The Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard is a set of file format specifications intended to facilitate electronic data transmission in the legal industry. The phrase is abbreviated LEDES and is usually pronounced as "leeds". The LEDES specifications are maintained by the LEDES Oversight Committee, which was formed by the Law Firm and Law Department Services Group within PricewaterhouseCoopers. Members of the committee have included law firms, corporate legal departments, universities, and software vendors. The LOC was first informally created in 1995 to address e-billing issues and then incorporated as a California mutual-benefit nonprofit corporation in 2000. The LOC currently maintains four sets of data elements and four data exchange format types. The four sets of data elements are: activity codes; expense codes; timekeeper classification codes; and Uniform Task-Based Management System codes. The four data exchange format types are: electronic billing ; budgeting; timekeeper attributes; and intellectual propertymatter management. The LOC recently announced a business partnership with , a legal billing software provider. The two organizations will work together to create web-based content to aid law firms, vendors and corporate clients in the electronic billing process.
The electronic billing data exchange format types provide a standard data format for electronically transmitted invoices, typically from a law firm to a corporate client. The LEDES e-billing format currently has the following variations:
LEDES 1998, the first "LEDES" format, created in 1998, but no longer in use.
LEDES 1998B, a pipe-delimited plain text file. The standard was adopted in 1998, and it is by far the more commonly used LEDES format. It lacks some flexibility, having a rigid structure. Another disadvantage of LEDES 1998B is that invoice-level data is repeated on every line item even though it is only needed once, as it does not vary per line. Many clients attempt to impose nonstandard customizations, thus defeating the purpose of having a standard. Nonetheless, law firms prefer it for its simplicity and familiarity.
LEDES XML2000, adopted in 2000, is an XML format. Adoption was slow, but is now fairly widespread. One advantage of LEDES 2000 is that although the structure is well defined, the specification defines "extend" segments, allowing the insertion of client-specific fields without breaking the format or violating the standard.
LEDES 1998BI, a pipe-delimited plain text file, based on the LEDES 1998B standard. This format was designed to accommodate legal bills generated outside of the United States. It includes all of the fields in the LEDES 1998B format, plus additional ones. The format was proposed in 2004 by the Legal IT Innovators Group. The LEDES Oversight Committee ratified the format in 2006.
LEDES XML2.0, ratified in 2006 and addresses international needs in XML format. Contains 15 segments and 153 data elements.
LEDES XML2.1, ratified in 2008. Contains 16 segments and 191 data elements.
Other data exchange formats
The other LEDES data exchange formats are as follows:
LEDES Budget was ratified in 2006. This XML format facilitates the exchange of budget data between law firms and clients.
LEDES Timekeeper Attribute was ratified in 2007 and revised in 2014. This XML format used to transmit timekeeper and rate data to from law firms to clients.
In April 2006, the UTBMS Update Initiative voted to merge into the LEDES Oversight Committee. The Uniform Task-Based Management System is a widely used system for coding legal work.
