LedesKit: LEDES 1998B invoices without a full practice-management suite

Many corporate and insurance clients will not pay a PDF invoice. They require a LEDES 1998B file — a 24-field, pipe-delimited ASCII format with a header row and [] terminators — uploaded to their e-billing portal. If your firm already lives in Clio, Filevine, or similar, export is a menu click. If you are a solo or small firm still billing from spreadsheets or Word, that click does not exist.

Free Windows utilities exist (often little-known and platform-locked). Enterprise suites solve it as part of a larger subscription. The gap is a focused, browser-based builder that produces a valid .LED file without uploading matter data to a vendor.

What you get

• Invoice header fields (client ID, matter IDs, firm ID, billing period)
• Fee and expense line items with UTBMS task, activity, and expense codes
• Validation before download (required IDs, line math, type rules)
• Preview of the exact file · CSV import · import existing .LED files
• Firm defaults for tax ID / timekeeper · sample invoice · local-only storage

Honest limits

LedesKit is not affiliated with LEDES.org and is not a full time-and-billing system. Portals differ: some require firm-specific identifiers or restricted code lists. Always confirm against the client’s e-billing guidelines before treating an export as final.

Also shipping

If you work in construction progress billing rather than legal e-billing, see DrawBook — local-first schedule-of-values pay apps.