Understanding Attorney Billing Increments for a More Efficient Practice

Attorney billing increments help firms track time consistently while keeping invoices fair and accurate. But which increments are the best fit for your practice? Is there an easier way to keep track of them all?  

In this guide, we break down the most common billing increments for attorneys, how they impact your profitability, and ways to simplify your tracking methods for faster, more reliable billing. 

The Takeaways 

• Billing increments create structure for tracking time, but can also introduce manual work and errors when handled without the right tools. 
• Most firms rely on 6-, 10-, or 15-minute increments, but each approach affects accuracy, client perception, and attorney workflow differently. 
• Manual time tracking leads to missed hours, especially when attorneys rely on memory or recreate increment-based time entries at the end of the day or week. 
• Paper notes and manual invoicing increase the risk of errors, which can undermine client trust and delay payments. 
• Real-time, automated time tracking is more accurate and helps firms capture billable work as it happens and produce cleaner, more reliable invoices. 
• Legal billing software removes the need for increments altogether and gives firms a faster, more reliable way to bill while improving profitability and client trust. 

What Are Legal Billing Increments?  

Legal billing increments are preset units of time that help attorneys track and bill their work consistently. Instead of logging every minute exactly, firms choose an increment—then round each task up to the nearest unit.  

This makes time tracking more manageable when using the billable hour model and ensures all work on a client matter is accounted for, whether it’s a quick phone call or in-depth research. 

The standard increments used by most lawyers are: 

• 1/10th of an hour (6 minutes) 
• 1/6th of an hour (10 minutes) 
• 1/4th of an hour (15 minutes) 

For example, if your firm uses 6-minute increments and you take a 3-minute call, you record it as 0.1 hours. This approach offers a clear, standardized way to show clients how time was spent and helps firms maintain predictable, accurate billing. 

Here’s a simple example of how attorney billing increments map to minutes: 

Read next: What Legal Billing Increment Should My Firm Use? 

Why Are Legal Billing Increments Important?  

Legal billing increments help create structure in an attorney’s daily workflow. By breaking time into predictable units, firms can keep billing consistent, transparent, and easier to manage.  

Here’s why increments matter in many traditional billing processes: 

• Simplify time tracking: Create a consistent, repeatable structure for logging time spent on billable work, even for small tasks. 
• Reduce billing disputes: Provide clear, predictable units that make invoices easier for clients to understand and help defend against billing disputes. 
• Increase billable time: Ensure you are compensated for brief calls, emails, and quick updates that belong on an invoice, but don’t take much time to complete. 
• Monitor productivity: Increments offer a clearer picture of how attorney time is spent across matters, even when using alternative billing models. 
• Support accurate invoicing: Standardized increments help prevent underbilling and missed entries for more confident invoicing. 

While increments bring structure to traditional time tracking, they can also create challenges that impact accuracy, efficiency, and your day-to-day workflow. We’ll explore those next and why many firms are moving toward more modern, automated approaches. 

Common Mistakes Lawyers Make with Billing Increments  

Even with a consistent system in place, billing increments don’t completely eliminate billing issues.  

Traditional attorney billing increments rely on outdated methods, not precision. For most, billing in increments of 6, 10, or 15 means jotting down notes throughout the day or recreating entries from memory. Each one leaves ample room for error. 

Manual invoicing adds another layer of risk, especially when you’re moving information from one place to another. 

Billing in smaller units, like 6-minute increments, can push attorneys to watch the clock too closely. Larger increments may raise questions about accuracy and fairness. 

And while billing might seem like a behind-the-scenes task, it directly impacts client satisfaction, transparency, and overall profitability. 

Some of the most common issues with attorney billing increments include: 

• Losing time to manual tracking: Smaller increments require you to frequently log entries, which can interrupt workflows and reduce productivity. 
• Relying on memory: Reconstructing time spent on tasks a day or week after the fact often leads to missing or underestimated billable hours. 
• Manual invoicing errors: Transcribing handwritten notes or transferring data between systems increases the risk of mistakes and lost billable time. 
• Inconsistent or unclear invoices: Even small inaccuracies or increments that don’t match the work performed can affect client trust and strain relationships. 

With the potential to lose billable hours and increase errors, it raises an important question: Are traditional billing increments still the best way to handle client billing? 

The most reliable billing workflows track time as work happens and connect each entry to the right task or matter. This safeguards against errors and helps prevent lost billable hours. 

With modern legal billing software, firms can automatically track time for different tasks, designate what’s billable, and record work in real time, even when multi-tasking. With no need to transcribe notes, you can easily capture more accurate billable time as it happens and create cleaner, more dependable invoices. 

When your firm earns what it’s owed while maintaining client trust, the billing process is simpler, faster, and more profitable overall. 

Stop Fighting the Clock—Start Automating 

Structuring your day in 6-minute billing increments was the best solution 20 years ago, but today, there are better solutions to support your practice. 

With legal practice management software, you can eliminate the need to track time in increments altogether, streamline the billing process from start to finish, and track with more accuracy than ever.  

CosmoLex is an end-to-end practice management platform with built-in billing and time tracking designed for law firms. Every task and billable hour automatically connects to the right matter, helping your firm invoice accurately without handwritten notes, manual rounding, or extra steps. 

And because CosmoLex centralizes your billing, accounting, and practice management, attorneys spend less time on administrative work—and more time on client work. 

With CosmoLex, your firm can: 

• Automate invoicing and accounts payable 
• Collect payments and eSignatures with one click 
• Access real-time dashboard insights 
• Run automatic three-way reconciliations and LEDES billing 

Billing shouldn’t be complicated. Start your free trial now or get a demo today to see these tools in action.