LEDES billing for small firms that bill insurers and corporate clients

A firm that takes work from insurers or larger companies is eventually told to send its bills electronically, in LEDES, through the client’s e-billing platform. For a small firm that is usually the moment the spreadsheet stops working. The file has to follow an exact layout, every line needs the right codes, and a platform can reject a whole invoice over one bad field.

What LEDES 1998B is

The LEDES Oversight Committee hosts the format documentation and describes LEDES 1998B as the most widely used e-billing standard in the US legal industry. It is a plain ASCII text file with fields separated by the pipe character, 24 fields in all, and the committee says it does not intend to change it.

The codes on each line usually come from the Uniform Task Based Management System (UTBMS). Task codes describe the work by area of law and roll up into broader phase codes. Activity codes say what was done, such as drafting, communicating or researching. Expense codes classify costs. Each client’s billing guidelines say which of these it wants, and how granular.

What Coil does today

• UTBMS activity and task codes on each time entry, chosen as you record the time, and carried into the LEDES file with the line.
• A timer that rounds to six minutes, with entries in hours or minutes, so the units on the file match the way you bill.
• Expenses with categories, recorded against the matter.
• A LEDES 1998B export, one of Coil’s exports, alongside CSV files and the QuickBooks import layouts.
• Exports that hold up. They stay fast at thousands of rows, neutralise spreadsheet formula injection, and put a currency code on every amount.

What to know before you rely on it

A LEDES file is a set of invoices in a fixed layout, and Coil builds it from invoices. Coil’s invoicing is built and in testing, not yet available. So the export ships today, but the invoices that would feed a real monthly cycle are still being tested, and a firm should not move its insurance billing onto Coil until invoicing launches.

Coil’s LEDES output also has not yet been run through a client’s e-billing validator. When you do start, send one test invoice through the platform and confirm it is accepted before you send a month of them. Expect to adjust codes to each client’s guidelines as you go; that is normal for LEDES whatever the software. The first time, keep the client’s guidelines open beside you and check which task codes they expect, whether they want activity codes at all, and how they want expenses described.

What comes next

Deeper LEDES support for insurance defense, beyond the 1998B export, is in the next phase. Until it ships, 1998B is the only LEDES format Coil writes. Multi-currency matters, which some cross-border clients need, are also in testing.

What Coil does not do

Coil does not submit invoices to an e-billing platform for you; you download the file and upload it. It does not read a carrier’s billing guidelines or warn you when an entry would break them. Questions about a reduced or rejected line stay between you and the client’s billing team.

Why it matters for a small firm

For a small litigation practice, LEDES requirements can be the main thing standing between the firm and a client who bills that way. Recording codes on time as you go, in the same place you keep the matter, means the LEDES file is an export at the end of the month rather than an afternoon of retyping. Coil is free during the beta, and beta firms keep founding pricing when paid plans start.

Last checked October 28, 2026.