Everhour embeds time tracking in legal workflows, while attorney billing still depends on clear increments, rates, and review.
Track billable vs. non-billable time and see your real utilization rate and revenue potential in seconds.
Working hours in the period
Admin, meetings, internal work
Industry average is 75–80%
The calculator gives you the number — Everhour takes it from there.
One click and you're timing. Start a timer, add an entry, edit the details. This is exactly how it feels in Everhour.
Set a budget, assign rates, and get alerted before you're over.
Measurement
Track your budget through time or costs
Every report you need — configured your way, always up to date.
Tracked hours flow straight into a polished invoice — no copy-paste, no manual math.
For attorneys, the calculation answers how much billable value a set of legal work entries produces after time is converted to the matter's billing increment and multiplied by the applicable hourly rate. It is useful for checking a draft invoice, measuring pace against an annual requirement, reviewing a matter budget, or separating billable work from administrative time before a client sees the total.
The output is not the same as collected revenue. Billable hours show work captured for billing. Realization shows how much billable work gets invoiced after write-downs. Collection shows how much invoiced work gets paid. Clio's 2025 benchmark reports 38% utilization, 88% realization, and 93% collection across its law-firm dataset, so those stages should stay separate.
Attorney time-based compensation is calculated as rounded billable hours × hourly rate. A common legal increment is 0.1 hour, or six minutes: 1-6 minutes becomes 0.1, 7-12 minutes becomes 0.2, and the pattern continues through 55-60 minutes as 1.0 hour. The fee agreement or engagement terms should state the billing increment and rate before the calculation is used.
For example, an attorney records 78 minutes of research, 132 minutes drafting a motion, and 54 minutes on a client strategy call. At a 0.1-hour increment, those entries become 1.3, 2.2, and 0.9 billable hours. The total is 4.4 billable hours. At a $310 hourly rate, the pre-tax billable amount is $1,364.00.
Many attorneys compare billable hours with an annual requirement, not only with a single invoice. NALP reported an average associate billable-hours requirement of 1,892 hours per year, with 1,800, 1,850, 1,900, 1,950, and 2,000 hours as the most common reported values in its 2015 table. A weekly pace check should use the actual target, working weeks, and approved billable hours.
Do not fold write-downs into the time entry calculation. If 4.4 hours were worked and rounded under the disclosed increment, the billable time remains 4.4 hours before review. If a partner writes the invoice down to 3.8 hours, realization changes, not the original captured time. Keeping both figures lets you see whether the issue is time capture, billing judgment, or client payment.
U.S. attorney billing is normally denominated in USD, but there is no federal VAT/GST or national sales-tax rate for billed professional time. Sales tax treatment is state and local. Some services are not taxed; some jurisdictions tax services or gross receipts. A U.S. billable-hours total therefore needs a jurisdiction-specific tax input only when the legal service is taxable.
The common mistake is adding a default national tax line because the invoice looks incomplete without one. That is wrong for U.S. legal billing. For example, Texas taxes taxable services at a 6.25% state rate with local jurisdictions able to bring the combined rate up to 8.25%, while New Mexico gross receipts tax rates vary by business location from 5.125% to 8.6875%.
A one-off calculation is enough when you are checking a small matter, estimating a draft invoice, or converting a few handwritten entries into tenths of an hour. It is also enough when the rate, increment, matter, and tax treatment are already clear and no approval trail is needed. The result should still match the written basis or rate communicated to the client.
A managed workflow is better when multiple attorneys, paralegals, matters, rates, and write-downs are involved. That is where continuous time capture, billable flags, matter-level review, and an invoicing handoff prevent duplicate entry and lost detail. Everhour can support that workflow by placing tracking controls inside supported project tools and syncing task and project context into one reporting layer.
This content is for general information only, may not be fully up to date, and is provided without any warranty or liability.
High Performer
G2
Summer 2026
Best Ease Of Use
Capterra
Summer 2026
Rated in the top time trackers across G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius — with consistent praise for ease of use, integrations, and support.
Attorneys convert minutes into the billing unit stated for the matter. With a 0.1-hour increment, each six-minute block equals one-tenth of an hour: 1-6 minutes is 0.1, 7-12 minutes is 0.2, and 55-60 minutes is 1.0. The invoice amount is the rounded billable-hour total multiplied by the applicable hourly rate.
For hourly billing, ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 says a lawyer may not bill more time than actually spent except for rounding to disclosed minimum periods such as one-tenth or one-quarter of an hour. The billing increment should be communicated clearly, and the time entry should reflect the work actually performed for the client matter.
Include only approved billable time for the matter, the correct attorney or staff rate, the disclosed billing increment, billable expenses if they belong on the invoice, and any jurisdiction-specific tax input when the service is taxable. Keep non-billable administration, business development, internal training, and written-off time separate so they do not inflate the client-facing total.
Realization does not change the original billable-hours calculation. It measures the share of billable work that is actually invoiced after review and write-downs. If 10.0 hours are recorded and only 8.5 hours are billed to the client, the captured billable time is 10.0 hours and the realized billed time is 8.5 hours.
No. The United States has no federal VAT/GST and no single national sales-tax rate for professional time. Tax treatment is state and local, and some services may not be taxed. Use a jurisdiction-specific tax input only when the legal service is taxable under the applicable state or local rule.
Everhour integrates with tools such as Asana, ClickUp, GitHub, Jira, Monday, Notion, Trello, and others, then embeds tracking controls inside supported workflows. Attorneys and legal operations teams can capture time in the work context while synced project and task metadata flows into Everhour reporting.
Everhour Billing & Invoicing turns tracked billable time and expenses into invoices, calculates amounts from rates and billable time, and excludes non-billable work. Invoice data can be grouped by project, task, person, date, or other available breakdowns before export to QuickBooks Online, Xero, or FreshBooks.
Track attorney time inside supported work tools, keep matter context attached, and move approved billable hours toward reporting and invoices. Everhour connects daily time capture with cleaner billing handoff.
14-day free trial · No credit card · Cancel anytime
