LEDES is the standard format for electronic legal billing between law firms and their clients, maintained by the LEDES Oversight Committee. Its formats — from the pipe-delimited 1998B through the XML variants — carry line-item detail, task and activity codes, and timekeeper information in a form corporate legal departments can process automatically.
LEDES
LEDES is what corporate legal departments use to process outside-counsel invoices without reading them one at a time. It is unglamorous, it is nearly thirty years old, and it is the closest thing the legal market has to a universally adopted data exchange.
- Line-item billing detail - Task, activity and expense codes, so spend can be analysed rather than only paid.
- Buyer-driven adoption - Corporate legal departments require it of their firms, which is why it stuck.
- Multiple formats - 1998B remains widely used; XML variants add structure for more complex arrangements.
- A committee, not a vendor - Governed by an oversight committee drawn from the market it serves.
LEDES is worth noting for what it proves about this market. Legal and compliance is capable of adopting a shared format — it did, thirty years ago, for invoices — and The State of Legal & Compliance APIs finds it has not repeated the trick for anything else. There is no LEDES for clauses, obligations, matters or controls, and the resource taxonomy shows the consequence: 928 distinct names across 81 companies, with clause published by none of them. The pattern that worked is available to be copied.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This standard shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this standard in the context of a real sector.
The State of Legal & Compliance APIs
Proof this market CAN adopt a shared format — it did for invoices thirty years ago, and has not repeated it for clauses, obligations, matters or controls.
