Intapp Time re-architected with Intapp Celeste and agentic workflows is now available. Agentic AI makes capturing every hour effortless for timekeepers while protecting earned revenue at the point of entry — turning time data into intelligence that makes every matter more profitable.
The economics of law firms are being rewritten. AI is automating the routine, high-volume work that once filled associate hours — the engine of firm profitability. But when revenue is tied to hours, doing the same work faster can mean billing less for it.
So far, firms have largely compensated by charging more for each hour: Firms posted 13% profit growth in 2025, driven by record rate increases. But that growth may not be sustainable. Clients are increasingly questioning whether they should pay for the hours that technology eliminates. Yet Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law research shows that 90% of legal work still flows through traditional billable-hour model.1
For every firm, the pressure lands in the same place: the record of the work itself. Whether a firm bills by the hour, charges fixed fees, or prices work based on outcomes, it needs an accurate, complete, and compliant account of the work behind it. And that record has always been the hardest thing to capture because it depends on one of the tasks lawyers like least: entering their time.
Where the value of work leaks away
Time entry is a part of the job most fee earners dread and put off. Hours are lost or underreported as entries are created hours or days after the work happened. And even more hours are lost when compliance issues surface at prebill or after the invoice has gone out.
Firms have traditionally absorbed this pressure through leverage: more associates, more hours, and more people to check the work before it goes out. That is precisely the capacity AI is taking away. As AI accelerates associate work, each remaining hour carries more of what a matter earns — so every hour that goes unrecorded or noncompliant costs the firm more. On top of that, firms have no way to identify which AI tools touched which matters, or where along the matter lifecycle they were used. So when leaders ask how AI is changing the way the work gets done or billed, partners can only provide their best guess.
Operational and financial data sits apart, and the record that should connect them is the same one fee earners don’t want to keep. We’ve seen this shift coming for quite some time — which is why we’ve been rebuilding Intapp Time around it for more than a year.
What we rebuilt first
In August 2025, we introduced a completely reengineered Time application, with AI designed to make time entry and billing compliance easier for fee earners — whether at their desks or on the go.
They can now see the day as a timeline, dictate an entry by voice, or build one from a quick note. Work code prediction fills in the details, while tone and style guidelines and one-click narrative rewrites bring an entry in line with billing rules before it moves forward.
These changes removed clicks and minutes from each lawyer’s day. Together, they built the foundation for what came next.
Reimagining timekeeping with agentic AI
In July 2026, we announced the general availability of Intapp Celeste, our agentic AI platform for professional firms that’s grounded in their data and governed by their rules. Now, we’ve re-architected Intapp Time with Intapp Celeste and agentic workflows at its core.
Celeste is an expert AI coworker for every timekeeper. It suggests time entries and recommends corrections to compliance issues before they turn into lost revenue. Timekeepers can see its reasoning, and the decisions stay theirs.
A new panel also puts Celeste directly in the workflow. Ask for an entry or an insight in natural language, or run a pre-configured playbook with a single click.
The work captured in Time becomes more than a billing record. It becomes engagement intelligence that firms can activate with Celeste to make sharper decisions that drive profitability.
How Celeste works inside Intapp Time
Capture every hour, effortlessly
Time now automatically detects, captures, and labels work activity from AI tools, in addition to the activity already captured across email, calendars, virtual meetings, browsers, and more. Celeste then suggests time entries complete with compliant narratives based on that captured work activity, correlating it to gaps in a timekeeper’s day. Timekeepers simply review and spend less time creating entries —the part of the job they like least — while the firm recovers more billable hours.
Protect every dollar earned
Celeste continuously evaluates time entries against firm standards and client guidelines. When it detects a compliance issue, Celeste makes recommendations — which the timekeeper can accept with a single click, right at the point of entry.
For example, Celeste will identify time entry narratives that refer to multiple activities. If the client for that matter doesn’t permit block billing, Celeste will flag it and offer to split the single non-compliant time entry into multiple billing-ready entries. Issues get resolved at the point of entry instead of surfacing as write-downs weeks later.
Generate foundational engagement intelligence
A Celeste panel sits directly in Time, giving timekeepers and billing teams one place to ask questions, run playbooks that further automate timekeeping, or get insights into topics like hours realization. Answers are drawn from the firm’s own records and grounded in its access policies, so people get accurate answers when they need them, with only the information they should see.
The intelligence comes from the connection
Celeste can reason across more than work activity and time entries. It activates the time, compliance, and billing data your firm already has, so every entry it creates is in the context of the client’s guidelines and firm standards. That context is what separates a suggestion that is right from one that is merely plausible.
Celeste works where time is captured and billed, using the data and workflows the firm has already built. It’s governed by design: Sensitive firm, client, and matter data stays within the platform, and every agent respects the firm’s access policies. Celeste does the preparatory work while the professional stays in control of the final entry.
The more complete the record, the more value a firm can unlock from it. An accurate, governed account of the work becomes the foundation for the questions firm leaders are weighing now: What a matter actually costs to deliver? How should the firm scope and price the next one? Where is utilization heading? These matter economics questions are only answerable when the record beneath them is complete.
Built to keep advancing
This is just a starting point, not a finish line. Celeste will extend revenue governance to more of the factors that make an entry compliant, and new playbooks will connect real-time work with more of the firm’s historical financials and billing rules. Those playbooks will surface more realization trends, measure where AI tools are changing the work, and answer matter economics questions in natural language for firm leaders.
Learn more
Time helps firms capture every hour, protect every dollar, and build the matter intelligence that makes the next decision a better one. To see how Celeste works inside Time, visit intapp.com/time-tracking or talk with your Intapp account team.
1 Thomas Reuters Institute. 2026 Report on the State of the US Legal Market: Peak prosperity and the fault lines below. Accessed August 14, 2026. https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en/institute/reports/state-of-the-us-legal-market-2026.