The 6 Best Time Tracking Software for Lawyers: Our Top 2024 Picks

Billable hours are the holy grail for legal professionals. But, with many firms seeing fee income write-offs rising to more than 15% in 2023, accurate time entries are fast becoming the difference between thriving and surviving.

Time tracking software is the secret to mastering billable hours. By incorporating timesheets, case management, expense tracking, and invoicing functionality, your tool of choice promises to simplify and streamline your entire billable hours workflow.

But how do you choose the best time tracking tool for lawyers? Luckily, we’ve done all the heavy lifting by comparing six of the best time tracking software tools on the market. We’ll break down the features, integrations, pricing, and pros and cons of each to select the best time tracking software for you!

Overview of the best time tracking software for lawyers

Short on time? Here’s how the six best time tracking tools shape up:

• Toggl Track. Easy-to-use, on-the-move time tracking that enables data-backed decision-making. Best for highly accurate time tracking, with a free plan for up to five users.
• Harvest. Time-tracking that leans towards fast invoicing and payments. Great for those looking for easy cost management, with a free account for one user working on two projects.
• Clockify. Simple time tracking built on a clean and simple interface, with a focus on team attendance. Best for low budgets thanks to its generous free plan.
• Timely. AI-backed activity tracking generates instant automated time sheets. This is a different approach from competitors, starting at $9 per user/mo.
• Everhour. Time tracking and project management combined. Integrates with other well-known tools and is free for up to five users.
• Clio. A full-service legal tool that also includes time tracking. It’s well-respected in the legal industry but comes at a high cost, from £39 per user/mo, as part of a broader package.

Essential time tracking features for legal professionals

Even though no two law firms are the same, the need to track billable activities is universal. Regardless of your specific use case, here are some essential features to look for in a time tracking app worth its salt.

Tracking billable hours

Tracking billable activities is the name of the game in the legal industry, so look for a tool with:

• Multiple ways to track billable time. Whether it’s manual time inputs, automatic in-app tracking, or other integrations, look for software that adapts to a lawyer’s busy, on-the-go schedule.
• Active and passive time tracking. Legal professionals are often too busy to focus on admin. To capture detailed time information, look for a mix of active and passive time tracking features.
• The ability to track time across devices. Client work isn’t limited to the walls of your law practice. Whether it’s out-of-hours phone calls, emails on the train, or off-site meetings, select software that works seamlessly across various Android, iOS, and Windows devices.

Managing invoicing and payments

Turn your firm’s time into money in the bank. Look for a tool that:

• Generates accurate invoices. Convert hard work into cash with accurate client invoices created by features that seamlessly connect your time tracking and accounting needs.
• Gets you paid faster. Beat fee income write-offs by turning invoices into fast online payments. This boosts profitability and keeps your end-to-end workflow ticking over.

Running reports & analytics

Detailed time tracking needs powerful analytics. The best time tracking tools should also produce:

• Detailed time and hours reports. Large, complex client relationships involve a mix of billable and non-billable hours. Pull apart detailed time data for simple and intuitive reporting features.
• Client, project, or free earner-level insights. Legal time tracking looks different from firm to firm. So, find a time tracking tool that makes tracking data simple, no matter the client, project, or fee earner involved.

Integrations with other legal tools

Timesheets are just one part of the billing workflow. Some of the most popular integrations include:

• Case management and project management. Linking the work you do with the hours you record is fundamental for accurate timekeeping. Continue working with your preferred legal tech stack by seeking easy integrations with your existing case management or project management tools.
• Invoicing, payments, and expenses. The legal time tracking process isn’t complete unless you get paid. If your firm already uses finance systems, make sure they can talk to your chosen time tracking tool.

Security and compliance

You’ll be dealing with sensitive legal data every day, so look for tools that:

• Use cloud-based data management. A secure, cloud-based tool keeps your data safe and accessible, no matter where you are.
• Have a zero surveillance policy. Let’s face it, no one likes being watched. Make sure your chosen legal billing software allows you to track time without spying on anyone.

Ease of use and user experience

Tracking billable hours can be time-consuming, which is why you should look for a timekeeping tool with:

• A clean user interface. Your team members will be jumping from client to client and project to project. To make the journey enjoyable, pick a tool with a clean and intuitive user interface.
• Customizable workflows. Whether you need bespoke billing rates, automatic time capture, or real-time reporting, we recommend a tool that can be customized to your workflow. After all, if it doesn’t quite fit your billing process, your team won’t want to use it.

An in-depth look at the best legal time tracking software

Now it’s time to dive into the market and compare the six best time tracking tools for legal professionals. The tools and their rankings are based on an in-depth look at their features, pricing, and ease of use, as well as reviews from real customers worldwide.

1. Toggl Track

💡 Key features

Toggl Track is time-tracking software with a range of features to simplify the lives of lawyers, attorneys, and other legal professionals. It’s extremely easy to use and highly accurate, enabling you to make data-backed business decisions based on where you’re spending your time.

Toggl Track’s key features include:

• Multi-platform time tracking from your desktop, phone, or the web, alongside a handy Chrome browser extension to track time from inside other workplace tools
• Smart integrations with 100+ other platforms, such as Slack, OneDrive, and Quickbooks
• GDPR compliance with high-grade data security features such as admin rights and audit checking
• Tracking reminders, alerts, and required fields which cut down admin work and automate your end-to-end billing workflows

⚖️ Pros and cons

You’ll love Toggl Track’s:

• Features which are built to create a more focused, productive, and aligned company
• Analytics for flexible, customized and easily visualized data analysis
• Fast and human support, maximizing the value you receive from Toggl Track

You may struggle with:

• Toggl Track’s lack of surveillance and employee monitoring features because we believe in trusting employees and respecting their privacy

💰 Pricing

Alongside a free plan for up to five users, Toggl Track’s pricing model offers three additional tiers:

Plan	Pricing	Best For
Starter	$9/user per month	Small teams that work quickly without a lot of overhead
Premium	$18/user per month	Those looking for powerful tools to ensure growing teams are aligned and agile
Enterprise	Custom	Companies looking for tailored solutions for a larger organization

💬 Why customers love it

“Toggl makes it extremely easy for me to track time spent on various tasks/projects/clients. In comparing several time-tracking tools, Toggl ended up being the clear winner.”—A small business user

“Toggl is very simple to use and extremely helpful when invoicing clients. It’s nice to see what employees are working on, where we are on a project’s estimated time, and specific tasks within that project.”—Amanda C., a small business president

👍 Recommended for…

Toggl Track is best for busy lawyers who want to maximize their practice’s profitability and efficiency by choosing a highly intuitive tracking system with robust reporting capabilities.

2. Harvest

💡 Key features

Harvest offers frictionless time tracking, invoicing, and reporting that allows legal professionals to focus on their clients rather than timesheets. The software covers the entire billing process, streamlining the way billable hours produce cash for the business.

Harvest’s key features include:

• Basic time tracking through the web, mobile app, and handy browser-based extensions
• Instant customer payments based on time entries and hourly rates
• Upfront client retainers that integrate with payment tools such as PayPal and Stripe
• The ability to set hourly or fixed fee budgets for each project and get instant alerts when budgets are reached

⚖️ Pros and cons

You’ll love Harvest’s:

• The simple user interface which makes it easy for organizations to pick Harvest up quickly
• Expense tracking features that create a full financial picture
• The simple cost structure

You may struggle with:

• Limited ability to customize the system, leading to parts feeling a bit clunky and unnecessary
• Limited reporting capabilities, especially in invoicing and expense management

💰 Pricing

Harvest has a simple two-tier price structure:

Plan	Pricing	Features
Harvest	Free	One seat and two projects
Harvest Pro	Starting at $10.80/user per month	All features

💬 Why customers love it

“Harvest is simply a time tracker for projects. It’s simple and easy to use. It integrates where I need it to. It doesn’t try to be more than a time tracker. It just stays in its lane, does so with excellence, and doesn’t cause problems.” —Daniel C., a small business user

“Harvest is super simple and easy to use. I love that you can set a time limit on specific projects and visually see how much you’ve gone over. Having the costs and percentages visible is helpful as well. ” —Annika H., an associate

👍 Recommended for…

Harvest is best for those looking to turn hours into invoices, expense reports, and fast client payments.

3. Clockify

💡 Key features

Clockify is one of the world’s most used time tracking applications. It is focused on capturing accurate timesheets with ease. Clockify offers a forever free policy for basic use cases or more powerful features for paid users.

Clockify’s key features include:

• A simple timesheet interface makes it easy to track productivity, costs, and billable hours
• A built-in calendar to visually block out and manage time
• Dedicated features for attendance to monitor who’s working and who isn’t
• Client profitability functionality to track billable and non-billable hours, how much you’ve earned, and download data for invoicing

⚖️ Pros and cons

You’ll love Clockify’s:

• Super simple interface
• Real-time time tracking insights to see how many billable hours have been worked versus targets or budgets
• In-browser tracking extension, easy for busy legal professionals to install, use, and operate.

You may struggle with:

• Outside of core time tracking, Clockify’s functionality is limited.
• Regular reports of system bugs can lead to inaccurate timesheets.
• The support from Clockify can be patchy, including difficulties navigating FAQ’s and knowledge articles.

💰 Pricing

Alongside Clockify’s famous free offering, there are tiers for:

Plan	Pricing	Features
Standard	$5.49 per seat/month	Additional billing and expense management on top of the free plan
Pro	$7.99 per seat/month	Wider profit and productivity features
Enterprise	$11.99 per seat/month	All Pro features alongside additional security controls such as SSO
Bundle Productivity Suite	$12.99 per seat/month	Time tracking, team communication, and project management features

💬 Why customers love it

“Our fully remote company needed a simple, easy to implement and use solution for collating our project hours only. Clockify’s UI is simple and clear, and it’s easy to find anything you need. The cost for us was important, and we found Clockify to be really good value for our money.” —Jeff K., an operations user

“Clockify makes precise time and activity logging very easy. We can quickly and easily separate our hours by projects and individual tasks. With tangible and illustrative data, we may also create personalized reports and assess team productivity.” —Crystal D., a manager

👍 Recommended for…

Clockify is great for those looking for simple time tracking at a cost-effective price point—especially if you’re interested in attendance, too.

4. Timely

💡 Key features

Timely helps you unlock business insights using automated time and activity tracking. Unlike other time tracking tools, Timely automatically tracks your activities as “memories,” revealing when and where your time was used.

Clockify’s key features include:

• AI-generated timesheets based on memories
• A choice of billable and non-billable rates to easily control client vs. non-client time
• A people dashboard to view team capacity, bottlenecks, and other key data
• A sleek, modern design to boost team buy-in

⚖️ Pros and cons

You’ll love Timely’s:

• AI-based time tracking on a desktop device—no starting or stopping timers required
• Memories to retrospectively manage timesheets and client records
• Detailed insight and analytics to manage billings and boost productivity

You may struggle with:

• Clunky integrations, leading to inaccurate time calculations and errors
• Exporting data to finance systems, which is tricky and unreliable
• High pricing

💰 Pricing

Timely offers a free trial but no free plan. Instead, it has three tiers, plus an Enterprise plan available for those interested in custom pricing:

Plan	Pricing	Features
Starter	$9 per user/month	Essential time tracking, AI assistance, and in-app support
Premium	$16 per user/month	Covers broader team management, budgeting, and costs
Unlimited	$22 per user/month	All Premium features, with additional time types, currencies, and integrations

💬 Why customers love it

“Timely makes my billing very accurate especially as a lawyer where every minute matters. I really like that I can get a whole summary with graphs and a pie chart of where my time was utilized. I can compare daily or monthly reports.”—Michael D., a candidate attorney

“I recommend this to absolutely every single new associate who comes to the firm and have used it for years since I found it—4 firms ago. It is extremely easy to use, the full print out detailed reports are very helpful. Also being able to enter past time in minute increments (ex: .6) is great for a lawyer.” —Tiffany S., an associate attorney

👍 Recommended for…

Timely is perfect for those with a higher budget looking to link time tracking and team productivity together.

5. Everhour

💡 Key features

Everhour is all about simple time tracking and project management integrations. It combines time sheeting, task management, and planning to create an overall productivity tool. It even integrates with Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp to keep all your work in one place.

Everhour’s key features include:

• Simple time tracking across browser and mobile devices
• Quick timesheet approvals
• Reminders and auto-stop timers to support accurate team time tracking

⚖️ Pros and cons

You’ll love Everhour’s:

• Simple, one-click time tracking on web and mobile apps
• Seamless integrations to market-leading project management and finance systems
• Simple interface that’s easy to set up and use day-to-day

You may struggle with:

• Limited features to turn hours worked into billable hours and cash in the bank
• Reporting is limited, making it difficult to break time entries down by client or project

💰 Pricing

Everhour has two pricing tiers:

Plan	Pricing	Features
Free	Free	Up to five seats with basic time tracking, projects, and tasks
Team	$8.50 per user/month	Additional integrations, budgeting, and expense management features (minimum five seats required)

💬 Why customers love it

“The easy way to integrate these with CRM’s like Asana and ClickUp. Time can be added individually or in batches per week. You can also track time off and select if those are holidays, sick leave, paid or unpaid time.”—A small business user

“Everhour is extremely easy to use. I just click the timer for general tasks like checking messages. I can allocate time to different clients because it integrates with projects from Asana.”—Bridget B., a mid-market user

👍 Recommended for…

Everhour is a good fit those who need to integrate their timesheets with project management tools.

6. Clio

💡 Key features

Clio is one of the world’s leading legal case management systems, working to simplify law firm’s billing, communication, and document management needs. As part of this, Clio also offers time tracking, helping legal professionals record their billable and non-billable tasks.

Clio’s key features include:

• A timer clock within Clio’s browser and mobile applications to track time exactly where you are
• The ability to track time entries through to payment with invoicing and online payments
• Links to other legal expenses such as disbursements to your day-to-day time entries
• Separate non-billable work to drive profitability across client account

⚖️ Pros and cons

You’ll love Clio’s:

• Simple time tracking and time sheeting to record billable and non-billable hours
• Time entries, case files, and invoices linked together in one place
• Reputation as a well-used platform by legal professionals

You may struggle with:

• The outdated user interface compared to other time tracking tools
• Limited integrations with other platforms for finance and project management
• Clio operating as part of a broader package rather than a standalone time tracking tool

💰 Pricing

Clio’s full-service legal software package has four tiers:

Plan	Pricing	Features
EasyStart	$39 per user/month	Basic legal case management
Essentials	$79 per user/month	Adds client collaboration and integrations
Advanced	$109 per user/month	Full case management and client onboarding
Complete	$139 per user/month	Enterprise legal practice management software

💬 Why customers love it

“Attorneys who are not technologically inclined and have very little time to learn, can learn on the go. It is intuitive, easy to use, and makes sense.” —Jose Rafael G., a managing partner

“I have been using Clio for several years now and have found it to be incredibly helpful. My primary use is for time tracking and billing. A process that I used to hate that took me all day – but now I zip through monthly billing in less than an hour.” —Michael A., an attorney

👍 Recommended for…

Legal professionals looking for an all-in-one tool, including time tracking capabilities.

How to choose the right time tracking software for your law firm

Before you speak with different billing software providers, you need to understand your firm’s needs. Specifically, take the time to consider:

• What features do you actually need? Time tracking tools are packed full of functionality, but you probably don’t need them all. Alongside the power to track time and bill clients, consider if you also need help with case management, invoicing, expense tracking, or time management.
• When will your team need access? Office-based employees may be just fine with a cloud-based tool, but those on the road could also benefit from a real-time mobile app to make time entries easier to process.
• Which other systems do you need to talk to? Your end-to-end workflow will likely sit across multiple legal practice management software tools. If that’s the case for you, integrations are another top requirement for your list.
• How will the tool improve your profitability? With PwC reporting that 44% of top firms have falling profits, your time tracking software must strengthen your bottom line. Being clear on your budget and pricing point helps here, as does being clear on features that will actually drive a return on investment.

Common mistakes to avoid when selecting a legal time tracking software

Wondering what to avoid when selecting a legal time tracking tool? Here are our customer success team’s three top tips:

• Don’t scrimp on anti-surveillance. Teams don’t mind tracking their time so long as they don’t feel like they’re being watched. Promote anti-surveillance to ensure you get full user engagement.
• Don’t ignore security and compliance requirements. As your team tracks their time, they’ll capture other sensitive data along the way. Make sure any tool you choose complies with local privacy laws and regulations.
• Avoid a steep learning curve. Legal professionals are busy people; they simply don’t have time to learn a complex software tool. Plump for a tool with a simple, easy-to-use interface to track time entries straight away!

So…what’s the best timekeeping software for legal professionals?

Choosing the right time tracking tool for lawyers can feel like a maze, with each tool offering its own mix of time sheeting, case management, invoicing, expense tracking, and time management.

If you’re looking for time tracking software that’s easy to use, highly accurate, integrates with your existing systems, and offers great support, check out Toggl Track. 

We support legal professionals with tracking their time and making data-backed decisions that improve client satisfaction while boosting their profitability. 

Sounds good, right? Try Toggl Track for free and see for yourself how we make tracking billable hours a walk in the park. No credit card required!