiTIME’s Custom Fields Report – define practice areas, litigation codes and more
To automate most of your time tracking, billing, reporting routines, you can use actiTIME integrations. With QuickBooks accounting system integration, you can import your timesheet data and use it for invoicing, tax calculations and payroll. Or use Zapier to connect actiTIME with 2000+ apps without any coding skills.
Integrations: QuickBooks, 2000+ Zapier integrations, API and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.
We reduced payroll processing to 45 minutes per week
actiTIME is very robust, integrated well into your business process, and most important, helps you focus on your business instead of monkeying around with technology. actiTIME has reduced our payroll processing from 4-6 hours per week to 45 minutes per week.
2. PracticePanther
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
- Document Management
Price: Starting at $49 per user per month + 7-day trial period.
Best for: Law firms and government institutions.
Overview: PracticePanther is a legal case management software with time tracking functionality for lawyers.
PracticePanther offers a dashboard where you can track time and appointments, manage your calendar, monitor unpaid invoices, and more. As long as it’s a cloud-based solution, it allows you to sync files across the platforms, see their change history, protect them with passwords, delete and restore them.
Use tracked time logs to create billings and invoices and keep track of unpaid ones. Promote transparency to your clients by giving them access to their invoices and previous payments.
Integrations: QuickBooks, Dropbox, LawPay, Zapier integrations, and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Android, and iOS.
3. Bill4Time
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
- Document Management
- Project Management
- Reporting
Price: Starting at $27 per user per month + free 14-day trial.
Best for: Individual consultants, lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitors, law firms, government institutions.
Overview: Bill4Time is a billable hours tracker for businesses of different kinds.
Bill4Time offers a number of ways to track your time. You can capture billable and non-billable time and track internal non-client time. You can start one or several timers on your laptop and continue with your smartphone.
The client portal allows you to accept payments from multiple popular options like PayPal and LawPay. Clients can access their portal through desktop apps or smartphones and see their billings, invoices and payments.
Integrations: QuickBooks, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and Box.
Deployment: Web-based, Android, and iOS.
4. Chrometa
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
Price: Starting at $19 per user per month + 30-day trial period.
Best for: Individual consultants, lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitors, small law firms.
Overview: Chrometa is a background time tracking app for lawyers and law firms that records everything you do without toggling anything.
Chrometa captures time entries, uses rules and keywords to sort them according to clients or matters, and allows you to further export them to Clio, QuickBooks, or another billing system. To make sure that this tool assigns your time logs with the utmost accuracy, you can tag files, folders, and URLs with clients / matters or create custom keyword-based rules.
If you spend some time away from your computer to attend a meeting or to make a call, Chrometa records your time away. When you are back, it’ll ask you to record your activities.
Its mobile app also captures your data, sorts it according to the date, time spent, and the person you spoke to, and syncs it with your Chrometa account.
Integrations: PracticePanther, Clio, Xero, Freshbooks, QuickBooks, Asana, Trello, and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
The tools above and below help you track and save time, but there are more ways to do it. Pass our quiz to learn more.
5. FreshBooks
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
- Reporting
Price: Starting at $6 per month + 30-day trial period.
Best for: Individual consultants, lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitors, law firms.
Overview: FreshBooks is one of the accounting, invoicing and time tracking apps for lawyers.
Start a timer and get down to business, fill in timesheets manually, use mobile apps or Chrome extension timer – bank every billable hour the way you like. Review your team’s timesheets in a few clicks and get a quick summary of their daily activities with a simple and intuitive calendar dashboard.
With FreshBooks, you can track time against a specific client or project and use your time logs to build billings and invoices and send them to your clients.
Integrations: Shopify, Squarespace, Zoom, Gusto, SSuite, Fundbox, Stripe, Bench, and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Android, and iOS.
6. TimeCamp
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
- Reporting
Price: Starting at $6.3 per user per month + free 14-day trial.
Best for: Individual consultants, lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitors, law firms.
Overview: Timecamp is one of the time tracking apps for lawyers and law firms that deliver products and services to their clients and require smart billing and invoicing features.
Time tracking with TimeCamp is fully automated. When you switch between tasks and matters, the software looks for project-specific keywords and logs your time accordingly. If you need to add, adjust or delete time entries, TimeCamp allows you to do that too.
Set up billing rates to measure the cost of your work. Define project time or cost budgets to stay notified on when they are about to overrun.
If you’d like to invoice your clients right from the app, you need to feed it your time data, set up tax rates, and send out invoices via email or a private link. You can also export your invoices to Xero or QuickBooks.
Integrations: Xero, QuickBooks, Google Calendar, iCal, Trello, Evernote, and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.
7. Timely
Key features:
- Mobile apps
- Integrations
- Billing & Invoicing
- Reporting
Price: Starting at $8 per user a month + 14-day trial period.
Best for: Individual consultants, lawyers, attorneys, barristers, solicitors, law firms.
Overview: Timely is one of the best automatic time tracking apps for lawyers that records all the time you spend on different clients and cases.
It tracks your web and desktop activity, mobile calls, and GPS location as a mobile app and syncs all the data into a single timesheet for billing. If you manage a legal team, you can see what case your people are working on, and how much time is spent on different clients or internal communication.
Timely integrates with multiple accounting systems, so you can export your time logs and create bills and invoices seamlessly.
Integrations: FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, Stripe, Trello, Wrike, and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS.
8. AccountSight
Key features:
- Expense tracking
- Project estimates
- Invoicing
- Reports
Price: Starting at $8 per user a month + 30-day trial period.
Best for: Professional services organizations.
Overview: AccountSight is time tracking software for professional services companies. It allows you to quickly and easily keep a record of your time so that you can bill your clients accurately.
Not only that, but AccountSight also allows you to track your expenses, which is important for staying on budget and avoiding cost overruns. Plus, with AccountSight’s online invoicing, you can create error-free invoices in a matter of seconds and get paid faster.
Overall, if you’re looking for a way to save time and increase your billable hours as a lawyer, then AccountSight is an excellent choice for you.
Integrations: QuickBooks.
Deployment: Web-based, Android, and iOS.
9. Amberlo
Key features:
- Matter management
- Expense tracking
- Billing
- Legal calendaring
Price: Free solo version + Paid plans start at the price of $30 per user a month + 7-day trial period.
Best for: Law professionals.
Overview: Amberlo is designed to streamline a variety of processes in legal professionals’ practice, making it more efficient to work with clients and keep everything in check.
This free legal time and billing software offers a number of features that are helpful for lawyer time tracking, including a stopwatch for keeping an accurate record of every billable second and detailed performance reports. Additionally, Amberlo can be integrated with a variety of other software programs – calendars and emailing systems – streamlining your workflows even more.
Integrations: Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, SharePoint Online.
Deployment: Web-based, Android, and iOS.
10. App4Legal
Key features:
- Case management
- Time tracking
- Financial management
- Litigation management
Price: Starting at $10 per user a month + free trial period.
Best for: In-house legal teams and law firms of different sizes.
Overview: App4Legal is a specialized software tool for law professionals, and it offers a number of features to help lawyers manage their time.
The software includes a timer, which can be used to keep an accurate track of the amount of time spent on tasks. Plus, it has a financial management module, which can be used to monitor expenses, generate invoices, and bill clients.
Integrations: Outlook, Google Apps.
Deployment: On-cloud, on-server, mobile.
Ready to Adopt Time Tracking Software for Lawyers?
The software market offers hundreds of lawyer time tracking tools. If you are still not sure where to start, we offer you a 30-day trial of actiTIME time tracking software with rich project management capabilities, billing & invoicing features, and a free plan for individuals and teams of up to 3 users. If you are looking for a reliable solution for your law team, we can also save you some time and show you a live product demo.
