The goal of LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) billing and the LEDES definition is to use open standards that are non-specific to any corporation.
About LEDES
LEDES is an acronym for “Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard.” The Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) is overseen by the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC) that was lead by PricewaterhouseCoopers. LEDES is traditionally used in legal billing and is many times referred to as LEDES billing. The LOC is a non-profit international group that consists of representatives in the legal industry. This organization is in charge of maintaining these open legal standard formats for electronic billing between law firms and corporations.
The LEDES definition and the goal of the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard billing is to use open standards that are non-specific to any corporation and have the following goals:
- Keep it simple
- Make it unambiguous
- Minimal divergence from existing legal billing formats
- Only require information that a firm can provide from their financial system
- Meet the legal billing needs of law firms, corporations and the legal industry
LEDES Formats
There are currently 3 main LEDES billing formats in use:
- LEDES 1998B and LEDES 1998BI
- LEDES 2000
- LEDES XML E-Billing (XML E-Billing 2 and XML E-Billing 2.1)
Read our blog post entitled, “What is a LEDES File?” for more information!
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