In 1995 PriceWaterhouse convened a consortium of leading legal industry time and billing system and case management system vendors in order to define a standard electronic billing format for use by the legal industry. In 2000 the informal LEDES consortium incorporated as a non-profit mutual benefit corporation.

LEDES is now more than just an ebilling standard. Today there are five ebilling standards, and others for the exchange of budgeting and timekeeper information. Another standard is under development for the exchange of IP matter information. Most importantly, the LEDES standards are a globally recognized industry-specific EDI standard for eInvoicing.

Unchanged for 6 years since 2008 is the LEDES XML Ebilling Versio. 2.1 format. The LEDES XML Ebilling Ver 2.1 format includes 191 data elements within 16 segments. The format documentation was revised in August, 2014 to the extent that timekeeper classifications are referenced in the document.

Downloads:

• LEDES_XML_E-Billing_2-1_Rev-7-2014.xls (9 downloads)
• LEDES-21-XSD.zip (9 downloads)   click and open the XSD file without having an XML editor. Note that no sample files are currently available for this format.
• XML-E-Billing-2.1-White-Paper.pdf (8 downloads)   Be sure to download the Ebilling XML 2.1 Whitepaper to learn more about changes in this format including specifically tax support.