Uniform Task-Based Management System

The Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) is a set of codes designed to standardize categorization of legal work and expenses. The coding is reflected in legal bills sent from a law firm to its corporate clients. Law firms will usually use coding on time and expenses for those clients who explicitly request it.

Fees, which are charges for attorney and legal assistant time, are coded with task and activity codes. Task codes may also be summarized into phase codes, Expenses are coded using a set of expense codes.

There are four sets of task codes: Litigation, Project, Counseling and Bankruptcy). The codes themselves are composed of a letter (the first letter of the task code set), followed by a three-digit number. The set used for a given matter (i.e., case or transaction) depends upon the nature of that matter. Therefore, tasks will often be reported without reporting the phase, as this can be deduced from the task. Within a given task code set, a task may be assigned to only one phase. The hieracrchy is uniform in the Litigation and Bankruptcy task code sets. In the Project set, only the second phase contains more then one task. The Counseling set has only a single level. In such situations, a code may be considered both a phase and a task, and it may be necessary to program the time and billing software this way.

There is a single set of activity codes, which is used in conjunction with each of the four task code sets. While phase and task indicate There is also a single set of expense codes, which are independent of phase/task/activity codes.

Many clients who use UTBMS also use electronic billing, usually with the LEDES standard.