The Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard is a set of file format specifications intended to facilitate electronic data transmission in the legal industry. The phrase is abbreviated LEDES and is usually pronounced as "leeds". The LEDES specifications are maintained by the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC), which started informally as an industry-wide project led by the Law Firm and Law Department Services Group within PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1995. In 2001, the LEDES Oversight Committee was incorporated as a California mutual-benefit nonprofit corporation and is now led by a seven-member Board of Directors.
The LOC maintains four types of data exchange standards for legal electronic billing (ebilling); budgeting; timekeeper attributes; and intellectual property matter management.
The LOC also maintains five types of data elements in the LEDES data exchange standards: Uniform Task-Based Management System codes, which classify the work performed by type of legal matter; activity codes, which classify the actual work performed; expense codes, which classify the type of expense incurred; timekeeper classification codes; and error codes, which assist law firms with understanding invoice validation errors.
The LOC has also created an API that allows for system-to-system transmission of legal invoices from law firms and other legal vendors required by their clients to ebill, to the third-party ebilling systems. Other functionality is also supported in this very complex standard, which is intended to ease the burden at the law firm for managing client-required ebilling.
The electronic billing data exchange format types provide a standard data format for electronically transmitted invoices, typically from a law firm to a corporate client. The LEDES e-billing format currently has the following variations: [1]
The other LEDES data exchange formats are as follows:
The Uniform Task-Based Management System is a widely used system for coding legal work. [7]
In April 2006, the UTBMS Update Initiative voted to merge into the LEDES Oversight Committee. Shortly thereafter, the LEDES Oversight Committee established www.UTBMS.com as the global reference for all known UTBMS standards, regardless of the organization that established the standard.
In 2020, the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC) ratified Version 1 of the LEDES Error Codes, which aimed to establish a standardized framework for identifying errors in electronic billing (e-billing) submissions. In September 2024, Version 1 was fully updated and replaced by Version 2, which was ratified by the LEDES Board. This new version continues the mission of standardizing the identification of errors in e-billing submissions across different systems and clients.
Why LEDES Error Codes?
The introduction of LEDES Error Codes addresses a longstanding issue expressed by many law firm members. Prior to the standardization, law firms and corporate legal departments spent significant time tracking down errors caused by non-standardized and often unintelligible error messages in e-billing submissions. These error messages gave little indication of what needed to be fixed, resulting in wasted hours and inefficient workflows.
The standardized Error Codes are designed to make e-billing error identification more consistent and easier to understand, which will help reduce the time law firms, corporate legal departments, and software vendors spend on correcting billing errors. The hope is that the implementation of these standardized error codes across the industry will streamline the billing process and reduce the administrative burden on legal teams, ultimately enhancing the efficiency of legal billing practices.
The 2024 Board of Directors of the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC) plays a critical role in overseeing the development and implementation of LEDES standards, including the new version of the LEDES Error Codes. The following individuals serve on the 2024 LOC Board:
President: Jane A. Bennitt, Global Legal Ebilling, LLC Vice President: Cathrine J. Collins, Legal Systems Automation, LLC Treasurer/Membership: Jim Hannigan, Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP Standards: David Nelson, Pathfinder eConsulting Limited Secretary: Nadia Strobbia, Elite Regional Groups: Andrew Dey, Andrew Dey Limited Marketing: Inemesit Edet, Smart eBill Team
In 2014, the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) Intellectual Property Matter Management (IPMM) subcommittee proposed an extensible markup language (XML) invention disclosure standard. An XML-based invention disclosure standard can fulfill a critical need that conventional invention disclosure forms fail to address, namely validation of invention data and automated data analysis. An invention disclosure that conforms to the IPMM standard will receive initial data quality checks and be readable by any conforming application and structured for further handling and analysis.