Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard
The Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard is a set of file format specifications intended to facilitate electronic data transmission in the legal industry. The phrase is abbreviated LEDES and is usually pronounced as "leeds". The LEDES specifications are maintained by the LEDES Oversight Committee (LOC), which was formed by the Law Firm and Law Department Services Group within PricewaterhouseCoopers. Members of the committee have included law firms, corporate legal departments, universities, and software vendors. The LOC was first informally created in 1995 to address e-billing issues and then incorporated as a California mutual-benefit  nonprofit corporation in 2000. The LOC currently maintains four sets of data elements and four data exchange format types. The four sets of data elements are: activity codes; expense codes; timekeeper classification codes; and Uniform Task-Based Management System codes. The four data exchange format types are: electronic billing (e-billing); budgeting; timekeeper attributes; and intellectual property matter management. The LOC recently announced a business partnership with LSG, a legal billing software provider. The two organizations will work together to create web-based content to aid law firms, vendors and corporate clients in the electronic billing process. Electronic billing formats . The electronic billing data exchange format types provide a standard data format for electronically transmitted invoices, typically from a law firm to a corporate client. The LEDES e-billing format currently has the following variations: Other data exchange formats. The other LEDES data exchange formats are as follows: UTBMS. In April 2006, the UTBMS Update Initiative voted to merge into the LEDES Oversight Committee. The Uniform Task-Based Management System is a widely used system for coding legal work.