Glossary
Billing leakage
Billable time that was performed but not captured, not entered, or not billed — and therefore never invoiced.
Definition
What is billing leakage?
Billing leakage is billable time performed by a lawyer or timekeeper that does not make it into the billing system — and therefore is never invoiced. It is the gap between the billable work that actually occurred and the work that was captured, entered, and billed. Billing leakage is not fraud and it is not error — it is simply time that was never recorded.
Why it matters
Why billing leakage matters for law firm revenue
Billing leakage is direct revenue loss. Every hour of billable work that is not captured is an hour the firm cannot invoice. Industry research suggests lawyers lose a meaningful amount of billable time per day to leakage — typically in the form of short phone calls, quick document reviews, informal advice conversations, and tasks completed between meetings that never generate a time entry.
The cumulative effect compounds significantly. For a lawyer billing at $350 per hour who misses 6–30 minutes per day in uncaptured billable work, the annual revenue lost per attorney can be substantial. Across a small firm with multiple timekeepers, billing leakage represents a persistent and structurally predictable source of revenue loss.
Billing leakage is not primarily a discipline problem — it is a friction problem. When the effort required to log a time entry is high, small tasks get skipped. When the entry system is not accessible in the moment the work occurs, the opportunity to capture is lost before the entry session begins.
CaseClock
How CaseClock reduces billing leakage
Voice-first capture reduces billing leakage by reducing the friction to log time in the moment. A 20-second voice entry immediately after a task — before the next one begins — captures the work while the detail is still fresh. The categories of work most commonly affected by leakage — phone calls, corridor conversations, brief reviews — are precisely the categories where a low-friction mobile capture habit makes the most difference.
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