In 2020 the LEDES Oversight Committee ratified version 1 of the LEDES API.
The API was suggested by and is the primary work product of LEDES Director and API Subcommittee head Nicholas Puschak, along with contributions from numerous technical subcommittee participants, as well as ebilling representatives to provide day to day perspective on usage. The LEDES Oversight Committee Board believes the API is an important step forward in managing the rigorous day to day workflow of legal ebilling.
The LEDES Software API, when adopted and implemented by software vendors, will allow the law firm time and billing applications to communicate directly to the corporate legal department matter management and e-billing applications. This in turn will allow the billing clerks at law firms to simply work within their time and billing applications to view the status of an invoice and to submit invoices, accruals and other legal data– all from one application, requiring no manual processing.
The API is intended for system-to-system communication.
How to get started? Contact your vendors today- those whose systems create your ebills, as well as the third party ebilling vendors that receive your ebills- and request they develop the API capability.