What is the cost-basis ratio and why does it matter for contingency practice?

The cost-basis ratio is cumulative captured hours × notional billing rate, divided by fee_pct × expected settlement value × probability of recovery plus expected fee-shifting award. A ratio of 0.5 means you've invested half the expected return in attorney time — sustainable. A ratio of 0.7 is the discovery-scope-creep flag threshold — worth a partner-level review of the case. A ratio above 1.0 means you have invested more attorney time than the expected fee will recover — you are working below cost on that matter. Knowing the ratio in real time — rather than at case resolution — is the difference between having options (early settlement, count-dropping, fee renegotiation) and having none.

What software do contingency attorneys typically use to track time, and what does each miss?

Most contingency solos use one of three tools: (1) a manual timer in their PMS (Clio, MyCase), which misses calls in transit, after-hours emails, and off-PMS document edits; (2) a spreadsheet, which requires self-discipline to maintain and typically results in block-billed reconstructed entries; (3) nothing at all. The first option costs $79–$159/mo for the PMS and still misses 20–30% of billable events. The second produces records that fail the Hensley contemporaneity test. The third produces no data for cost-basis monitoring, no lodestar records for fee petitions, and no portfolio pricing signal.

How does passive capture work for a contingency case's call-heavy discovery phase?

The iOS companion captures call duration, counterparty name from your Contacts, and call direction (incoming/outgoing/missed) without recording audio. During an active discovery phase — deposition scheduling calls, expert-witness status calls, mediation coordinator calls — each call appears in the end-of-day digest labeled with the counterparty name, ready for one-click matter attribution. A deposition-scheduling call with defense counsel (22 minutes) that you took while walking to the car is captured and attributable without having thought about a timer.

Does ClaimHour calculate the cost-basis ratio automatically?

ClaimHour provides the per-matter captured hours — the numerator input of the cost-basis ratio. The denominator (expected contingent share: fee_pct × E[settlement × P(recovery)] + E[fee-shifting]) is a judgment call the attorney updates at case milestones: after the answer is filed, after close of fact discovery, after each dispositive ruling, after mediation. ClaimHour's Pro plan ($59/mo) displays cumulative per-matter hours, which you pair with your expected-contingent-share estimate to compute the current ratio. The computation is arithmetic — two inputs, one calculation.

Category guide · Updated May 2026

Contingency fee time tracking software: managing cost-basis before the case runs away

The contingency model makes hours invisible until the case resolves. By then, the options are gone: the settlement is signed, the fee is fixed, and any over-investment in attorney time is absorbed as uncompensated work. The contingency solo who tracks hours in real time doesn't bill hourly — they compute the cost-basis ratio while options still exist to act on it.

TL;DR

ClaimHour captures contingency-case hours passively — calls, emails, document edits, calendar events — and gives you per-matter totals at 0.1-hour granularity. That data feeds three uses: (1) cost-basis ratio monitoring so you see discovery scope creep before it crosses 1.0, (2) lodestar-defensible records for fee-shifting cross-claims that succeed at trial, and (3) portfolio pricing intelligence so next year's contingency percentages reflect actual hours-per-case-type data. $29–$59/mo. No PMS required.

The three uses of time data in contingency practice

1. Cost-basis monitoring: the ratio that matters

The cost-basis ratio (cumulative hours × notional rate ÷ expected contingent share) is the number that tells you whether a contingency case is on track. It has four meaningful thresholds:

0.5 or below — the case is on track; expected return well exceeds invested capital
0.5–0.7 — approaching the monitoring threshold; update the expected-contingent-share denominator for any recent case developments
0.7 (the flag threshold) — the discovery-scope-creep flag. A partner-level review of the case economics is warranted: is the expected settlement still realistic? Are there counts worth narrowing? Is an early settlement offer on the table that makes sense at this ratio?
1.0 — you have invested as much attorney time as the expected fee. Every additional hour below 1.0 is incremental; every hour above 1.0 is uncompensated capital destruction unless the expected contingent share is revised upward

The ratio is only computable if you have per-matter captured hours. The contingency solo who does not track hours can only compute the ratio at resolution — when the options are closed. We walk through the full ratio formula, the four shapes of cost-basis crossing in discovery, and a worked FCRA example in our post on the discovery-scope-creep flag.

2. Lodestar records for fee-shifting cross-claims

Most contingency cases have at least one fee-shifting cross-claim: § 1983 civil-rights claims, Title VII and ADA employment claims, FCRA and FDCPA consumer claims, ERISA benefit claims, FMLA retaliation claims. When those claims succeed, the attorney-fees award comes from a lodestar petition — and the petition is only as strong as the billing records. A fee petition filed without contemporaneous time records at 0.1-hour task-specific granularity typically takes a 25–60% records-quality cut under Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424 (1983). On a $120,000 claimed fee, that is $30,000–$72,000 of foregone recovery per case.

3. Portfolio pricing: adjusting the contingency percentage

A contingency percentage set without data is a guess. The standard one-third pre-suit, forty percent post-suit schedule was calibrated to the median case type in an era when individual practitioners had no data on their own practices. With six months of captured hours by case type — motor-vehicle at $75,000: 48 hours median; employment hostile-environment: 210 hours median; FCRA willful-violation: 95 hours median — the solo can price each case type at the percentage that produces the target effective hourly rate. The median practice charges the same percentage for both the 48-hour motor-vehicle and the 210-hour employment matter. The data-driven practice charges differently.

What ClaimHour captures in a contingency practice

Calls: client status calls, expert calls, mediator calls

iOS companion captures call metadata — duration, counterparty, direction — without recording audio. During a contingency case's lifecycle, those calls include: intake calls, follow-up client status calls, calls to medical providers for record authorizations, calls to expert witnesses (medical, accident reconstruction, damages), calls to the mediator's office, settlement negotiation calls with defense counsel. Each appears in the day-end digest ready for one-click matter attribution.

Documents: demand letters, briefs, expert reports

File-open and focus-duration events for Word, Pages, and PDF viewers capture the time you spend drafting and reviewing documents. A three-hour session on a summary-judgment opposition brief, a two-hour review of an expert's draft report, a 45-minute demand-letter revision — all show up labeled in the digest. The document title is captured; the contents are never read.

Email: adjuster threads, expert coordinators, co-counsel

Sent-message count and compose-window duration give you the email time signal without reading message bodies. Active discovery produces dozens of emails per day across multiple matters; the digest breaks them down by counterparty so you can attribute each thread's compose time to the right case.

Calendar: depositions, mediations, hearings

Matter-tagged calendar events flow into the digest as pre-attributed time entries. The deposition day, the mediation day, the hearing day — each is a calendar event. The two-hour prep session the night before and the one-hour follow-up memo the next morning are document-edit and email bursts captured alongside it.

The scope-creep shapes that cross the ratio

Discovery scope creep is not random — it takes four predictable shapes in contingency practice, each with a recognizable signature in the captured-hours data:

Defendant motion practice — a sequential chain of MTDs, judgment-on-pleadings motions, protective-order fights, MTC hearings, in-limine motions, and reconsideration requests. Signature: sustained high-burn document-edit time without a corresponding deposition schedule.
Document-production explosion — 250,000 documents produced where 5,000 were anticipated. Signature: a sharp 4–8 week step function in document-edit time, usually tracking the production date.
Deposition multiplication — a four-deposition plan expanding to thirteen. Signature: calendar event count increasing, sustained document-edit and email-compose time per deposition block.
Expert witness scope creep — damages + liability + rebuttal + sur-rebuttal expert engagements at 40–100 hours each. Signature: a slow, irreducible six-to-nine month burn that does not respond to changes in motion or deposition pace.

All four shapes are detectable in the per-matter hours data ClaimHour produces. The detection requires only that the hours were captured — which passive capture does without any attorney action.

How ClaimHour fits contingency practice

If you are a contingency-fee solo — PI, plaintiff-side employment, civil rights, FCRA/FDCPA, ERISA, products liability, qui tam — and you have ever settled a case that consumed more time than the fee justified, or filed a fee petition without the records to defend it, ClaimHour is built for that. Join the waitlist and we'll email when early access opens.

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