A law firm’s billing system is the most complete record it holds of how its people spent the working year. Every time entry carries a timekeeper, a matter, a date and a number of hours. Most review cycles ignore that record and rebuild a rougher version of it by asking partners to remember who they worked with.
For the narrower question of choosing upward-review raters from time records, see our earlier piece on selecting reviewers from matter and billing data.
The billing systems US law firms run
Large and mid-size US firms bill from a small group of enterprise financial management systems, often with a separate time capture tool in front of them. Smaller firms more often bill from inside a practice management platform.
| System | Built for | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Aderant Expert and Expert Sierra | Large and mid-size firms | Expert Sierra is the cloud version of Expert, hosted on AWS. Aderant also sells iTimekeep for time capture and vi for performance reviews. |
| Elite 3E | Large and mid-size firms | Elite has been independent of Thomson Reuters since 2023 and was acquired by Francisco Partners in 2025. Elite also sells ProLaw. |
| SurePoint | Mid-size firms | Founded in 1982 as Rippe & Kingston. Added SurePoint Pro and Finance Pro in 2026. |
| Juris and PCLaw | Small and mid-size firms | Long-established time, billing and accounting products. |
| Clio, PracticePanther, CARET Legal, Centerbase and others | Small and mid-size firms | Billing runs inside a practice management platform rather than a separate financial system. |
For the practice management platforms in the last row, our guide to the practice management software US firms run goes through them one by one.
Every system in the table records the four fields a review cycle needs.
What a review cycle needs from billing data
- The timekeeper, and their role: partner, counsel, associate, paralegal or other.
- The matter, its practice group and, where the firm codes it, its matter type.
- The responsible or supervising attorney on the matter.
- Hours by timekeeper, by matter, over the review period.
It does not need time narratives, billing rates, invoice amounts or client names. Leaving them out keeps the extract small and keeps client-confidential material out of the review platform. Narratives often name the client, the other side and the advice given, so they are the first field to exclude.
How Artemis connects to the billing system
Artemis by SRA works with the billing system a firm already runs. With Aderant Expert, Artemis connects directly. With other systems, the connection runs directly or through middleware, and a firm that runs one cycle a year can start from a scheduled export and connect later. In each case the connection is configured for the firm during implementation, which is also where the firm’s matter structure and supervision rules are mapped.
Firms on Aderant Expert sometimes assume that review data connected to billing means buying Aderant’s own review product. vi’s connection is native, because the review module and the billing system come from one vendor. Artemis’s is built for each firm. Our comparison of SRA and vi by Aderant sets out the difference.
Associate evaluations
The first use is deciding who reviews each associate. A firm sets an exposure floor, for example fifty hours on shared matters in the review period, and every partner and senior lawyer above it is asked for an evaluation. Partners who worked heavily with an associate cannot be left off by oversight, and partners who barely worked with them are not asked to rate work they did not see.
The second use is giving reviewers context. A partner who is reminded which matters they shared with the associate, and for how many hours, writes about the work rather than about a recent impression.
What billing data should not do is set the rating. Hours already reach compensation through the firm’s billable targets. An evaluation that rewards hours a second time counts the same thing twice and tells the associate nothing about the quality of their work. Use billing data for the reviewer list and the context each reviewer sees, and leave the rating to the reviewer. Our page on associate evaluations covers how those cycles run in Artemis.
Staff evaluations
Paralegals, and other staff who record time, appear in the billing data the same way associates do. That matters because a paralegal’s manager is often a paralegal manager or practice support lead who does not see their daily work. The billing record shows which attorneys a paralegal worked for and how much, so the manager’s review can be built on input from the attorneys who saw the work, chosen by the same exposure floor.
Staff who do not record time, such as HR, IT, finance and marketing, do not appear in billing data at all. For them the reporting line comes from the HR system, which we cover in connecting Workday, UKG and ADP to the review cycle. Most firms need both sources: the billing system for who worked with whom on client matters, and the HR system for who reports to whom.
See staff and business-services evaluations for how those cycles run.
Partner reviews
Partner reviews come in two kinds, and billing data serves each differently.
In an upward review, associates and staff give confidential feedback on the partners they work for. Billing data identifies who worked with each partner long enough to answer, and shows before the cycle opens which partners have enough eligible raters to report against the threshold. A partner supervised by three associates cannot receive an individual report without putting those associates at risk. Knowing that before fielding lets the firm combine groups or report at practice group level instead. Deriving the list also means a partner cannot choose their own raters. Responses are held by SRA, outside the firm, and reported only above the threshold agreed before fielding.
In a partner evaluation run for a compensation committee, the committee already sees the financial figures: origination, working attorney hours, realization. Billing data adds the supervision record: how many people a partner supervised and for how long, so feedback on supervision can be read against the partner’s actual supervisory load. Keep the financial metrics and the feedback in separate parts of the report, so that the feedback is not read as a restatement of the numbers.
From the review to goals
A development goal is an outcome someone is working toward, such as running a matter end to end. Most such goals depend on exposure the associate or paralegal cannot arrange alone: a second-chair seat, client contact, time in a particular practice group. Our piece on development plans that survive the review cycle covers how to write them.
Billing data makes that kind of goal checkable. If an associate’s goal for the year is to build restructuring experience, the next cycle’s billing record shows whether they were staffed on restructuring matters, and for how many hours. If they were not, the review should record that the firm did not provide the work, so the associate is not marked down for a goal they had no chance to meet.
Artemis carries goals and development plans into the next cycle, so the next evaluation opens with what was agreed last time and the billing record beside it. The billing record confirms that the work happened. Whether the associate can now run a restructuring matter is for the reviewer to judge.
What to settle before connecting
- Who approves the fields. Finance usually owns the extract. General counsel or risk should approve which fields leave the billing system, and in writing.
- Ethical walls. Walled matters, and matters whose names are themselves confidential, should be excluded or carried only as an anonymous identifier. A matter name that reveals a client can be the most sensitive field in the extract.
- Supervision rules. A relationship partner can bill to a matter without supervising anyone on it, so the rules that pick reviewers need to use role and seniority as well as hours.
- Work the billing system does not see. Time recorded on non-billable matter numbers, such as pro bono at many firms, can be included. Recruiting, mentoring and committee work often never reach the time system, so the reviewer list needs a manual add step.
- Refresh timing. Decide whether data is drawn once, before the cycle opens, or kept current through the year so that mid-year reviews and lateral arrivals are covered.
Where to start
Pick one practice group. Derive its reviewer lists from the billing data, ask the group head for their list the usual way, and compare the two. Then check how many of last year’s development goals the billing record can confirm. The first comparison shows which working relationships the current process misses. The second shows which goals depended on work the firm never staffed.
SRA runs associate evaluations, staff evaluations and partner upward reviews for US law firms on Artemis, connected to the billing system the firm already uses. SRA is ISO 27001 certified, and its SOC 2 Type I report is available under NDA. Tell us which billing system you run and we will walk through the connection with your own matter structure.
Sources: Aderant and Elite announcements as reported by Legal IT Insider, LawSites and Artificial Lawyer, 2023 to 2025; SurePoint press releases, 2025 to 2026. Checked 1 November 2026.