Generate professional invoices, track payments, and manage trust accounts. All from a native Mac app that works offline and keeps your data private.
Try FreeHere is the uncomfortable truth about solo and small firm practice. Most attorneys leave between $30,000 and $50,000 on the table every single year. Not because they did not do the work. Because they did not bill for it.
It happens slowly. You finish a phone call with a client and forget to log the time. You draft a motion on a Friday afternoon and tell yourself you will enter it Monday. Monday comes and goes. The time entry never happens. The invoice never goes out. The money never arrives.
Then there is the delay problem. Studies from the Legal Trends Report consistently show that the faster an invoice goes out after work is completed, the more likely it gets paid. Every week of delay reduces your collection rate by roughly 10%. Invoice within 48 hours and your collection probability sits above 90%. Wait a month and it drops below 70%. Wait two months and you are looking at coin-flip odds.
This is not a software problem. This is a business survival problem. And the fix is simple. You need legal billing software that makes invoicing so fast and so easy that there is no reason to put it off. One click from time entries to a finished invoice. That is what TimeNet Law does.
You cannot use QuickBooks for legal billing. You cannot use FreshBooks or Wave or whatever your accountant friend recommends. Legal invoicing has requirements that regular invoicing software does not understand.
Every state bar requires strict separation of client trust funds. Your invoicing software needs to track retainer balances, apply charges against trust, and maintain audit-ready records of every drawdown. Get this wrong and you face disciplinary action.
Corporate clients and insurance companies require LEDES 1998B billing format. That is a standardized electronic invoice format with specific task codes, expense codes, and billing structures. Regular invoicing software has never heard of it.
Some matters have multiple responsible parties. Insurance defense work. Multi-party litigation. Co-counsel arrangements. Your invoicing software needs to split charges accurately across different billing recipients without manual math.
Hourly billing for one client. Flat fee for another. Contingency for a third. Retainer drawdowns for a fourth. Your invoicing software needs to handle all of these within the same practice, sometimes within the same client.
UTBMS and ABA task codes categorize the work you do. Corporate clients expect them. Insurance companies require them. The right invoicing software assigns codes automatically based on your time entries.
Legal invoicing has ethical guardrails. You cannot bill for certain activities. You must disclose certain fee arrangements. Your software needs to understand these rules so you do not accidentally cross a line.
TimeNet Law handles all of this. It was built by an attorney who spent 20 years dealing with the same billing headaches you face. Every billing edge case you can think of, it is already covered. Check the full feature list to see everything included.
Good invoicing software helps. But good invoicing habits matter just as much. These practices come from two decades of watching what works for attorneys who actually get paid on time.
The data is clear. Collection rates drop approximately 10% for every week of delay between completing work and sending the invoice. Bill within two days and your odds of getting paid are above 90%. Wait a month and those odds drop dramatically. The work is fresh in your client's mind. The value is obvious. Send the invoice while they still remember why they called you.
Clients who understand the work pay faster. "Legal research" tells the client nothing. "Research on statute of limitations defense for breach of contract claim, reviewed 3 relevant cases" tells the client exactly what you did and why it mattered. Detailed entries reduce billing disputes and speed up payment. It takes an extra 30 seconds per entry. It saves weeks of collection calls.
Pick a billing schedule and stick to it. First of the month. Every two weeks. Whatever works for your practice. Clients who know when to expect your invoices budget for them. Surprise invoices create friction. Predictable invoices get paid on time. TimeNet Law lets you set billing cycles per client so nothing falls through the cracks.
Email delivery beats paper mail by about two weeks in average payment time. The client gets the invoice instantly, reviews it on their phone, and can pay the same day. Paper invoices sit in mailboxes, get buried on desks, and add friction to every step. If you are still printing and mailing invoices, you are leaving money on the table and wasting your own time.
Nobody likes chasing payments. But a structured follow-up system takes the awkwardness out of it. At 30 days, send a friendly reminder. At 60 days, make a phone call. At 90 days, have the harder conversation. The key is consistency. Clients who know you follow up learn to pay on time. TimeNet Law's accounts receivable tracking shows you aging invoices at a glance so nothing slips past 90 days unnoticed.
A $15,000 invoice can stall a client for months. But three payments of $5,000 feel manageable. For larger matters, proactively offer a payment schedule. You get cash flow. The client gets flexibility. Everyone wins. Just make sure the arrangement is documented and you track each installment.
Nothing erodes client trust faster than a billing error. Review every invoice before it goes out. Check for duplicate entries, incorrect rates, or vague descriptions. TimeNet Law includes a pre-bill review screen that lets you edit, adjust, or remove entries before the invoice is finalized. Catch errors before your client does.
Print this list. Pin it above your desk. These habits are worth more than any software feature. But the right software makes every one of them easier. That is the point.
The distance between tracked time and a sent invoice should be as short as possible. In TimeNet Law, it is one click.
Select the client. Choose the date range. Click generate. TimeNet Law pulls every unbilled time entry and expense, formats them into a professional invoice with your firm branding, and shows you a preview. Review it. Adjust anything that needs adjusting. Send it as a PDF by email. Done.
Most attorneys bill all their clients at once, usually at the end of the month. TimeNet Law's batch billing feature lets you generate invoices for every active client in a single pass. Select all unbilled work, review each invoice in sequence, and send them out. Most solo practitioners finish their entire monthly billing in under 30 minutes.
No copy-pasting from a spreadsheet. No manually formatting Word documents. No logging into a browser-based app that takes 10 seconds to load every page. TimeNet Law is a native Mac application. It is fast. It works offline. And it makes invoicing the easiest part of your day instead of the most dreaded.
An invoice is not just a document. It is a lifecycle that starts when you pick up the phone and does not end until the money is in your account. TimeNet Law manages every step.
Track time as you work with running timers, or enter it manually at the end of the day. Every entry includes the date, duration, billing rate, task code, and a description. TimeNet Law stores it all, ready for invoicing.
Before generating an invoice, review all unbilled entries. Edit descriptions. Adjust time. Write off entries that should not be billed. This is your quality control step, and it takes minutes.
One click creates a formatted invoice with your firm logo, address, and branding. Time entries are organized by date or task code. Expenses are itemized. Totals are calculated. Trust balances are shown if applicable.
Email the invoice as a PDF directly from TimeNet Law. The macOS PDF engine produces clean, professional documents with proper typography. Your invoice looks polished, not like it came from a spreadsheet.
Record payments as they arrive. Full payments, partial payments, trust drawdowns. TimeNet Law updates the outstanding balance and moves the invoice through your accounts receivable pipeline.
If the client has a trust balance, TimeNet Law applies charges and records the drawdown with a full audit trail. Your IOLTA records stay clean without manual bookkeeping.
Run reports on revenue, outstanding receivables, collection rates, and billing productivity. See which clients pay on time and which ones need follow-up. Use the data to make better business decisions about your practice.
Most invoicing software handles steps 3 and 4. Maybe step 5 if you are lucky. TimeNet Law handles all seven because it was built as a complete practice management system, not just a billing tool. Learn more about the full feature set.
Most legal billing software runs in a web browser. That means every click takes a round trip to a server. Pages load slowly. The interface feels sluggish. And if your internet goes out, you cannot bill at all.
TimeNet Law is a native Mac application. It runs on your machine. Here is what that means in practice.
No browser lag. No spinning wheels. No waiting for servers. Everything happens instantly. Click generate, and the invoice appears. This matters when you are billing 30 clients at the end of the month.
Generate invoices from a courthouse. A client's office. An airplane. Your cabin in the mountains with no Wi-Fi. Your data lives on your Mac. You do not need the internet to bill for your work.
macOS has the best PDF rendering engine in the industry. Your invoices use native system typography and print infrastructure. They look sharp, clean, and professional. Not like something a web app spit out.
Cloud-based invoicing software uploads every invoice, client name, and billing amount to someone else's server. TimeNet Law keeps everything on your Mac. Nobody at TimeNet Law or any third party can see your billing data. Ever.
Private equity firms have bought most of the legal software industry. They move everything to the cloud because it is easier to charge monthly subscriptions and mine your data. TimeNet Law has rejected every buyout offer for 20 years. Your data stays yours. Your price stays fixed. That is the deal.
Let's do the math. These numbers are based on a solo practitioner billing $300 per hour, 1,400 billable hours per year. Conservative estimates.
You have options. Clio, PracticePanther, Smokeball, and a dozen others offer invoicing as part of their cloud-based practice management suites. They work. But there are tradeoffs you should understand before you sign a subscription contract.
Cloud software means your billing data lives on someone else's server. Every invoice, every client name, every dollar amount is stored in a data center you do not control. When private equity acquires the company (and it has acquired most of them), your data becomes part of their asset portfolio.
Cloud software means monthly fees. $49 per month. $79 per month. $129 per month. Per user. Forever. A solo practitioner paying $79/month for Clio spends $948 per year. Over five years, that is $4,740. TimeNet Law costs $479.99 once. You do the math.
Cloud software means dependence. Your internet goes down. The vendor's server goes down. The vendor gets acquired and decides to sunset your plan. You lose access to your own billing data. With TimeNet Law, your data is a file on your Mac. You own it. You control it. Nobody can take it away.
If cloud-based invoicing works for your practice, use it. But know what you are trading away. If you value privacy, independence, and not paying rent on your own software forever, take TimeNet Law for a spin.
Yes. TimeNet Law supports LEDES 1998B billing format, which is the standard required by most corporate legal departments and insurance companies. You can generate LEDES-compliant invoices with a single click and export them electronically.
TimeNet Law tracks trust account balances for each client and automatically applies invoice charges against available trust funds. When you generate an invoice, the software shows the trust balance, applies the charges, and records the drawdown. This keeps you compliant with your state bar's IOLTA requirements.
Yes. TimeNet Law is a native Mac application. All your data lives on your Mac, so you can generate, review, and send invoices whether you have an internet connection or not. Perfect for attorneys who work from courthouses, client offices, or anywhere with unreliable Wi-Fi.
Absolutely. TimeNet Law lets you add your firm logo, customize colors, adjust layouts, and set default text for invoice headers and footers. Your invoices look like they came from a professional design firm, not generic accounting software.
One click. Select the client and date range, click generate, and TimeNet Law pulls all unbilled time entries and expenses into a formatted invoice. You can review and adjust before sending. Most attorneys generate a full month of invoices in under 30 minutes using batch billing.
Yes. TimeNet Law includes full accounts receivable tracking. You can see outstanding invoices at a glance, sort by aging at 30, 60, and 90 days, record partial payments, and run collection reports. You always know exactly who owes you money and for how long.
Yes. TimeNet Law supports split billing across multiple responsible parties, different billing rates per client or matter, flat-fee arrangements, contingency tracking, and blended rates. You can mix billing arrangements within the same client.
Your data stays on your Mac. Period. TimeNet Law does not upload your billing data to any cloud server. No one at TimeNet Law or any third party can see your invoices, client names, or billing amounts. Your practice data is yours alone.
TimeNet Law is a one-time purchase of $479.99. That includes time tracking, invoicing, trust accounting, calendaring, and every other feature. No monthly fees. No per-user charges. No surprise price increases. You can try it free before buying.
TimeNet Law turns time entries into professional invoices in one click. Native Mac app. Works offline. Your data stays private. Try it free and see how fast billing can be.
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