ClaimHour

Vertical guide · Updated June 2026

DUI attorney time tracking: simultaneous DMV and criminal proceedings, flat-fee calibration

DUI practice has all the billing challenges of general criminal defense — after-hours arrest calls, court-day waits, ADA phone tag — plus structural complexity unique to drunk driving cases: every arrest spawns two simultaneous proceedings (criminal and DMV) on different deadlines with different billing implications; most flat fees are priced on gut feel rather than data and are systematically wrong for elevated-BAC or CDL cases; and toxicology expert coordination generates 8–15 hours of billing spread invisibly across 3–4 months. Passive capture handles all of it.

TL;DR

ClaimHour captures DUI arrest calls (including the 11pm call from the arrest), DMV hearing prep, toxicology expert coordination, field sobriety test video review, and criminal court day wait time — passively, no timer, no audio, no document contents. It builds the data that DUI flat-fee calibration requires and the contemporaneous records that hourly-rider trial cases need. $29–$59/mo. No PMS required.

The dual-track proceedings problem

Every DUI arrest in most states creates two simultaneous legal proceedings: the criminal case (arraignment, discovery, pre-trial motions, trial or plea) and the administrative DMV hearing (also called an implied-consent hearing, APS hearing, or administrative license revocation hearing depending on the state). The two tracks run on different timelines — the DMV hearing must usually be requested within 7–10 days of arrest — and require independent work product: separate demand letters, separate discovery requests, separate hearing preparation.

DUI solos who quote a flat fee "for the case" frequently absorb the DMV track without billing it separately. A first-offense DUI flat fee of $2,500 covers the criminal track in the attorney's mind; the 4–6 hours of DMV work — requesting the hearing, obtaining the officer's sworn statement, reviewing the breath-test calibration records, preparing for the hearing, and conducting the hearing — are either absorbed into the flat fee or billed as a $500–$1,000 add-on that doesn't reflect the actual time. Without captured time data, the attorney cannot calculate whether the add-on price is accurate.

ClaimHour handles the dual track by treating each track as a separate matter. DMV-specific calls and document-edit sessions attribute to the DMV matter; criminal-case work attributes to the criminal matter. The evening digest presents both and you allocate in 2 minutes at day end.

Flat-fee calibration: why your DUI tiers are probably wrong

Most DUI solos price their flat fees on one of two methods: what competitors charge, or what feels right for the expected complexity. Both methods produce pricing that is too high for simple cases (where clients comparison-shop) and too low for complex cases (where the attorney absorbs the loss). After six months of captured data, the pricing conversation changes entirely.

The key insight from captured data is that DUI complexity is predictably stratified. Standard first-offense .08 cases with no accident and no CDL issue average 7–11 hours from intake to disposition. Elevated-BAC cases (0.15+) that attract enhanced penalties and more aggressive prosecution average 14–20 hours. Commercial driver (CDL) cases — where the client faces both criminal penalties and permanent career consequences — average 18–28 hours because the attorney has to coordinate with the DMV track, an employment attorney on the CDL implications, and frequently a vocational expert on the client's future earnings. Cases that go to jury trial average 40–60 hours regardless of BAC.

A flat fee priced at $3,000 for "DUI defense" works on first-offense standard cases. It produces a $2,500–$4,500 loss on CDL cases that go to trial. A data-driven attorney who knows those averages charges $3,000 for standard first-offense, adds a $1,500 CDL surcharge, and adds a trial rider at $350/hr for anything that goes past the pre-trial motions stage. The annual revenue difference between gut-feel pricing and data-driven pricing, on a practice with 60 cases per year and 10 CDL clients and 5 trials, is $32,000–$52,000.

Toxicology expert coordination

DUI cases where the defense challenges the chemical test result — breath test accuracy, blood draw contamination, chain-of-custody failures, mouth-alcohol contamination — involve a toxicology expert engagement that spans 3–4 months and generates 8–15 hours of attorney coordination work. The phases are: initial intake call with the expert to assess the test facts (45–90 minutes), transmission of the breath test maintenance records and calibration logs to the expert (compose time for the email, 15–20 minutes), expert's preliminary opinion call (30–45 minutes), review of the state's toxicologist report (2–4 hours of document review), preparation of the cross-examination outline with the expert's input (1–2 hours), and pre-trial preparation call (30–45 minutes). If the case goes to hearing, the pre-hearing prep and testimony coordination add another 2–4 hours.

Without contemporaneous capture, this phase appears on the invoice as 4–6 hours because the calls and document review sessions were individually short and are remembered collectively rather than individually. At $325/hr, the undercount represents $975–$2,925 per case. On a 15-case/year toxicology-challenge practice, the annual undercount is $14,625–$43,875.

Field sobriety test video review

Body camera footage from the arresting officer and dashcam video from the patrol car are discovery in every DUI case. The attorney needs to review every minute of video: the stop, the field sobriety test instructions and performance, the PAS test, the arrest, and the booking. A typical DUI arrest generates 60–120 minutes of video across 2–3 cameras. Review at attorney pace (pausing, rewinding, taking notes on specific frames) takes 2–4 hours per case. A solo handling 60 DUI cases per year spends 120–240 hours reviewing video — at $325/hr, $39,000–$78,000 of annual billing that is almost entirely captured at its true value only if the attorney is tracking screen-focus time during video review sessions.

ClaimHour captures browser and media player focus-duration events. QuickTime, VLC, and browser-based video players are captured as document-edit sessions with the file name and focus duration. A 3-hour video review session on the dashcam footage from "State v. Jones" appears in the evening digest as a 3-hour event ready to attribute to the matter. Reconstruction from memory the next morning typically produces 1.5–2 hours for the same session.

The commercial driver (CDL) case

CDL DUI cases are the highest-complexity, highest-billing, and most under-priced DUI matters. A commercial driver who registers any BAC above 0.04 (the commercial standard) faces disqualification of their commercial license for 12 months on a first offense — permanent disqualification on a second offense. The attorney must manage the criminal case, the DMV administrative hearing (for both personal and commercial licenses), and the federal FMCSA implications simultaneously. The client's livelihood depends on the outcome of all three tracks, and the attorney fields daily status calls from the client and often from the client's employer or union representative.

The daily status calls alone — 5–8 calls across the 60 days of active DMV and criminal proceedings, at 10–20 minutes each — add 1–3 hours of billable time that the flat fee never anticipated. Without captured call data, those calls become "client communication" entries at whatever round number the attorney recalls. With captured data, every call is in the digest at its actual duration ready for the attorney to decide whether it's billable at the flat-fee matter or qualifies as a separately billable hourly event.

How ClaimHour fits DUI practice

If you are a DUI solo — flat-fee first-offense, retainer-and-hourly felony DUI, CDL defense, or trial-ready contested cases — and you've ever looked at a month's DUI billings and thought "the DMV track alone should have paid more than that," ClaimHour was built for that gap. Join the waitlist and we'll email when early access opens.

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Related questions

How does DUI time tracking differ from general criminal defense billing?

General criminal defense is about jail visits, court-day waits, and after-hours arrest calls. DUI adds three distinct failure modes: dual-track proceedings (criminal + DMV, each with its own billing events, often absorbed into one flat fee), flat-fee calibration inaccuracy (CDL and elevated-BAC cases average 3–5× the hours of standard first-offense cases), and toxicology expert coordination (8–15 hours spread invisibly across 3–4 months).

How does ClaimHour handle the dual-track DUI/DMV proceeding?

Each track gets its own matter tag. DMV-specific calls and document-edit sessions attribute to the DMV matter; criminal-case work attributes to the criminal matter. Allocation happens at review time in the evening digest — 2 minutes per day — not during the events themselves.

Can ClaimHour data help me calibrate flat-fee DUI pricing tiers?

Yes — after six months of data you know average hours by case type: standard first-offense (~9 hours), elevated-BAC (~17 hours), CDL (~23 hours), trial-track (~50 hours). Data-driven tier pricing — CDL surcharge, elevated-BAC add-on, trial rider at hourly — is only possible when you know the actual time input per case type. The annual revenue difference on a 60-case practice is typically $30,000–$50,000 versus gut-feel tier pricing.

How does ClaimHour capture toxicology expert coordination time?

Calls with the expert are captured as duration + contact metadata. Document review of breath test maintenance records and blood chain-of-custody is captured as PDF focus-duration. Email-compose time for transmitting discovery to the expert is captured automatically. All four event types appear in the evening digest for per-matter attribution.

Further reading