Bexar County Criminal Defense
The voucher fee schedule
How Bexar County pays appointed counsel, the difference between billable hours and flat-fee events, and why the matter records the work the way the voucher reads it.
Two ways the county pays
Appointed work in Bexar County is paid two ways, and a defender who keeps only one in mind leaves money on the table. Some work is billable by the hour: in-court and out-of-court time, logged by date, each entry carrying a description of what was done. Some work is paid as a flat-fee event under the local fee schedule, the kind of disposition or appearance the county pays a set amount for regardless of the minutes it took.
The local fee schedule is adopted under Article 26.04 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, which is what gives the schedule its force and what requires the work to be handled on the record. Reading your own county’s schedule is the difference between claiming what the work was worth and guessing at it. The board’s job is to keep the two kinds of pay straight so neither one falls through.
The board keeps hours and flat events in their lanes
Every hour you log against a matter is logged against the voucher attached to it. Court appearances, the out-of-court time appointed counsel earns and too often forgets to claim, the dates, the descriptions: the Case Board tracks the work the way the voucher wants to see it, so the record is built as you go rather than rebuilt at the deadline.
When a task is the kind the schedule pays as a flat-fee event, it is marked that way instead of by the hour. When it is billable time, it is logged by date with a description. And because no schedule anticipates every situation, there is an Other (specify) line with a free-text field for the task the schedule treats on its own terms. You decide how a given task is classified, because that is a judgment about your own work. The board makes sure it lands against the right line before the voucher is filled.
The voucher fills from the record you already kept
When the work on a matter is done, the voucher fills from the matter rather than from a blank county form opened weeks later. The client name, the cause number, the court, the dated hours, and the flat-fee events all auto-fill into the form, so the numbers on the voucher match the record you have been keeping all along. You are not reconstructing a file from memory at a deadline. You are confirming a record that was built as the case moved.
This is a draft-and-hold posture, the same one that governs every working surface on the platform. The system fills and exports the voucher filing-ready. The attorney is the one who submits it, the way Bexar County accepts it today. One-click voucher submission is designed and coming soon, and it is not claimed as live until it is. Nothing leaves the system on its own.
Why the structure protects the defender
The out-of-court hours are where appointed counsel quietly loses money, because they are the easiest to forget and the hardest to reconstruct after the fact. A schedule that distinguishes billable time from flat events only helps if the work is recorded against the right line while it is fresh. The board records it as you go, so the claim reflects the work the docket actually demanded.
This is the access-to-justice ledger underneath Gideon. The Sixth Amendment promise holds only if the lawyer who answers the appointment is actually paid for the defense the case required, and the record shows it. A fee schedule read carefully and a matter that tracks the work the way the schedule reads it are how the defender keeps defending.
The whole machine
Ten logins down to two
One subscription stands in for the stack a defense firm usually stitches together, so the practice runs on two things it already trusts: Google Workspace, where the files and matters live, and The IMC Machine, where the matter runs. LawPay and QuickBooks, the money rail, stay where they are, fed by the Machine. Casework, evidence, motions, vouchers, marketing, and events, in one place.
San Antonio and Bexar County. The Machine is built for here first. For another city, county, or region, the build-out is custom and carries its own setup fee.
