What Counts as a 'User' for LeanLaw's Per-User Pricing?

LeanLaw is priced per user, and the deciding factor for any role is whether that person needs a login to work inside the system, not their title. Four roles cause most confusion — bookkeeper, contract attorney, part-timer, paralegal — each turning on its own version of that question.

Why “per user” isn’t the same as “per attorney”

Core runs $55 per user per month and Pro runs $75, and both are priced against the number of people who need a seat, not the number of timekeepers or the number of partners on the letterhead. That distinction matters because a firm sizing up the total cost often starts by counting attorneys, then discovers the real roster includes several people who touch billing, trust, or reporting without ever appearing on an invoice as a timekeeper. Getting a number worth planning around means asking the seat question about every person who might need one, not just the ones who bill hours.

The bookkeeper: does the work happen inside the system or outside it?

A firm’s bookkeeper is the first role that tends to complicate the count. Some bookkeepers work entirely from exports and reports someone else pulls for them; others log in directly to reconcile, review, or adjust entries themselves. The question worth asking isn’t “is this person a bookkeeper,” it’s whether their actual work requires them to act inside LeanLaw or only to receive information out of it. That’s the line that decides a seat, and it’s worth confirming for how your specific bookkeeper actually works, not how the role is typically described — particularly for an outside bookkeeper or accountant splitting time across several clients.

The contract attorney: who enters their time?

A contract or of-counsel attorney raises a related but distinct version of the question: does that person log their own time, or does someone else — an assistant, an office manager — enter it on their behalf? Whether time entry happens under that attorney’s own login is usually the pivot point, and it’s worth confirming explicitly at the quote stage rather than assuming either answer.

The part-timer: does a partial schedule change the seat, or just the hours?

A part-time timekeeper introduces a different wrinkle. Per-user pricing is generally built around the existence of a seat, not the number of hours that seat is used, so a person working a partial schedule may still need a full seat even though their billable output is smaller. Whether a partial schedule changes anything about the cost, or only changes the volume of work logged against an otherwise ordinary seat, is a question to raise directly rather than assume from the hours alone.

The paralegal: time entry versus billing access

Paralegals split into two versions of the same question depending on the firm. Some paralegals enter their own time and need visibility into billing; others support attorneys without ever touching the billing or trust side of the practice. As with the bookkeeper, the deciding factor isn’t the job title “paralegal” — it’s whether that specific person’s responsibilities require a login of their own.

Take a hypothetical five-person firm: two partners who log their own time, one paralegal who enters time directly, one bookkeeper who only receives a monthly export, and one contract attorney whose hours are entered by an assistant. If only the people who log in directly need a seat, that firm might be pricing out three or four seats rather than five — but that’s a hypothetical illustration of how the question could shake out for one roster, not a stated count, and it’s worth confirming against your own five people rather than assuming the pattern transfers.

Answering this ahead of a quote also protects a budget from a different kind of surprise: the roster you describe on a call and the roster you actually run day to day can drift apart within a few months. A paralegal who started out receiving reports might start entering their own time once a firm reorganizes; a contract attorney brought on for one matter might become a regular fixture. Treating the login question as a one-time answer, settled once at signup and never revisited, is how firms end up either under-provisioned or paying for seats nobody’s using — and either direction is easier to catch by asking the question periodically than by assuming the original quote still describes reality a year later.

What this depends on

• How your firm defines each role’s actual day-to-day work, not the title on the org chart.
• Whether time entry, billing review, or trust reconciliation happens under that person’s own login or someone else’s.
• Which plan tier you’re evaluating, since Core and Pro price seats differently.
• How your roster changes over a year — a temporary hire is a different budgeting question than a permanent one, even before you know how licensing treats either.

The question worth bringing to a quote

Rather than asking a vendor to define “user” in the abstract, walk your actual roster — bookkeeper, contract attorney, part-timer, paralegal, and anyone else who touches billing or trust — and ask the login question about each one by name. That turns an abstract pricing definition into a number you can actually plan a budget around, and it’s the same list worth revisiting whenever headcount changes.

Related questions

What counts as users? It’s decided role by role, based on whether that specific person needs their own login to work inside LeanLaw, not by a fixed list of job titles — confirm it against your actual roster.

Is a “user” equal to a login, or something else, for pricing purposes? Per-user pricing is built around who needs direct access to the system, so a login is the relevant unit, but whether a given role needs one is the question to settle case by case, not a definition to look up.

Do we need a user for every single person, or just lawyers? Per-user pricing isn’t limited to attorneys — bookkeepers, paralegals, and contract staff can all need a seat depending on how directly they work inside the system, so it’s worth checking what’s included at each plan level alongside your roster.