How to Bill for Phone Calls, Emails and Short Communications as an Australian Lawyer

Phone calls, emails, text messages, and brief corridor conversations make up a surprisingly large portion of legal work. For many practitioners, these short communications account for 30 to 40 percent of total daily activity. Yet they remain the single most under-recorded category of billable time in Australian legal practice.

The problem is not that lawyers do not intend to bill for this work. It is that billing phone calls as a lawyer, recording email billing entries for legal matters, and capturing other short communication time entries are all deceptively difficult to do consistently. The tasks themselves feel minor. They happen quickly, interrupt other work, and are easy to forget by the end of the day. The result is systematic revenue leakage.

This guide covers everything Australian lawyers need to know about billing for short communications: the 6-minute unit system, how to write proper descriptions, when to bundle micro-billing entries, the most common pitfalls, and how modern tools can automate much of the process.

The 6-Minute Unit Rule and How It Applies to Short Communications

Most Australian law firms bill in 6-minute increments, often called "units." One unit equals 0.1 of an hour. This is the standard minimum billing increment, and it has important implications for how short communications are recorded.

When you take a phone call that lasts 2 minutes, it is recorded as 1 unit (6 minutes). When you send an email that takes 90 seconds to compose, it is recorded as 1 unit. This is not rounding up in bad faith. It is the agreed billing convention disclosed in your cost agreement, and it reflects the reality that even a brief communication requires context-switching: you need to identify the caller or sender, recall the state of the matter, formulate your response, and then return to whatever you were working on before the interruption.

The 6-minute minimum is standard practice, but it carries a professional obligation. Your cost agreement must disclose the unit size, and your billing descriptions must accurately reflect what occurred. Billing a 1-minute call as 3 units (18 minutes) would be misleading. Billing it as 1 unit with a proper description is entirely appropriate.

When Communications Exceed One Unit

Not all phone calls and emails are quick. A detailed telephone attendance with a client discussing settlement options might run 24 minutes, which rounds to 4 units. A carefully drafted email responding to complex queries from opposing counsel might take 36 minutes. These longer communications should be timed accurately and recorded in the appropriate number of units. The 6-minute minimum is a floor, not a ceiling.

For phone calls, it helps to glance at the clock when you pick up and again when you hang up. For emails, timing yourself is more difficult, but developing a habit of noting start times or using a timer can prevent significant under-recording. If you are looking for a detailed breakdown of how to approach this, our guide on how to record time as a lawyer covers practical timing methods in depth.

Writing Proper Billing Descriptions for Phone Calls, Emails, and Brief Communications

The description is arguably more important than the time itself. A vague short communication time entry like "Phone call" or "Emails" tells the client nothing, gives the billing partner no basis for review, and creates problems if the bill is ever assessed or disputed. A well-written description, by contrast, justifies the charge, demonstrates value, and protects the firm.

Phone Call Descriptions

A good billing description for a phone call should include who you spoke with, what was discussed, and any outcome or next step. Consider the difference between these two entries:

• Poor: "Telephone call with client."
• Good: "Telephone attendance on client J. Smith regarding updated valuation report received from expert; advising on implications for quantum and discussing whether to proceed with mediation or seek further evidence."

The second entry takes only a few more seconds to write but communicates the substance and value of the work. For very brief calls, the description can be proportionally shorter while still being informative:

• Acceptable for a brief call: "Telephone attendance on client confirming receipt of signed contract and advising that settlement will proceed on 12 April."

Email Descriptions

Email billing for legal matters follows the same principle. Identify the recipient or sender, the subject, and the purpose:

• Poor: "Email correspondence."
• Good: "Email to opposing solicitor enclosing executed deed of settlement and requesting confirmation of discharge of mortgage."
• Good: "Reviewing and responding to client email regarding concerns about delay in council approval; advising on options to expedite DA process."

When you receive and respond to an email in quick succession, you can record this as a single entry covering both the review and the response. Our detailed guide on how to write billing descriptions includes dozens of examples across different practice areas that you can adapt for your own entries.

Other Short Communications

Modern legal practice involves more communication channels than phone and email. Text messages, Microsoft Teams chats, brief meetings in the hallway, and voicemail messages all represent billable activity when they relate to client matters. The same principles apply: record the communication, describe the substance, and allocate the appropriate number of units.

For voicemail messages, a typical entry might read: "Listening to and noting voicemail from client regarding availability for conference; returning call (no answer) and leaving message confirming proposed dates." That kind of entry captures what actually happened and justifies the time recorded.

Bundling vs Individual Entries: When to Combine Short Communications

One of the trickiest questions around micro-billing entries is whether to record each short communication as its own time entry or bundle several related communications into a single entry. Both approaches are legitimate, and the right choice depends on context.

When to Bundle

Bundling makes sense when you have multiple brief communications on the same matter within a short window, and they are part of a connected workflow. For example:

• You receive a short email from a client, reply with a brief answer, and then make a 2-minute call to clarify a point. Rather than three separate 1-unit entries (totalling 18 minutes), a single entry of 1 or 2 units is fairer and more accurate.
• You leave a voicemail, then follow up with a short email to the same person about the same topic. One combined entry is appropriate.
• You send three short emails to different parties on the same matter within 10 minutes as part of coordinating a settlement. A single bundled entry covering all three is reasonable.

A bundled entry might read: "Various attendances regarding settlement coordination, including telephone call to client confirming settlement date, email to opposing solicitor enclosing transfer documents, and email to conveyancer regarding adjustment figures (2 units)."

When to Record Separately

Separate entries are appropriate when each communication involves distinct substantive work, when the communications occur at different times during the day, or when they relate to different aspects of a matter. If you have a 15-minute phone call with a client in the morning and a separate 12-minute call with counsel in the afternoon, those should be individual entries. Each involved different parties, different subject matter, and different time expenditure.

As a rule of thumb: if you would describe the communications differently to a supervising partner, they probably warrant separate entries. If they blur together as part of one task, bundle them.

Common Pitfalls in Billing for Short Communications

Having worked with hundreds of Australian law firms, we see the same mistakes repeated across practices of all sizes. Here are the most damaging ones and how to avoid them.

1. Forgetting to Record the Communication

This is by far the most costly problem. A phone call interrupts your drafting work. You handle it in 3 minutes and go straight back to the document. By 6pm, you have no recollection of the call ever happening. Multiply this across five or ten short communications per day, and you are losing 30 to 60 minutes of billable time daily. Over a year, that is hundreds of hours of unrecorded work.

The fix is to record time entries as close to real-time as possible. If you cannot create a full entry immediately, at minimum jot down a note: the matter, the person, and one line about the topic. Tools that help you capture more billable time can automate much of this, but even a handwritten log is better than relying on memory at the end of the day.

2. Under-Describing Entries

Vague descriptions like "Calls and emails" or "Various correspondence" are a recipe for write-offs. When the billing partner reviews pre-bills, entries without meaningful descriptions are the first to be cut. When clients query invoices, undescribed entries are the easiest to challenge. Every short communication time entry needs enough detail to stand on its own.

3. Losing Track of Micro-Tasks

Short communications often trigger other micro-tasks: after a phone call you might spend 4 minutes checking a clause, after an email you might briefly review a document to confirm a date. These follow-on tasks are billable work, but they are rarely recorded because they feel like part of the communication rather than distinct activity. Train yourself to recognise when a "quick check" triggered by a call or email is itself a separate piece of work that deserves recording.

4. Inconsistent Practices Across the Team

In firms with more than one practitioner, inconsistent approaches to billing phone calls and emails create problems. One lawyer records every email individually; another bundles everything into end-of-day block entries. One lawyer writes detailed descriptions; another writes "Emails." This inconsistency confuses clients, complicates bill review, and makes it difficult to benchmark productivity across the team.

Establishing firm-wide standards for how short communications are recorded, described, and bundled is essential. Document these standards and include them in your onboarding for new staff.

5. Not Recording Internal Communications That Are Billable

Conversations with colleagues about a client matter are often billable. If you spend 10 minutes on the phone with a senior associate discussing strategy for a client's dispute, that is billable time for both of you. Many lawyers only think of billing for external communications and forget that internal discussions about client matters are legitimate billable work when they advance the matter.

How LexUnits Solves the Short Communication Billing Problem

The core difficulty with billing phone calls, emails, and short communications is that the effort to record them can feel disproportionate to the task itself. Spending 2 minutes writing a billing entry for a 1-minute phone call creates friction, which leads to avoidance, which leads to lost revenue.

LexUnits was built to eliminate that friction. Rather than requiring you to manually compose each time entry from scratch, LexUnits lets you provide minimal input and generates complete, professionally worded billing entries automatically.

Email-to-Billing: Forward and Done

LexUnits offers a dedicated email-to-billing workflow that transforms email correspondence into time entries. You forward a client email (or a chain of emails) to your LexUnits account, and it produces a properly formatted billing entry with an appropriate description, matter reference, and time allocation. There is no need to re-read the email and manually summarise it. The tool extracts the key information and generates a description that is detailed enough for client-facing invoices.

This is particularly powerful for email billing in legal practices where lawyers handle high volumes of correspondence. Instead of batch-processing emails at the end of the day (and inevitably forgetting some), you forward as you go. The entries are ready to export to your practice management system whenever you need them.

Quick Voice Notes for Phone Calls

After a phone call, you can dictate a brief voice note describing what was discussed. LexUnits transcribes the note and converts it into a structured billing entry. Speaking for 15 seconds into your phone is far faster than typing out a description, and it captures details while they are still fresh. This approach dramatically reduces the gap between the communication and the recording, which is where most billable time is lost.

Batch Processing and Export

LexUnits accumulates your entries and lets you review, edit, and export them in bulk. You can export to CSV for import into practice management systems like LEAP, Actionstep, Clio, or Smokeball. This means you spend a few seconds capturing each communication throughout the day and then a few minutes at the end of the day reviewing and exporting everything at once.

For firms looking to reduce overall billing administration, this workflow represents a significant time saving. Partners and senior associates consistently report recovering 30 to 60 minutes per day that was previously spent on manual time entry.

Practical Tips for Better Short Communication Billing

Whether or not you use a tool like LexUnits, these habits will improve your short communication time entry capture:

1. Record immediately. Create the entry within 60 seconds of the communication ending. Even a partial entry is better than nothing.
2. Use templates. Develop standard phrasings for common communication types. "Telephone attendance on [party] regarding [topic]; advising [outcome]" is a repeatable structure that works for most calls.
3. Set phone reminders. If your practice management system supports it, set a recurring reminder at 12pm and 5pm to review whether all morning and afternoon communications have been recorded.
4. Review your sent emails folder. At the end of each day, scroll through your sent emails. Each client-related email you sent is a billable event. If you do not have a corresponding time entry, create one.
5. Check your call log. Your phone's recent calls list is a ready-made audit trail. Cross-reference it with your time entries to catch anything you missed.
6. Be honest about bundling. Bundling is appropriate when communications are genuinely connected. It should not be used to hide the volume of work from clients, nor should it be used to inflate time by recording bundled work at the same total units as individual entries would produce.

The Revenue Impact of Getting This Right

Consider a lawyer who handles 8 short communications per day that go unrecorded. At 1 unit each, that is 48 minutes of lost billing daily. At a charge rate of $450 per hour, that is $360 per day, $1,800 per week, or roughly $86,000 per year in unrecovered revenue. For a firm with five fee earners, the aggregate loss can exceed $400,000 annually.

Even capturing half of those missed micro-billing entries represents a material improvement to the firm's financial performance. The investment required is not money or technology (though both help). It is discipline: building the habit of recording every communication, every time, with a description that justifies the charge.

Short communications are the low-hanging fruit of legal billing. They happen constantly, they are clearly billable, and they are overwhelmingly under-recorded. Getting this right is one of the highest-return improvements any Australian law firm can make.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I bill for a 30-second phone call as a full 6-minute unit?

Yes. Under the standard 6-minute unit billing system used in Australia, the minimum recordable increment is 1 unit (6 minutes or 0.1 of an hour). Even if a phone call lasts only 30 seconds, it is recorded as 1 unit. However, your billing description should accurately reflect the nature and brevity of the communication, and your cost agreement should disclose that time is recorded in 6-minute units. This is standard practice across the profession and is not considered overcharging provided the client has been properly informed.

Should I bill phone calls and emails separately or bundle them together?

It depends on the context. Multiple short communications on the same matter within a short window — for example, a brief call followed by a confirming email — are often best bundled into a single time entry. This is fairer to the client and avoids the appearance of padding. However, substantive communications that each involve distinct legal reasoning or advice should generally be recorded as separate entries with their own descriptions. The guiding principle is accuracy: the total time recorded should reflect the actual time spent, and the descriptions should reflect the actual work performed.

What is the biggest mistake lawyers make when billing for short communications?

The most common mistake is simply failing to record the communication at all. Short phone calls, quick emails, and brief messages are easy to forget in a busy day. Over a week or month, these unrecorded micro-tasks can represent hours of lost billable time. The second most common mistake is recording the entry without a meaningful description, which leads to write-offs during bill review and client disputes at invoicing time. Both problems are preventable with real-time recording habits and proper description standards.

How should I describe an email in a billing entry?

A good email billing description should identify the recipient or sender, summarise the subject matter, and indicate the purpose. For example: "Email to client regarding proposed amendments to clause 7.2 of the share purchase agreement" or "Reviewing and responding to email from opposing solicitor regarding discovery timetable." Avoid vague descriptions like "Emails" or "Correspondence" as these provide no value to the client and are frequently written off during bill review.