Part of Nova Aurora, clarity tools for people the legal system was never designed for. $19.99 launch · $29.99 regular · one invoice · this site only
For individuals & small businesses

Was your legal bill actually fair?

Upload your attorney's invoice. Our analysis engine compares every charge against industry billing guidelines and returns a line-by-line review in plain English, usually within minutes. Flat fee. No appointments. No lawyer required.

Start a review · $19.99 launch See a sample report
Results in minutes
Flat fee · no subscription
30-day launch pricing
8–15% Of legal billings are commonly flagged as questionable when reviewed line by line against industry guidelines.
Minutes From upload to your review report. Automated analysis, no scheduling, no consultation calls, no waiting weeks.
$19.99 Launch pricing. Regular price $29.99. One flat fee per attorney invoice. No subscription.

Where Legal Bill Audit fits, next to the real alternatives

See the full comparison
LEGAL BILL AUDIT

A line-by-line audit anchored to every entry on your invoice.

$19.99 one-time, single-invoice written audit

  • Block-billing, rate-shifting, and admin-at-attorney-rate flagged with the line.
  • Five-stage pipeline with layered guardrails, not a single prompt.
  • Find an issue we missed, we patch the system, not just your report.
ENTERPRISE BILL AUDIT FIRMS

1% – 2.5% of legal spend, enterprise-only

  • LSG, Sterling Analytics, Legal Decoder, Bottomline LegalX, others.
  • Built for in-house counsel at Fortune 500s, not individuals.
  • Annual contracts, six-figure minimums, no single-invoice product.

Pricing reference: LSG legal bill review pricing

DIY: READ IT YOURSELF + CHATGPT

Free, but the patterns are not common knowledge

  • UTBMS task codes, ABA Rule 1.5 fee standards, block-billing rules: specialized knowledge.
  • ChatGPT forgets the rate table by page three and hallucinates a total.
  • No written deliverable to hand back to the firm in a fee dispute.
How it works

Three steps. No phone calls. No paperwork.

We built this for people who are already exhausted by their legal matter. No calls. No meetings. Just a simple document-based process that takes about as long as reading a contract.

01

Upload your invoice

Upload a PDF, photograph the paper, or paste the text. One invoice for a single-bill review, or all the invoices on one matter for a matter review.

02

We review every line

Our analysis engine compares each entry against industry billing guidelines, professional responsibility rules, and comparable market rates, instantly, line by line.

03

You receive a clear report

Usually within minutes: every line categorized, the top concerns flagged with the guideline behind each one, comparable cost ranges, and options you may want to consider next.

WHY THIS SITE

Legal Bill Audit, next to the services people actually consider.

There are three real options for this exact problem: a paid service in the same category, a DIY path, or Legal Bill Audit. Here is the side-by-side, with prices.

  Legal Bill Audit Enterprise bill audit firms DIY: read it yourself + ChatGPT
Price $19.99 one-time 1% – 2.5% of legal spend Free
Available to individuals Yes No, enterprise only Yes
Turnaround Same day Weeks to months Hours, no checks
Specific to your invoice Yes, this exact bill Aggregate spend reporting No structured pattern detection
Cites the line Yes, line by line Roll-up dashboards No
Conflict-free Neutral third-party review Enterprise relationship with firm You are reading your own bill

Competitor pricing referenced from LSG legal bill review pricing. Ranges reflect publicly listed prices at time of writing.

A quality system, not a prompt

Borrowed from manufacturing: a serious quality program is not, we tried hard. It is layered checks, a measured defect rate, and a patch loop that improves with every report.

  1. 1
    Document parse and anchor map Every line indexed before any analysis runs. Guardrail
  2. 2
    Issue detection, layered Pattern checks for billing irregularities (block billing, rate-shifting, admin-at-attorney-rate, duplicate research). Filter
  3. 3
    Citation verification Every claim tied back to a line in your file. Guardrail
  4. 4
    Plain-English translation Bound to the source, no rewording drift. Filter
  5. 5
    Report assembly and final check No claim ships unless every prior stage passed. Guardrail

How a defect gets caught and fixed

Every report runs this loop. Every patch raises the floor for the next reader.
  1. 01 Catch A reader, a customer, or an internal review flags a miss, an inaccuracy, or a missing safeguard.
  2. 02 Reproduce We run the same inputs against the system and confirm the defect is real and repeatable, not a one-off.
  3. 03 Patch the system Fix the rule, the prompt, or the check that let it through. Not just this report; every future report.
  4. 04 Regression-test Add a permanent check to our QA registry so the same defect can never silently return.
  5. 05 Tell you Email the reader who reported it with what changed and which check now guards against it.

We will publish defects-per-thousand-reports here once we have a full quarter of real customer data; not before.

OUR COMMITMENT

If you find a defect, we fix the system. Then we tell you what we changed.

Every flagged issue feeds the patch loop. Every patch raises the floor for the next reader. That is the only quality program worth running.

Run an Audit · $19.99

Five U.S. provisional patents pending. Filed by SELAH Enterprises, the operating company behind Nova Aurora.

Why this exists

Legal bills routinely contain charges that wouldn't survive a careful read.

This isn't an opinion; it's documented in bar association advisories, ABA ethics rules, federal court decisions, and peer-reviewed research. A few of the findings:

10–30%

How much block billing can inflate a bill

The State Bar of California's fee arbitration committee found that block billing (lumping multiple tasks into one time entry) “may increase time by 10% to 30%.” It's one of the most common patterns we flag.1

10–50%

How much federal courts cut block-billed fees

When block billing shows up in fee disputes, federal courts apply standardized reductions: 10% in the D.C. Circuit, 20% upheld in the Eighth Circuit, up to 50% in egregious cases. The same patterns are visible on a typical invoice.2

5 yrs

Average time billing fraud goes undetected at elite firms

A peer-reviewed Georgetown study identified 37 cases of billing and expense fraud at prominent law firms since 1989. The fraud patterns averaged five years before anyone caught them, underscoring why a careful read of even one invoice matters.3

Want a documented example? In 2018, the firm Rosicki, Rosicki & Associates paid $6.118 million to the U.S. Department of Justice after admitting it had submitted inflated bills to Fannie Mae and the VA, with markups as high as 750% on third-party charges. Patterns like that don't only happen at the institutional scale.5

  1. 1 State Bar of California, Arbitration Advisory 2003-01 (Detecting Attorney Bill Padding). ↩
  2. 2 Troutman Pepper analysis (2024) citing federal circuit decisions on block-billing reductions. ↩
  3. 3 Lerman, “Blue-Chip Bilking: Regulation of Billing and Expense Fraud by Lawyers,” 12 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 205 (1999). ↩
  4. 4 ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 (1993). ↩
  5. 5 DOJ settlement: Rosicki, Rosicki & Associates (2018). ↩
A real (anonymized) review

This is exactly what you get back.

We don't show testimonials we don't have. Instead, here's an excerpt from an actual review, the same format every customer receives. See it before you pay.

Sample report · Texas matter (premises liability) Reviewed under: Texas state-bar fee guidelines + ABA Model Rules

Henderson v. Coastal Property Mgmt LLC · Cause No. D-1-GN-25-003817 · $24,780 total, $3,420 flagged. Cited under Tex. Disc. R. 1.04(b)(1), ABA Formal Op. 93-379, and In re Polybutylene Plumbing. Now includes the Your Action Paths section: a four-rung procedural ladder (direct letter, fee arbitration, grievance, malpractice review) auto-highlighted to where your findings actually land.

Download full sample PDF (8 pages) Preview Action Paths section (4 pages) Anonymized real-world matter · same format every customer receives

Your invoice (excerpt)

Before
09/14/24 Email correspondence with co-counsel re: scheduling $262.50
09/15/24 Research, draft motion, review file, calls with client $3,937.50
09/16/24 Travel to courthouse and waiting time (partner) $2,625.00
09/17/24 Internal conference re: strategy (3 attorneys) $1,800.00

Our review report

$2,750 flagged
09/14/24 Email correspondence (scheduling) $262.50 Questionable
Administrative task billed at attorney rate. Most fee guidelines treat scheduling correspondence as non-billable or paralegal-rate. Suggested adjustment: $0–$87.50.
09/15/24 Bundled work, 6 different tasks $3,937.50 Block billed
Block billing limits the ability to review reasonableness. Many courts apply 10–30% reductions to block-billed time. You may want to request itemization with time per task before paying.
09/16/24 Travel + waiting time at full partner rate $2,625.00 Excess rate
Travel and waiting are typically billed at half rate under most engagement letters. Likely excess at full rate: ~$1,312.50. Worth raising with the firm directly.
09/17/24 Three attorneys, single internal call $1,800.00 Questionable
Multi-attorney internal conferences are commonly questioned. Worth verifying whether all three timekeepers were necessary; if not, this is a line worth discussing with the firm.
New · appended to every report

Your Action Paths, mapped to your findings.

Every report now ends with a four-rung procedural ladder: Rung A (direct letter to firm under Rule 1.5 Comment 9), Rung B (state-bar fee arbitration), Rung C (disciplinary grievance), and Rung D (malpractice review if case harm exists). A six-row severity table maps the specific patterns we found, billing drift, pattern overbilling, Rule 1.5 unreasonableness, Rule 1.15 trust-account issues, Rule 8.4 fraud, and case-harm scenarios, to the rung where they typically land. You choose every step.

Covers TX, CA, FL, NY, PA, IL, OH, GA, NC, MI. Mandatory fee arbitration: CA, NY, NC. Voluntary: TX, FL, IL, PA, OH, GA, MI. Procedural information only; not legal advice.

Start your review

Two flat fees. Pick the one that fits.

One invoice or many, the depth of review is the same; every line compared against industry guidelines, every concern explained in plain English. The matter package adds pattern analysis across all the invoices on a single case.

  • Every line categorized: consistent with guidelines, commonly questioned, or commonly disallowed.
  • Top concerns flagged with the specific guideline or precedent each one references.
  • A comparable cost range so you know what this work typically runs.
  • Talking points and options: questions to ask your firm, fee-arbitration paths, or attorney referrals.
  • Your documents are encrypted, processed only to generate your report, and auto-deleted right after we send you the PDF.
Single-bill review
$19.99 $29.99 regular · 30-day launch pricing
For a single attorney invoice, any length. No subscription.

Upload your invoice

PDF, image, or text. Whatever you have works. Your report is generated and emailed within minutes.

Employment contracts and engagement letters usually fix the place of law. Pick the state if you know it; your report will cite that state's bar rules.
We'll send your review here, usually within minutes of upload.

Legal Bill Review is an analytical service operated by Nova Aurora Ventures LLC. We are not a law firm, do not provide legal advice or representation, and do not establish an attorney–client relationship. Our reports flag billing entries against publicly available industry guidelines and case law for your information. Any decision about how to act on those flags is yours alone, and we recommend consulting a licensed attorney before disputing a bill or filing fee arbitration.

Common questions

The questions everyone asks first.

Is this legal advice?
No. Legal Bill Review is an analytical service. We compare your invoice against industry billing guidelines, professional responsibility rules, and comparable case data. We don't represent you, can't appear in court, and won't tell you whether to file a fee dispute. We give you the information; you (or a licensed attorney) decide what to do with it.
How many invoices does $19.99 cover?
One invoice, any length. Upload a 2-page bill or a 30-page itemized statement; the depth of analysis is the same. If you have more than one bill on the same case, submit each one separately.
What if my lawyer finds out I had their bill reviewed?
They almost certainly won't unless you tell them, and you have every right to do so anyway. Reviewing a bill you're paying is not a hostile act; it's basic financial diligence. Most firms expect (and many encourage) clients to scrutinize line items.
What happens to my invoice and case details?
Your documents are encrypted in transit and at rest, processed only to generate your report, and auto-deleted as soon as we send you the PDF. Once the report is in your inbox, the job is done and the file is gone. We never share, sell, or train models on your data.
How accurate is the review?
Every flag is citation-backed; we point to the specific guideline, fee-arbitration precedent, or industry billing rule behind each one, so you can verify the reasoning yourself. The analysis is automated and applied consistently to every bill, no exceptions and no soft-pedaling. If something looks borderline, we say so explicitly rather than guess.
Can you review hourly bills, contingency fee disputes, and flat-fee arrangements?
Yes to all three. The review format adjusts to the fee structure. For contingency disputes we focus on cost itemization and proper allocation. For flat-fee arrangements we evaluate scope-of-work compliance. Email us before submitting if you're not sure your matter fits; we'll tell you honestly.
Do I need the original engagement agreement?
Helpful but not required. The audit is sharper if we can compare invoices to your engagement letter (rates, fee structure, scope), but we can run a meaningful audit on the invoice alone.