Glossary
Legal time entry
The core unit of legal billing — a formal record of professional work performed for a client, with a matter reference, description, and time value.
Definition
What is a legal time entry?
A legal time entry is a billable record of legal work performed for a client. A complete time entry typically includes: the client or matter reference, a description of the work performed (the billing narrative), the time value in hours or tenths of an hour, and the billing rate applied. Together, these elements form the record that appears on a client invoice and supports the firm's revenue recognition.
Why it matters
Why time entry quality affects billing outcomes
Time entries are the core unit of legal billing. The quality of a firm's billing — its realization rate, write-down exposure, and client satisfaction at invoice review — depends directly on the completeness, specificity, and narrative quality of its time entries.
Vague or incomplete entries are more likely to be challenged by clients, written down internally before invoicing, or reduced in response to billing disputes. An entry that says "conference call" provides no basis for a client to evaluate its value. An entry that describes the purpose of the call, the issues discussed, and the outcome is both more accurate and more defensible.
Entry quality is a downstream consequence of how and when time is captured. Entries recorded while context is clear produce better narratives than entries reconstructed from memory hours later.
CaseClock
How CaseClock structures time entries
CaseClock structures spoken legal work into review-ready time entries. The output is not a transcript — it is a billing-native draft designed to meet the requirements of a legal time entry: matter context, narrative description, and time value. The lawyer reviews and approves the draft before it moves to the billing system.