By Legal Futures Associate Access Legal [1]
The average law firm in England and Wales is losing close to £2 million a year in unbilled time to legal tech that fee earners indicate isn’t fit for purpose and leaves them frustrated.
Fee earners report losing an average of 4.16 billable hours every week to administrative workarounds, manual processes and time-capture tools that do not work well enough.
At £194 per hour across a firm of 50 fee earners working 48 weeks a year, that amounts to just under £2 million in unrecorded billing annually.
The finding emerges from a survey of 200 legal professionals and firm leaders conducted by Censuswide in April 2026, commissioned by Access Legal [2], about their current legal tech.
Fee earners are consistent about where the lost time goes. When asked which tasks cause the biggest frustration due to clunky software, their answers centre around four areas. Time recording and billing (28%), switching between disconnected applications (26%), document drafting (22%), and client onboarding and AML checks (20%).
The problem doesn’t end with lost hours either. Some 71% of fee earners say the administrative burden of their firm’s primary software also makes it difficult to accurately capture and record the billable time they do have.
Most firm leaders reach completely the opposite conclusion when talking about tracking billable time. 71% of leaders said they were confident their case management system allowed fee earners to capture all of their billable time – the exact same proportion as fee earners who said the opposite.
The past three years have seen firms invest in technology modernisation at a pace the sector has not seen before. What this research suggests is that those decisions have been made largely without the voice of the professionals the investment most affects.
Andrew Stevens, General Manager at Access Legal, said the findings pointed to a clear priority for firms: “”What fee earners are telling us is straightforward. They need technology that works the way they work. Not more applications to log into, not more screens to switch between, but a single environment where time recording, compliance and AI assistance sit alongside their case work.
“That’s exactly what we’re building with CaseMatters Evo, intelligent time capture that works in the background, reducing admin burden while ensuring every billable minute is recorded accurately.
“The research suggests that implementing legal tech without clear buy-in from those who use it is costly – not just in terms of the initial outlay but the lost time. Reviewing legal tech strategy with fee earners is where firms should begin to fix these challenges and unlock that lost revenue.”
With National Insurance (NI) contributions rising, software markets consolidating, and corporate clients resisting rate increases — trends documented in the Law Society’s Financial Benchmarking Survey 2026 [3] — many firms cannot rely on generating more revenue from fees alone. Recovering lost billable time is the most immediate answer.
A separate consumer survey of 1,000 UK legal services users, commissioned by Access Legal in 2025, found that fewer than half (43%) said their solicitor’s fees were clearly explained with a detailed breakdown provided upfront. And more than a quarter said faster turnaround would most improve the value of their legal service.
When fee earners are absorbing hours of avoidable administration every week, slower service and unclear billing are the result. The research suggests clients are already noticing.