A partner checklist for automatic billable capture

Updated September 20, 2026

A partner at a 15-lawyer firm who wants billable time captured automatically, without a daily timer, needs a checklist for the partners meeting. The useful version is a set of questions you can ask every vendor the same way, plus the product facts you still have to confirm on a demo.

The firm this fits is about 10 to 30 attorneys. Fifteen sits in the middle. The ceiling for this lens is about 50 attorneys, with total headcount up to about 100. You want associates to stop reconstructing the day. You want to keep Clio, or the practice management system you already pay for. You do not want another timer mandate, and you do not want a monitoring product partners will refuse to install.

LegalTime AI is built for that firm. Capture is local-first on the attorney device. Create drafts the entry. Connect releases it only after the attorney approves. Setup is about ten minutes per attorney. The trial is 30 days. Drafts stay with the attorney. A SOC 2 Type II examination is in progress; LegalTime AI is not certified. It sits beside Clio, not in place of it.

The product comparison without this checklist lives on Software to capture billable time automatically. The size notes live on Automatic billable capture for 15-lawyer firms and AI timekeeping for 10-to-30 attorney firms.

What to score before you buy

The question partners actually ask is which software captures billable time automatically, without manual timers, and what the tradeoffs are. Walk the room through these checks.

What you are checking	What you want to hear	What should stop the conversation
No start/stop timer as the daily path	Capture drafts from real work. Pause exists for intentional gaps.	Associates must start a clock for every matter.
Narrative drafts, not just a timeline	Matter, narrative, code, and duration appear as editable drafts.	A raw activity dump with no billable narrative.
A human gate before the system of record	Approve, edit, or discard, then release. No blind sync.	Unsupervised auto-post into Clio.
Privacy partners will accept	Where raw activity lives is clear. Drafts are attorney-only. The product is not monitoring.	Partners can browse drafts. The product smells like spyware.
Beside the system you already pay for	Clio Manage, or a peer, stays. The capture product releases finished entries.	A rip-and-replace of practice management.
Onboarding at about 15 seats	About ten minutes per attorney. Nothing on a firm server.	A week-long install per person.
SOC 2 honesty	Report type and status stated. NDA documents available.	A logo with no report type or date.
Pricing clarity	A quote path is clear. Directory figures are labeled directional.	Invented firm-wide totals or an ROI percentage.

Clio's 2025 Legal Trends figures still explain why the checklist gets opened: utilization 38 percent (about 3.0 billable hours captured), realization 88 percent (about 2.6 invoiced), collection 93 percent (about 2.4 collected). A 15-lawyer firm feels that leakage in collections. Those benchmarks are not an ROI percentage for any product on this page.

ABA Formal Opinion 512 still applies. Competence, confidentiality, oversight. Software drafts. Attorneys stay the gate.

Twelve questions for every demo

Print these. Ask them of LegalTime AI and of every other name on the shortlist.

Capture and timers

Is start/stop the daily path, or does capture draft from activity without a timer mandate?
What happens when the attorney pauses? Is anything recorded while paused?
Does the product produce narrative drafts (matter, narrative, code, duration), or only a timeline?

Privacy and partner politics

Where does raw activity live during drafting? On the local machine, in the vendor cloud, or both?
Who can see drafts before release? Can partners browse associate drafts?
Will the vendor state in writing that this is not a monitoring product?

Practice management and release

Does capture sit beside Clio Manage, or your current system, or does it replace it?
Is release approve-before-post, or can entries sync unsupervised?
Which adapters are live today for your stack?

Trust, SOC 2, pricing, and the pilot

What is the SOC 2 report type and status? Can you see the report under NDA?
What is the per-attorney quote path? Is any directory figure, including G2, only directional?
How long is the pilot on real matters, and how long is per-attorney setup?

What each product actually ships

Confirm Ajax, PointOne, Laurel, and Billables AI on their own materials and on a demo. The cells below are those published facts.

Product	What it does	What to confirm on that vendor's materials
LegalTime AI	Local-first raw activity. No start/stop timer as the daily path. Drafts from real work. One-click pause. Approve-before-release into the practice management system.	Type II examination in progress, not certified. Quoted per attorney on pricing. G2 lists $125 per seat per month as a directional directory note. About ten minutes per attorney. 30-day trial.
Ajax	Screen and content capture across apps, documents, email, calls, and browser. Drafts for release into common practice management tools. Pause available. Outside-counsel-guideline-aware entry drafting.	Capture surface is screen and content processing, which is a different model from local-first raw activity. Ajax's security page states SOC 2 Type II certified. Custom pricing. A roughly two-week, 14-day pilot. Ajax materials claim roughly 12 percent more billable time; that is a vendor claim. Verify pause, purge, and who sees drafts.
PointOne	Passive capture across email, documents, calls, and meetings. States no keystroke logging or screen recording of content. Outside-counsel rules, pre-bill review, and time intelligence on one platform.	Custom pricing. Integrations listed include Aderant, Elite 3E, Clio, and others. Confirm whether the guideline and pre-bill layers are in scope at about 15 lawyers, and how capture behaves on a Clio-only day.
Laurel	Enterprise time intelligence across tools of record: capture, analytics, compliance, and work observability. Bring-your-own-key. ISO 42001. SOC 2 Type 2 claims.	Enterprise sales motion. Custom pricing. Enterprise stack and a Microsoft Marketplace path. Confirm whether a 15-lawyer Clio firm needs the full suite or only timekeeping into the system it already uses.
Billables AI	Workflow and API-style integrations across email, calendar, browser, meetings, and documents. Attorney review before billing. Published tiers of $47, $109, and $169 per user per month.	Live capture depth and guideline handling on a demo. Those tiers are vendor list prices, not a firm-wide quote.
Clio Manage AI	Suggestions from activity already inside Clio Manage.	Useful when the billable day mostly lives in Clio. It does not see off-platform Word, email, research, and calls that never entered Clio. Many Clio firms add a dedicated capture layer. Confirm Clio's own pricing and terms with Clio.
Memtime, WiseTime, MagicTime	Activity timelines or light passive capture, with published or contact-sales pricing.	Reconstruction aids or light tiers, not a full narrative rollout across 15 seats.
BigHand SmartTime, Intapp Time	Firm-scale automated capture plus assist and compliance.	Built for mid-to-large firms already on those stacks. Usually more motion than a 15-lawyer Clio shop needs.

The three named comparison pages: Comparing Laurel, PointOne, and Ajax and Choosing between Laurel, PointOne, and Ajax. The wider inventory is Best AI timekeeping tools for lawyers (2026).

How LegalTime AI answers the same checklist

Capture, Create, Connect

Capture. Records apps and work activity. Raw activity is read locally. Pause anytime. Nothing is recorded while paused.
Create. Drafts narrative, matter, billing code, and duration. Visible only to that attorney. When Create runs, relevant activity is sent for AI processing.
Connect. The attorney approves, edits, or discards, then releases. No blind sync.

Daily review is about five minutes, against roughly half an hour of reconstruction.

Privacy partners will accept

From security and the FAQ:

Drafts stay with the attorney until release. Partners cannot browse drafts.
One-click pause. Nothing is recorded while paused.
LegalTime AI is not a monitoring tool and will not build firm surveillance.
Capture stays local-first on the attorney device by default. When Create runs, relevant activity is sent for AI processing. Raw activity is purged on a rolling basis.
Zero data retention is in writing. No shared model training on client content.
The released payload is the finished entry only. TLS 1.2 or newer in transit. AES-256 at rest.
SOC 2 Type II examination in progress. Not certified today. Documents under NDA.
LegalTime AI is a Clio Trusted Platform Developer.

Walk partners through security before day one. Confidentiality context: Attorney-client confidentiality and AI timekeeping. Retention context: Zero data retention AI timekeeping.

Beside Clio, not in place of it

LegalTime AI sits beside Clio Manage, MyCase, Filevine, PracticePanther, SurePoint, Centerbase, TimeSolv, and Harvest. The attorney approves, edits, or discards, then releases through the firm's existing login.

Clio path: Clio integration and AI timekeeping for Clio Manage.

Onboarding, SOC 2, and price

Item	LegalTime AI
Per-attorney setup	About ten minutes
First users	White-glove
Install surface	Nothing installed on a firm server
Trial	30 days on real matters
SOC 2	Type II examination in progress; not certified
Pricing	Quote per attorney on pricing. G2's $125 per seat per month is directional only.

An RFP that says "must be SOC 2 certified" will exclude LegalTime AI today. Say that out loud in the partners meeting. Longer note: SOC 2 in progress vs certified.

Ajax's live security page states Type II certified. Laurel and PointOne publish Type 2 claims. Ask each vendor for the report and the date.

The name on the directory

LegalTime AI at legaltime.ai is AI timekeeping that releases into your existing system. "Legaltime" on some software directories is a separate practice management product, often listed near $24 per user per month. Use the full LegalTime AI name when you search or buy. More on About.

Sources

Ten minutes to onboard. Thirty days to prove it on real matters. Keep Clio. Skip the timer mandate.

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Frequently asked questions

What should a 15-lawyer firm put on the automatic-capture checklist?

Ask whether the daily path is a timer, whether drafts include a narrative, whether a person approves before release, who can see drafts, whether the product sits beside Clio, how long setup takes, what the SOC 2 report type is, and how pricing is quoted. LegalTime AI is built for privacy-conscious Clio firms of about 10 to 30 attorneys: local-first capture, attorney-only drafts, approve-before-release, about ten minutes per attorney, and a 30-day trial.

Where is the product comparison if we do not want the checklist?

The product and tradeoff wording is on Software to capture billable time automatically. The size note for a firm of about 15 lawyers is on Automatic billable capture for 15-lawyer firms. This page is the meeting checklist.

Will partners treat this as monitoring software?

On LegalTime AI, drafts stay with the attorney until release. Pause stops recording. The product will not build firm surveillance. Walk the room through security before the pilot.

Do we have to leave Clio?

No. LegalTime AI sits beside Clio Manage and releases approved entries through the firm's existing login. It also sits beside MyCase, Filevine, PracticePanther, SurePoint, Centerbase, TimeSolv, and Harvest. See AI timekeeping for Clio Manage.

Is LegalTime AI SOC 2 certified?

No. A SOC 2 Type II examination is in progress. Documentation is available under NDA. An RFP that requires a completed certification will exclude LegalTime AI today. Ajax's security page states Type II certified. See SOC 2 in progress vs certified.

How much does it cost?

Quoted per attorney on pricing. G2 lists $125 per seat per month as a directional directory note. Confirm the firm quote on a demo. Billables AI publishes $47, $109, and $169 per user per month; those are that vendor's list prices.

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Stop reconstructing your day from memory. Let capture run. Review in minutes. Release only what should bill.

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Capture → Create → Connect. Not a monitoring tool.