Ajax vs. Memtime: Which Is Right for Your Law Firm?

Timekeeping is the tax every lawyer pays for billing by the hour. You do the legal work, then you do the work of recording the legal work - reconstructing your day from memory, stitching together scattered tasks, writing narratives, and assigning matters. 

Most lawyers lose billable time in this gap between doing the work and logging it. The tools in this comparison both try to close that gap, but they go about it very differently.

Ajax and Memtime look similar on the surface: both run in the background on your desktop, both capture your work activity automatically, and both take privacy seriously. 

But the similarity ends at the tracking layer. What each tool does after it captures your day is where the comparison gets interesting.

Here's an honest breakdown of both.

What Is Ajax?

Ajax is an AI-native desktop application, supplemented by integrations, that reads the words on your screen in real time and uses that content to automatically generate time entries.

Since "reads your screen" understandably raises a privacy question: 

• Screen content is processed, used to generate entries, and then automatically deleted on a rolling basis. 

• Ajax doesn't use your data to train its models.

• Since, it is SOC 2 compliant, infrastructure vendors (including AI providers) are contractually prohibited from retaining or training on any data that passes through the system. 

Ajax uses that screen-read content to write entry narratives, assign matters, and group fragmented work into coherent entries.

Advantages

Here's what Ajax's customers tend to highlight when they talk about why they chose it:

• Generates complete time entries. You open Ajax and entries - with narratives, matter assignments, and activity codes - are waiting for review. No writing entries from scratch.

• Groups fragmented work across sessions. If you spend 30 minutes on a matter in the morning, 30 around lunch, an hour and a half in the evening - Ajax groups that into one entry of two and a half hours. Configurable between block billing and itemized entries.

• Hands-on onboarding with entries ready on day one. Ajax runs in the background for approximately two days before kickoff, customizing output based on your guidelines. When lawyers open it the first time, real entries are already there. The Ajax team handles setup so your firm does minimal work.

• Deep practice management integrations with two-way sync. Ajax integrates with Clio, MyCase, and others. It connects to fewer tools than Memtime overall, but its integrations go deeper, with tighter sync to your billing workflow.

Disadvantages

• Premium pricing. Ajax is a higher-investment tool, reflecting the AI infrastructure behind entry generation, matter attribution, and narrative writing, plus hands-on onboarding with a dedicated team. It's built to pay for itself through recovered billable hours.

• Work that never touches a screen won't be captured. Pen-and-paper notes, in-person conversations, unconnected phone calls. Ajax captures the vast majority of a lawyer's digital workday, but not literally everything.

• Requires cloud processing. Ajax protects data with rolling deletion, no model training, no vendor retention, and SOC 2 compliance - but if your firm requires captured data to never leave the local device, that's a meaningful difference.

Who Ajax Is a Good Fit For

Ajax is built for law firms where minimizing daily timekeeping effort is a priority.

• Firms that want entries generated, grouped, and attributed automatically

• Firms where adoption of previous tools has been a problem, or matters involve complex attribution (family law, multi-party litigation, transactional work)

• Firms that value hands-on onboarding and real-person support over self-serve setup

Ajax’s clients found over 60% more billable hours after switching, and increased billables by 50 hours a month.

What Is Memtime?

Memtime (originally called TimeBro before rebranding) is a general-purpose automatic time tracker built for anyone who bills by the hour - consultants, developers, designers, agencies, and lawyers. 

It's a European company that's gained significant traction recently.

• It runs in the background on your desktop and records which programs, files, emails, and browser tabs you have open

• Then displays your day as a color-coded chronological timeline called the "Memory Aid." 

• You review the timeline, remember your day, and create time entries by dragging time blocks to projects and adding descriptions.

Memtime's flagship strength is privacy: all captured activity data stays on your local device, offline. Nothing is uploaded to the cloud. 

Nobody - not even Memtime itself - can access the raw data.

Advantages

Memtime earned its reputation for following reasons:

• Strong privacy through local-only storage. All activity data stays on your device. Nothing touches the cloud. If a client asks how your data is handled, "it never leaves my computer" is a simple answer.

• Clean, useful visual timeline. The color-coded chronological display makes it easy to scan your day and recall what you were working on. 

• Accessible price point. Plans start around $10/user/month and go up to $23/user/month. For firms testing automated tracking, it's a low-risk way to start.

• Cross-platform support. Windows, macOS, and Linux. Ajax doesn't currently support Linux, so if that's a requirement, Memtime has the edge.

Disadvantages

• You still write the entries yourself. Memtime tracks what you did, but turning that into time entries - writing descriptions, assigning matters, combining fragments - is on you.

• Chronological display only. Your day is laid out in time order. If you worked on the same matter at three different points, those appear as separate blocks on the timeline.

• General-purpose design. Memtime isn't built specifically for legal workflows, so it doesn't have features like matter attribution learning, block billing defaults, or narrative generation tuned to billing guidelines.

• No cross-device sync. Since data stays local, each computer keeps its own timeline.

Who Memtime Is a Good Fit For

• Lawyers who prefer hands-on entry control and like working from a visual timeline

• Firms where budget is the primary constraint and lawyers are already disciplined timekeepers

• Anyone who requires captured activity data to never leave the local device, or who needs Linux support

Ajax vs. Memtime: A Side-by-Side Comparison

The simplest way to frame this: Ajax automates the full timekeeping workflow - from screen capture through entry generation, grouping, matter attribution, and narrative writing. 

Memtime automates the capture and gives you a polished visual timeline to work from, but the entry creation stays with you. That fundamental difference ripples through every feature below.

Privacy and Security

Memtime's privacy model is its simplest selling point: all captured activity data stays on your local device, offline. 

Nothing is uploaded to the cloud. For firms where the simplest possible data story matters, this feature carries real weight.

Ajax processes screen content through cloud infrastructure to power the AI, but with strict guardrails:

• Rolling, automatic data deletion - Ajax doesn't hang onto your data

• No model training on your data

• Infrastructure vendors (including AI providers) are contractually prohibited from retaining or training on any data

• Strict individual silos - nobody at your firm can see your data, not even managing partners

• SOC 2 compliant

Task Grouping

Memtime displays your day chronologically - every app switch, every file, every email gets its own color-coded block on the timeline. 

The granularity is useful: you can see exactly when you started and stopped, which helps with itemized billing or reconstructing a specific window of time. 

Combining scattered work into a single entry is a manual step.

Ajax handles grouping automatically. If you spend 30 minutes on a matter in the morning, 30 around lunch, and an hour and a half in the evening, that becomes one entry of two and a half hours:

• Configurable between block billing and itemized entries depending on client guidelines

• Works across the full day, not just consecutive activities

• Lawyers who task-switch frequently see the biggest time savings here

Matter Attribution

You probably don't have your billing system perfectly populated. On a family law case with dozens of involved parties, maybe two names are in your CRM. 

The children, the judge, opposing counsel, a disputed property address - all in email traffic, not in any structured system.

Memtime leaves matter assignment to you - you assign activities to the correct project manually, every time. 

Ajax automates this with legal-specific learning:

• Extracts names, addresses, and keywords from your screen content and maps them to the correct matter

• When it can't confidently attribute something - say, a Word doc titled "456 Elm" listing furniture for a settlement, with no client names anywhere - it writes a narrative and flags the matter for you

• You assign it to the Doe v. Doe divorce case. Ajax stores "456 Elm" in a case-specific dictionary

• Tomorrow, any email mentioning 456 Elm gets attributed to the Doe case automatically - it learns context the way lawyers actually correspond about their cases

User Interface and Workflow

Memtime centers on the Memory Aid timeline - a detailed chronological view with a time entry grid beside it. 

The interface is well designed and the visual recall it provides is a strength. Lawyers who like seeing the shape of their day and building entries from that context will find the workflow natural.

Ajax takes a different approach to the review experience:

• Two-column layout: entries for review on the left, entries already in your billing system on the right

• Drag entries left to right - the review column empties as you approve

• Feels like clearing a to-do list, not building a timesheet from scratch

This saves lawyers a lot of their billable hours.

Configurability and Setup

Memtime offers a self-serve setup process;

• Install the app

• Connect your integrations at your own pace 

• Set suggestion rules (e.g., when a client's name appears in an email subject, a time entry suggestion appears). 

It's hands-off, which some firms prefer. You're not waiting on anyone to get started.

Ajax is more hands-on, with legal-specific configurability built into onboarding:

• Plain-English rules for the entry generation pipeline: grouping preferences, default matters for admin, business development, CLE, and new client intake

• Narrative style customized per firm based on billing guidelines

• The Ajax team handles installation, integration, and configuration before kickoff - your firm does minimal setup work

Which Tool Is the Right Fit for Your Law Firm?

It depends on what you want the tool to do.

Choose Ajax if:

• You want entries written, grouped, and attributed automatically - not just activities tracked

• Adoption of previous timekeeping tools has been a problem at your firm

• Your matters involve complex attribution with many parties, peripheral names, or overlapping cases

• You want narratives generated from your firm's billing guidelines, ready for review on day one

• You're looking for a premium, full-service timekeeping experience with hands-on onboarding and dedicated support

Ajax is a premium tool with pricing to match, but firms that use it tend to recover the investment quickly through captured billable hours that previously went unlogged.

You can see what that looks like in practice in these case studies. 

Book a demo to see entries from your actual workday.

Choose Memtime if:

• You want a visual memory aid that captures your full day and lets you build entries on your own terms

• Your lawyers are already consistent, disciplined timekeepers who prefer control over their entries

• Budget is the primary constraint and you're looking for a low-risk entry point into automated tracking

• Zero cloud involvement is a hard requirement for your firm's data policy

• You need Linux support, or prefer a self-serve tool you can configure independently

Memtime is a strong choice at an accessible price point. It does what it does well.

Final Thoughts

Both tools address a real problem - lawyers losing billable hours to forgotten, fragmented, or poorly tracked work. 

They solve it differently. Ajax writes the entries for you. Memtime gives you a detailed visual record so you can write accurate entries yourself.

The right choice depends on how much of the timekeeping process you want to keep in your own hands versus how much you want automated.

Book a demo with Ajax to see entries from your own practice - not a canned walkthrough.