The Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) Ratifies New Industry Innovations.

NEW YORK -- The LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) Oversight Committee has announced the ratification of three new industry innovations. These new standards are designed to serve as supplements to the LEDES 1998B standard (the current de facto standard for electronic legal invoicing in the United States) and to create additional efficiencies in the electronic exchange of legal business information.

LEDES XML Budget Specification

The LEDES budget standard defines an XML format for the submission and revision of legal budgets. The standard uses the natively extensible characteristics of XML to allow for the support of budgets at many levels, such as task and activity, and across varying time frames. Individual timekeeper-based budgets or matter staffing plans are also supported within the defined standard. For more information regarding the LEDES Budget standard, please visit http://www.ledes.org/budget_standard.asp or contact the Budgeting Standards Subcommittee via e-mail at [e-mail].

LEDES XML Ebilling v.2 Specification

The LEDES XML Ebilling v.2 standard is an update to the LEDES 2000 ebilling format and is intended to be the future direction of the XML ebilling standard. It was designed to address shortcomings of the LEDES 2000 standard and emerging market needs, particularly in taxation and to support international ebilling. Among other enhancements, the new standard restructures the manner in which taxes are handled, enhances the ability to bill alternate fee agreements, eliminates unused or non-mainstream ebilling data elements, and creates consistency in the use of terminology.

This format is a superset of LEDES 2000, so it should have little to no adverse impact on organizations that have already implemented LEDES 2000. For more information regarding the LEDES XML standard, please visit http://www.ledes.org/xml_ebilling.asp or contact the Ebilling Standards Subcommittee via email at [e-mail].

LEDES 1998B-i Specification

LEDES 1998B-i, also known as 98B International, is the international e-billing standard for the exchange of legal invoices between law firms and corporate legal departments. This new format updates the original LEDES 1998B-i standard finalized in March of 2006, and works as an extension to LEDES 1998B to accommodate the needs of the international legal community. It includes added fields such as Client Tax ID for Value Added Tax identification and invoice currency specification, all components necessary for international ebilling to proceed until such time as the LEDES XML Ebilling v.2 format becomes available for use by law firms.

This is intended to be the final modification of the 1998B-i standard. Any international standard issues will be addressed through future modification of the LEDES XML Ebilling v.2 standard. For more information on LEDES98B-i, please visit http://ledes.org/FormatSpec98BIntl.asp or contact the Ebilling Standards Subcommittee via email at [e-mail].

About LEDES and the LEDES Oversight Committee

The LOC is a voluntary body consisting of representatives from the legal industry. It is the goal of the LOC that LEDES be an open standard which caters to no one organization or group of organizations and that LEDES be the single standard used for all billing within the legal industry. PricewaterhouseCoopers originally developed LEDES but it is now managed by the LOC. To find out more go to http://www.ledes.org.