Time and billing

Bill the work you actually did.

Record time against a case while you work rather than reconstructing it at the end of the month.

Itemised timesheets and fee notes flow straight to the instructing firm. Because the time is captured alongside the document activity that supports it, the billing is evidenced rather than estimated, which is exactly what a costs draftsman needs.

Where it fits

Billing that the costs draftsman can simply pass on.

Time reconstructed at month end is an estimate. Time captured as you work, against the document activity that supports it, is evidence.

Recording against the case in the moment means the fee note reflects the work actually done, line by line, rather than a rounded guess. Because the time sits alongside the records you opened and the report you drafted, it stands up at a detailed assessment, and the instructing firm receives an itemised note they can hand to the costs draftsman without a round of queries.

Day to day

A fee note the firm can pass on without a query.

Most disputes over an expert's fees are not really about the rate. They are about whether the time can be explained. A round number recorded weeks after the work invites the question.

Recording against the case as you work produces an itemised note where each line corresponds to something that happened on the file. The instructing firm receives a fee note their costs draftsman can submit without coming back to ask what a given entry covered, because the entry sits alongside the records you opened and the report sections you drafted. At a detailed assessment, that link between the time claimed and the document activity behind it is what makes the time recoverable. The practical effect is fewer awkward conversations about billing and a faster route from work done to fee paid, which is in everyone's interest including the client funding the case.

The fee note is written weeks after the work, and it shows.

Time reconstructed from memory is both inaccurate and hard to defend.

Most experts record time the way most professionals do, which is to say afterwards, from a diary and a rough sense of how the week went. The result is systematically wrong in one direction: the long afternoon on the records is remembered, the forty minutes on a supplementary question is not, and the total is lower than the work actually took. It is also fragile. When a costs draftsman or a paying party asks what a particular entry covers, an answer assembled from memory months later is exactly the kind of answer that invites a challenge. Recording against the case as the work happens removes both problems at once, and it takes less time than reconstructing the same information later.

What the firm needs to see.

An itemised fee note that can be passed on without a query is worth more than a faster one.

The instructing firm is rarely the party that ultimately pays, which means your fee note has to survive being read by someone with an interest in reducing it. What makes that easy is not brevity but evidence: entries that name the task, sit against the case, and can be traced to the document activity behind them. When the work is recorded as it happens and the file holds the record of what was done, the itemised note is a summary of something rather than an assertion about it. That is the practical difference at a detailed assessment, and it is the reason evidenced billing tends to be paid rather than argued over.