Automate Legal Time Tracking and Invoicing with a Custom AI System

Most small law firms use practice management software like Clio, MyCase, or PracticePanther for billing. These tools are effective databases for time entries and invoice generation, but they are entirely passive. An attorney must remember to start a timer, stop a timer, and manually write a descriptive entry for every single billable action. The software cannot find work you forgot to log.

Consider this scenario for a 5-person firm. An associate takes a 12-minute unscheduled client call on their mobile, replies to three substantive client emails between meetings, and then joins a 2-hour deposition. The deposition gets logged correctly. The call and emails, totaling nearly 0.8 billable hours, are forgotten by the time they reconcile their day. Across five attorneys, this leakage can easily exceed $10,000 in lost revenue every single month.

The structural problem is that existing tools are systems of record, not systems of discovery. They are designed for manual data entry. They lack any natural language understanding to differentiate a billable, 15-minute email exchange from a non-billable scheduling confirmation. To solve this, a firm needs a system that actively monitors communication channels, understands the context of legal work, and suggests billable activity that would otherwise be missed.

The first step would be a discovery process to audit the firm's information flow. Syntora would map every channel where billable work occurs, typically Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for emails and calendars, the phone system for call logs, and the existing case management system for matter information. We would also document the firm's specific billing increments, phrasing conventions, and any client-specific invoicing rules.

The technical approach would involve a secure pipeline built on AWS. An AWS Lambda function would run every 30 minutes, using the Microsoft Graph API or Google's API to pull new emails and calendar events. The text content of these items would be sent to the Claude API to classify the activity, extract the duration, identify the client matter, and draft a descriptive time entry. This entry is then stored in a Supabase database, awaiting review.

The delivered system is a simple, secure web application where each attorney sees a daily list of suggested time entries. They can approve, edit, or discard each suggestion. Approved entries are automatically pushed into your existing billing software via its API. The system drafts a timesheet for human approval, it does not replace attorney judgment. You receive the full source code and all infrastructure runs in your own secure cloud account.