You shouldn't need a second lawyer to read the first one's bill.
Upload your fee agreement and your invoices. BillingLens reads every line against what you agreed to, and shows you the entries worth asking about.
- No card for your first matter
- Your documents stay private
- Low-confidence flags reviewed by an attorney
- Invoice total
- $18,642.50
- Entries
- 64
- Worth asking about
- $4,219.50
| Date | Description | Hrs | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09/02 | Review file; telephone conference with client; draft correspondence re: discoveryR. Kessler · Partner · $425/hrFour separate tasks in one entry. Your agreement requires each task billed separately. | 3.40 | $1,445.00 |
| 09/05 | Organize and index exhibits for depositionM. Ortiz · Paralegal · $165/hrClerical work billed at a professional rate. | 2.80 | $462.00 |
| 09/08 | Attention to fileR. Kessler · Partner · $425/hrToo vague to tell what was done or why. | 1.50 | $637.50 |
| 09/09 | Attend deposition of respondentT. Nowak · Associate · $290/hrSecond timekeeper at the same deposition, already billed by R. Kessler. | 5.00 | $1,450.00 |
| 09/11 | Review correspondence from opposing counselR. Kessler · Partner · $450/hrBilled at $450. Your agreement says $425. | 0.50 | $225.00 |
| 09/12 | Draft and revise responses to respondent's first set of interrogatoriesT. Nowak · Associate · $290/hr | 2.10 | ✓ $609.00 |
Why you can rely on this
Your documents stay yours
Encrypted in transit and at rest. Never sold, never used to train a public model, deletable on request.
A person checks the hard ones
Where the software isn't confident, a billing attorney reviews the finding before you ever see it.
Free for your first matter
One matter, no card, no trial countdown. If nothing turns up, you've lost nothing.
Plain language, always
Every finding says what the entry claims, what your agreement says, and what to ask. No jargon.
Why bills need reading
The State Bar of California tells arbitrators exactly what to look for.
When a client disputes a legal bill in California, an arbitrator decides it. The State Bar publishes a guide teaching them how to spot a padded one. It is a public document, and it names the patterns.
- 10–30%
- How much the State Bar estimates block billing can inflate the time on a bill
- $341
- Average US lawyer hourly rate in 2024, up 28% since 2016
- $16,055
- Average amount in dispute in New York's fee arbitration cases
- 7
- Distinct padding patterns the State Bar guide instructs arbitrators to check
Nobody is checking
Your lawyer's system produced the bill. It has your fee agreement on file as a PDF, not as rules. No software compares one against the other before it reaches you.
Asking feels risky
You are mid-matter and depend on the person who sent the bill. Most people pay it and say nothing, which is exactly why patterns persist.
The detail is the problem
Sixty-four entries, six-minute increments, abbreviations. The issues are real but they are buried in arithmetic nobody has time to do by hand.
Sources: State Bar of California Arbitration Advisory 2016-02, Analysis of Potential Bill Padding, and Advisory 2003-01 for the 10–30% estimate. Hourly rate from the Clio Legal Trends Report 2024. Dispute average from the New York Attorney-Client Fee Dispute Resolution Program 2024 annual report.
How it works
Three things to do. About ten minutes.
Upload your fee agreement
The engagement letter you signed. BillingLens pulls out the terms that matter: hourly rates per person, what counts as a billable expense, who has to approve what, how time is meant to be recorded. You see the extracted terms and can correct anything we read wrong.
Send your invoices in
Upload a PDF or forward the email your firm sent. Scans and photos are fine. Every line item is read out and matched against the terms from step one, plus the patterns the State Bar guide describes.
Read the findings and decide
Each finding quotes the entry, quotes your agreement, and explains the gap in a sentence. You choose what to raise. When you want to raise it, BillingLens drafts the message to your firm, tracks the reply, and re-reads any corrected invoice they send back.
What a finding looks like
Every finding shows its work.
You get the entry as written, the clause it conflicts with, the amount involved, and a question you can actually ask. Nothing is asserted without the evidence next to it.
Four tasks share a single 3.40-hour total, so there is no way to tell how long any one of them took. A ten-minute phone call and two hours of drafting look identical here. The State Bar's guide to arbitrators treats this as the most common padding pattern and estimates it inflates time by 10% to 30%.
"Could you break the 09/02 entry into separate lines per task, as §4(b) of our agreement provides? I'd like to understand how the 3.4 hours was spent."
What we check
Arithmetic first. Judgment second.
The checks below are deterministic. They compare numbers and dates to the terms you agreed, so the result is the same every time and can be shown to anyone. Language checks run afterwards and are marked separately.
- Rate above your agreement
Every timekeeper's billed rate against the rate your engagement letter sets for their role.
Billed $450 · agreed $425 · 0.50 hrs - Block billing
Several tasks compressed into one time entry, where your agreement requires them separated.
4 tasks · one 3.40 hr total - Entries too vague to verify
Wording that does not say what was done, such as "attention to file" or "work on case".
"attention to file" · 1.50 hrs - Duplicate charges
The same work appearing twice, across entries or across invoices in different months.
Same description · 08/14 and 09/03 - Two people, one event
More than one timekeeper billing the same call, hearing or deposition.
Partner + associate · same deposition - Clerical work at professional rates
Filing, indexing, scheduling and copying billed at attorney or paralegal rates.
"organize and index exhibits" · $165/hr - Increment and rounding
Entries that don't match the increment your agreement specifies, and suspiciously round totals.
8.00, 9.00, 10.00 recurring - Expenses outside the agreement
Copy charges, mileage, travel and filing fees checked against what you agreed to reimburse and at what rate.
$0.75/page · agreement silent - Arithmetic
Hours times rate against the line total, line totals against the invoice total, and every carried balance.
Line total off by $27.50 - Work you didn't authorize
Tasks your agreement says need your approval first, appearing without any record of it.
Expert retained · §7 approval required - Recycled drafting
Identical or near-identical narratives recurring at full time, suggesting template work billed as new.
Same 14-word phrase · 6 entries - Time that doesn't fit the matter
Entries dated outside the engagement, or referring to parties and issues not in your case.
Entry dated before retainer signed
Where a human steps in
Software is confident about numbers. It should say so when it isn't.
Comparing a billed rate to an agreed rate is arithmetic, and BillingLens will always be right about it. Judging whether 6.2 hours of research was reasonable is not arithmetic, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
So every finding carries a confidence score. Below the threshold, it goes to a billing attorney who reviews it before it reaches you. They can confirm it, rewrite it, or throw it out. You see what a person concluded, not what a model guessed.
Rate, arithmetic, dates, duplicates, increments
Deterministic comparisons against your agreement. Shown to you immediately, with the clause quoted.
Reasonableness, vagueness, staffing judgment
Held back until a billing attorney has read the entry in context and decided whether it's worth your attention.
Whether you have a legal claim
Not a question software should answer, and not one BillingLens answers. That is what your own lawyer, or a bar fee arbitrator, is for.
If talking doesn't settle it
Your state bar will arbitrate a fee dispute, usually for free.
Most people don't know this, so we'll say it plainly even though it's not a BillingLens product. In California and New York, if you ask for fee arbitration, your lawyer generally has to take part. In Florida the arbitrator costs nothing. The result is binding.
Start with a conversation
Most billing questions are answered by the firm without any of this. A specific, well-evidenced question usually gets a specific answer, and often a corrected invoice.
Then your state bar
Search your state bar for "fee arbitration" or "fee dispute resolution". New York's program covers disputes from $1,000 to $50,000. California's runs without you hiring another lawyer.
Where BillingLens fits
Arbitration needs evidence: the entries, the clause each one conflicts with, the amounts. That is what your findings report already is. Export it and bring it.
Fee arbitration rules and costs vary by state, and some programs exclude certain matters. Check the rules for your own bar. BillingLens is not affiliated with any bar association.
Pricing
Your first matter costs nothing.
Most people only ever need one. If you have one legal matter and a handful of invoices, that is the free tier and it does not expire.
- One fee agreement, one matter
- Every check, including attorney-reviewed ones
- Findings report you can export
- No card, no expiry
- Unlimited matters and invoices
- Month-on-month comparison across invoices
- Drafted messages to your firm, with replies tracked
- Cancel any month
- Review pre-bills before you invoice
- Your client's billing guidelines encoded as rules
- Decision log on every entry
- Seats billed only for people recording time
Rather be walked through it
Stop guessing. Start reviewing.
Book a quick, no-pressure walkthrough. We read one of your invoices against your agreement while you watch, and you keep the findings report either way.
- Live walk-through of an invoice review
- See where the deterministic checks fire, and where a human takes over
- Ask our billing experts anything about your own bill
Questions people actually ask
Before you upload anything.
Is this legal advice?
No. BillingLens compares your invoices against your own fee agreement and reports where they appear to differ. It does not tell you whether a charge is legally improper, whether you're owed money, or what to do about it. It is not a law firm, it is not a substitute for a lawyer, and it does not represent you. When a finding needs legal judgment, we say so and stop there.
Will my lawyer find out I'm using it?
Not from us. We never contact your firm without you asking. If you decide to raise a finding, BillingLens drafts the message and you send it from your own email, in your own words, with as much or as little of our wording as you want.
What if my lawyer has done nothing wrong?
That's a common and good result. Plenty of bills come back with nothing worth raising, and the report says so. Knowing the bill holds up is worth something, and on the free tier it costs you nothing to find out.
What documents do I need?
Your signed fee agreement or engagement letter, and at least one invoice. PDFs, scans and phone photos all work. Without the agreement we can still run the pattern checks, but we can't compare anything to what you agreed, which is where most of the value is.
What happens to my documents?
They're encrypted in transit and at rest, visible only to you and to the reviewing attorney when a finding needs review. We don't sell data, and we don't use your documents to train public models. You can delete a matter and its files at any time.
Does it work for any kind of legal matter?
It works wherever you're billed by the hour with itemised entries, which in practice means contested divorce and family matters, probate and trust disputes, and civil litigation. It doesn't apply to contingency arrangements, where you pay a share of the recovery, or to flat-fee work, where there are no time entries to check.
I'm a law firm. Can we use it on our own bills first?
Yes, and some do. Same engine, pointed at your draft invoice before it goes out, against your client's billing guidelines rather than a consumer fee agreement.
For law firms
Reviewing your own pre-bill before it goes out?
If your clients are insurers or companies with written billing guidelines, the same engine reads your draft invoice against their rules and shows your billing attorney what a bill reviewer will find. One screen, keyboard-driven, with every decision logged.