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6/4/2007: The LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) Oversight Committee announces 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 the US) and create additional efficiencies in the electronic exchange of legal business information.
Electronic 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/LedesBudgetStandard.aspx or contact Cole Morgan of the LEDES Oversight Committee at (cole.morgan@datacert.com) with questions.
LEDES XMLE-Billing v.2 Specification The LEDES XML E-Billing v.2 standard was designed to address shortcomings of the LEDES 1998B and LEDES 2000 standards while addressing emerging market needs, particularly in taxation. The new standard restructures the manner in which taxes are handled, eliminates unused data elements, and creates consistency in the use or terminology. This format is also 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/XMLEBillingVersion2.aspx or contact Bill Mertes of the LEDES Oversight Committee at (bmertes@winston.com) with questions.
LEDES 1998B-i Specification LEDES 98B-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 newly developed standard, finalized in March of 2006, 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. This is intended to be the final modification of the 1998B-i standard. Other international issues will be addressed through future modification of the LEDES XML E-Billing standard. For more information on LEDES98BI, please visit http://ledes.org/ledes1998b_intl.aspx or contact Jeff Hodge of the LEDES Oversight Committee at (jeff.hodge@datacert.com).