How Law Firms Can Save Thousands by Automating Their Email Billing

The Case for Smarter, Faster, and More Accurate Timekeeping

In the legal industry, every minute counts—literally. Attorneys in the U.S. often bill their time in six-minute increments, and for most firms, that includes emails. Whether it’s a quick note to a client, a response to opposing counsel, or internal coordination, each email typically accounts for 0.1 billable hours. While this might sound like a small slice of time, multiply it by hundreds or thousands of emails per month, and you’re suddenly looking at tens of thousands of dollars in potential revenue.

But here’s the catch: tracking all those emails and billing them correctly is a logistical nightmare.

Traditionally, that task falls on legal aides, paralegals, or the attorneys themselves, who must sift through endless threads every billing cycle to match messages to cases and manually log the time. It’s a tedious, error-prone process that eats into productive hours and firm profits.

Enter Tempello.ai—an intelligent solution that automates the entire process. By automatically associating emails with case files and billing them accordingly, Tempello turns inbox chaos into streamlined revenue—without the manual overhead.

Let’s break down how it works, how much time and money it saves, and why automating email billing is one of the smartest moves a modern law firm can make.

The Email Billing Problem No One Talks About

Every law firm knows the pain of timekeeping. It’s not just about remembering what you worked on—it’s about proving it, documenting it, and billing it correctly.

Emails are a major part of this challenge. On a typical day, a lawyer might send and receive dozens of messages related to multiple clients and matters. Each one of those could and should be billed. But because email billing is often tracked manually, it falls through the cracks more often than firms would like to admit.

The costs of this broken system include:

Unbilled time: Missed emails mean lost revenue.
Overhead: Paying staff to comb through inboxes isn’t cheap.
Inaccuracy: Human error leads to under-billing—or worse, billing the wrong client.
Opportunity cost: Every hour spent on billing is an hour not spent practicing law or building the firm.

That’s why automating this process isn’t just a convenience—it’s a competitive advantage.

How Tempello.ai Works

Tempello.ai connects directly with a lawyer’s email account and intelligently scans emails to match them with client matters based on rules, context, and past activity. It identifies whether an email is billable, determines the right client/matter code, and logs it as a 0.1-hour activity.

Each billed email costs a flat $0.39—a predictable, affordable rate compared to the hourly cost of a legal aide or a paralegal doing the same work manually.

Here’s what the process looks like:

Connect Email: Attorneys or administrators link their email accounts with Tempello.
Smart Tagging: Tempello uses AI to associate each email with the appropriate client or case based on content, contacts, and prior behavior.
Automated Logging: Billable emails are recorded and billed automatically.
Review and Control: Lawyers can review their automated billing log and make adjustments if necessary.
Invoice Integration: Billing records sync with existing practice management and invoicing systems.

It’s like having a robotic paralegal working quietly in the background—accurate, tireless, and fast.

Time Saved: More Than You Think

Let’s put some numbers to this.

Assume an attorney sends and receives 100 emails per week that qualify as billable. Manually reviewing, tagging, and logging those might take 1-2 minutes per email, which adds up to 1.5 to 3.5 hours weekly. That’s 6 to 14 hours per month, per attorney.

Now multiply that across a firm with 10 attorneys.

We’re talking 60 to 140 hours a month—just spent billing email.

With Tempello, that entire process is automated. The firm pays $0.39 per email (roughly $39/week per attorney) and gets those 14 hours back. Even at a conservative billing rate of $200/hour, that’s $2,800/month of recovered billable time per attorney—or nearly $28,000 for a 10-lawyer firm.

It’s not just savings—it’s a revenue unlock.

Fewer Errors, Cleaner Books

Manual billing has another fatal flaw: humans are forgetful.

Even the most diligent timekeeper can miss a few emails here and there. And since every missed email represents lost income, the losses accumulate quickly. In fact, studies suggest that attorneys underreport their time by 10-15% on average simply due to poor time tracking.

Tempello eliminates these gaps. By automating billing at the source—in the inbox—it captures every billable action in real time, without relying on memory or post-hoc estimation. This results in:

More accurate invoicing
Improved client transparency
Stronger cash flow
Better compliance with billing guidelines

And because everything is tracked automatically, you reduce disputes, write-offs, and time spent justifying invoices to clients.

What Firms Can Do with the Time They Get Back

Let’s circle back to the most valuable asset lawyers have: their time.

Every hour spent billing is an hour not spent:

Meeting clients
Preparing for trial
Writing motions
Networking and growing the practice
Training junior staff
Creating thought leadership content
Closing more files

When firms automate routine, administrative work like email billing, they free up capacity for high-impact legal work—and business development.

It’s not just about cutting costs; it’s about reinvesting time where it matters.

A Modern Solution for a Modern Law Firm

The legal industry is notoriously slow to adopt technology, but firms that embrace automation early are gaining a clear edge.

Tempello is more than just a billing tool—it’s a step toward modernizing your firm’s operations. By automating low-value tasks, you create room for high-value work. You build a practice that’s more profitable, more efficient, and more client-focused.

And at $0.39 per email, the ROI speaks for itself.

Final Thoughts

The idea of billing for email might seem simple, but the execution has been messy for too long. Law firms are leaving real money on the table every billing cycle—through missed emails, inefficient processes, and avoidable human error.

Tempello.ai fixes that.

It’s fast. It’s smart. And it pays for itself in the first week.

Thousands of hours and dollars are slipping through your inbox—Tempello is how you take them back.

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