How do lawyers capture billable time from Outlook emails automatically?
Lawyers capture billable time from Outlook emails automatically using Tallymail, a Microsoft-certified Outlook add-in that runs inside your email client and flags every message you send or receive, then values it at your hourly rate. The software integrates directly with Outlook on desktop and web, so you don’t need to switch between applications or manually log time in a separate system. Instead of remembering to start a timer or writing down what you did after the fact, Tallymail works while you’re already doing your job.
How the capture actually works
When you send or receive an email, Tallymail’s add-in detects it in real time. The system reads the email metadata, sender, recipient, timestamp, subject line, and immediately presents you with a card in the Outlook interface showing the time value of that message based on your billing rate. You see it right there alongside your email. You don’t have to do anything for this to happen. The metadata processing happens on EU and UK servers via Microsoft Graph OAuth, so your email stays within Microsoft’s infrastructure unless you choose to use the AI features. If you want Tallymail to draft a brief or generate an AI narrative of the email’s content, only then does the full email text get sent to the AI service, and only when you explicitly click that button.
Assigning time to cases and matters
Once Tallymail captures the email, you assign it to a case or matter with a single click. The add-in shows you a dropdown of your active matters, which it pulls from your practice management system or from cases you’ve set up in Tallymail itself. You pick the right case, optionally add a description of what the email was about, and that’s it. The time is now logged against that matter at your hourly rate. If you’re working across multiple cases in a single email thread, you can split the time between them. The system remembers your cases and matters, so repeated assignments get faster over time. You’re not filling out timesheets at the end of the day trying to remember what you did.
Building court-ready timelines from email
Once you’ve assigned emails to a case over days or weeks, Tallymail automatically builds a chronology of events from those emails. It extracts dates, names, and key actions mentioned in the messages and arranges them in order. This chronology can be exported as a CSV file or formatted for court documents. Instead of manually reading through hundreds of emails and typing out a timeline, you get a structured record that’s already dated and sequenced. You can edit it, add context, or remove irrelevant entries before you file it. For cases that turn on the sequence of communications or agreements, this saves hours of document review work.
Email classification and AI narratives
Tallymail can classify emails by type, correspondence with the other side, internal advice, client communication, court filing, witness statement, and so on. You set up the categories that matter for your practice, and the system learns to tag incoming emails accordingly. If you want, the AI can also generate a brief narrative summary of what each email says, pulling out the key points and any dates or decisions mentioned. This narrative gets attached to the time entry, so when you’re reviewing your case timeline later, you’ve got context for why each email mattered. You’re not just seeing a list of dates; you’re seeing what happened and why it was billable.
Integration with practice management systems
Tallymail exports your captured time as CSV files that you can import into practice management platforms like Clio, MyCase, or other systems your firm uses. The export includes the matter code, the time value, the description you added, and any narrative the AI generated. You can then batch-import these into your billing system rather than manually entering each time entry. Some firms use this as a final check before billing, they review the exported entries, make sure they’re accurate, then upload them. Others use it to populate timesheets that get reviewed by a partner before billing. The point is that you’re not re-entering data. You captured it once in Outlook, and it flows into your existing workflow.
Why this matters for your billing accuracy
Manual time entry is unreliable. Lawyers forget to log time, underestimate how long emails took, or batch them together at the end of the day and guess. Tallymail values every email you send or receive at your hourly rate the moment it happens, so nothing gets lost. If you bill at £200 an hour and you send 30 emails a day, that’s £200 worth of time being captured automatically. Over a month, that’s thousands of pounds in billable work that would otherwise be unmeasured. You’re not inflating your hours; you’re simply recording what you actually did. The system typically covers its subscription cost within the first month for most practices because it recovers time that was never being billed before.
Common concern: privacy and email security
Tallymail is a Microsoft-certified add-in, which means it’s been audited by Microsoft and meets their security standards. The add-in runs inside Outlook, not on an external server. Email metadata is processed on EU and UK servers, and full email content only leaves your system when you explicitly ask for an AI feature. You control what gets sent. You can also set rules for which emails to ignore, internal firm emails, newsletters, spam, so only client work and relevant correspondence gets flagged. Your email stays yours. The system doesn’t store your emails permanently; it processes them and keeps the data you’ve assigned to cases.
About the work
Tallymail is built and supported by a team in the United Kingdom and the United States. The software runs on Windows and web versions of Outlook and integrates with practice management systems used across both regions.