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LEDES & LSS Billing Formats

Export invoices in the standard electronic formats required by corporate legal departments

LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) and LSS (Legal Services Standard) are standardized electronic billing formats used by law firms. Many corporate clients and insurance companies require invoices in LEDES format for processing through their own e-billing systems.

Supported Formats

  • LEDES 1998B — The most widely used format. A pipe-delimited text file that most e-billing platforms accept. Start here unless your client specifies otherwise.
  • LEDES 2000 — An XML-based format with more granular detail. Some larger corporate legal departments require this version.
  • LSS — Legal Services Standard, used by some insurers and large corporate legal departments. Less common than LEDES but required by certain clients.

Generating a LEDES Invoice

  1. Create and finalize an invoice as usual in the Invoicing section.
  2. Open the finalized invoice.
  3. Select Export as LEDES from the invoice actions menu.
  4. Choose the LEDES version your client requires (1998B is the default).
  5. Review the export for any validation warnings — the most common issue is missing UTBMS codes on time entries.
  6. Download the file and submit it to your client or their e-billing platform.

Prerequisites

LEDES invoices require UTBMS task and activity codes on every time entry. If you haven't set up UTBMS codes yet, do that first (see "Using UTBMS Task & Activity Codes"). Without UTBMS codes, the LEDES export will generate validation errors.

Tip: Before your first LEDES submission, ask your client which format version they accept and whether they have specific field requirements. Some e-billing platforms reject files that are technically valid LEDES but missing optional fields they expect.

LEDES billing is available on the LawBillity subscription tier.