For the matter, not the month
Narratives that bill. Data that stays put.
Matter-level time with proper notes, disbursements on the bill, and a daily hours goal on the home screen. It all lives in one local file. Privilege is privilege. We never get a copy.
One payment. No rent. File is yours.
Law Firms — straight talk
The parts that usually go sideways.
Targets slip until December
Set a daily hours goal and it sits on Today next to what is actually logged. You course-correct at lunch, not in a partner meeting in November. Weekly grids show the quarter taking shape.
Narratives get thin at 6pm
Notes autocomplete from the matter's history, so recurring work types itself and timestamps stay exact. Itemized entries with start and end times read the way billing guidelines want.
Cloud is a policy problem
One SQLite file, offline, no accounts, no telemetry, no call home. Auto-backup on launch and every 6 hours of use, mirrored to your own R2 or S3 bucket on every save if policy allows it. Back it up where policy says.
Disbursements leak
Filing fees, counsel, courier. Logged as billable expenses with receipt photos, they wait on the matter's next invoice. Recovery stops depending on memory.
What you’ll actually use
Just the bits you bill for.
Matters, not just clients
Client holds the relationship, matter holds the rate and the hours budget. How you already think, mirrored in the app.
Notes that bill
Autocomplete from matter history keeps narratives consistent and fast. Search across notes finds the attendance note from March in seconds.
Stays in chambers
Local file, activate-once license, your backup location. Nothing to disclose to the client about where data sits, because it sits with you.
Daily goal, honestly kept
Hours goal versus actual, today and this week. No gamification, just the number, which is what targets need.
And the rest of owntime
Timers, timesheets, invoices with tax, expenses with snaps, estimates, per-client currency, CSV you can hand to anyone — the full list.
Set it up like this
Your world, in your trade’s words.
First run: pick Law firms
Matters, Work type, Disbursements. owntime seeds Calls, Letters, Drafting, Research, Appearances, Admin, sets rounding to 6 minutes with a 6-hour daily goal, and tints the app oxblood.
Client = the client
One record per client, with their currency and address for the invoice letterhead.
Project = the matter
Smith conveyance, Jones litigation. Each matter holds its rate and any hours budget or fixed fee.
Tasks = the work kind
Calls, letters, drafting, research, appearances, admin. Consistent tasks keep narratives and reports comparable.
Expenses = disbursements
Filing fees, counsel fees, travel. Billable by default, receipt attached, recovered on the next bill.
A week in owntime
How the work actually flows.
Daily: log as you attend
Short entries through the day, notes while fresh. The daily goal bar fills and idle detection catches the gap you forgot.
Weekly: review narratives
Scan the grid per matter. Thin notes get fixed while the week is still warm. This is where bills stop getting written down.
Monthly: build the bills
Pull unbilled matter time plus waiting disbursements onto each invoice. Tax and notes print clean. Send, mark paid.
Year end: the record answers
Targets versus actuals from the same data. Fee reviews start from hours, not memory.
What the client sees
A bill that looks like you wrote it.
| Description | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith — calls and letters | 1.8h | $350 | $630 |
| Smith — affidavit draft | 3.2h | $350 | $1,120 |
| Disbursement: Filing fee | — | — | $145 |
| Total | $145 | ||
Plain lines, your letterhead, your numbers. PDF, made locally. No server in the middle.
Straight talk
What it will not do.
Every tool has edges. Here are ours, plainly, so you find out now and not in month three.
- ×No trust accounting and no client ledger. Time and disbursements only. Client money stays in your practice system.
- ×Rounding is a per-entry setting, and 6-minute units are preset for law firms. It is not a per-client billing-rules engine: if a matter demands a special unit schedule, apply it when you build the bill.
- ×No multi-fee-earner rollup. Each timekeeper keeps their own file. Bills combine at preparation, as many chambers already do.
Asked a lot
Questions law firms people ask.
Is our data really never uploaded?
There is nowhere to upload it to. No accounts, no telemetry, no servers. Backups are local files, and the optional R2 or S3 mirror uses your bucket and your keys, which never leave your machine.
How do disbursements get recovered?
As billable expenses with receipt photos attached to the matter. They wait for the next invoice and print as separate lines.
Can matters have different rates?
Yes. Each matter sets its own rate, and rate changes are timestamped in history so old time keeps its old rate.
What about fixed-fee matters?
Log the hours for your own record, bill a fixed-fee line at completion. Cost control and the bill stay properly separate.
Test it on a real week.
14 days, full app. If it doesn’t survive your busy week, don’t pay. Simple.