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 started informally as an industry-wide project led by the Law Firm and Law Department Services Group within PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1995. In 2001, the LEDES Oversight Committee was incorporated as a California mutual-benefit nonprofit corporation and is now led by a seven-member Board of Directors.
The LOC maintains four types of data exchange standards for legal electronic billing (ebilling); budgeting; timekeeper attributes; and intellectual property matter management.
The LOC also maintains five types of data elements in the LEDES data exchange standards: Uniform Task-Based Management System codes, which classify the work performed by type of legal matter; activity codes, which classify the actual work performed; expense codes, which classify the type of expense incurred; timekeeper classification codes; and error codes, which assist law firms with understanding invoice validation errors.
The LOC has also created an API that allows for system-to-system transmission of legal invoices from law firms and other legal vendors required by their clients to ebill, to the third-party ebilling systems. Other functionality is also supported in this very complex standard, which is intended to ease the burden at the law firm for managing client-required ebilling.