Southern District of California · S.D. Cal. · 9th Circuit

CJA eVoucher Timekeeping
for S.D. Cal. Panel Attorneys

PanelTime™ is the only AI tool that converts your CJA timesheet — handwritten, Word, Excel, Google Docs, or PDF — into an eVoucher-ready file automatically. No manual data entry. No service codes to look up.

Convert your timesheet →

Abbreviation

S.D. Cal.

Location

San Diego · El Centro

Circuit

9th Circuit

About the District

Southern District of California — Federal Court Overview

The United States District Court for the Southern District of California is headquartered in San Diego and serves San Diego and Imperial counties. With one of the nation's busiest land border crossings directly to its south, the Southern District consistently ranks among the highest in the country for federal criminal filings — driven largely by immigration-related prosecutions, drug trafficking cases originating at the U.S.-Mexico border, and related firearms offenses.

The volume and pace of federal criminal work in S.D. Cal. make efficient timekeeping and billing especially important for CJA panel attorneys. Many appointed attorneys in this district handle high caseloads with frequent short entries across numerous defendants. PanelTime™ is well-suited to this pattern — it reads entries in any format and sorts them correctly regardless of how they are organized on the page.

CJA panel attorneys in the Southern District submit compensation through the national eVoucher platform. The Federal Public Defender's office in San Diego administers the CJA panel and provides support for voucher-related questions. PanelTime™ works with both CJA-20 (attorney) and CJA-21 (service provider) voucher types.

How it works

From timesheet to eVoucher in three steps

Works with any format S.D. Cal. panel attorneys already use.

Upload your timesheet — handwritten notes, Word, Excel, Google Docs, PDF, or any format you already use, as long as it has a date, description, and hours. (see requirements)

PanelTime™ reads your entries — automatically assigns the correct eVoucher service codes, sorts services from expenses, and builds a clean import file. No service code lookup needed.

Import into S.D. Cal. eVoucher with one click. Use our free Chrome extension to automatically populate your expenses tab as well. Services and expenses, done.

✓

Review, correct, and submit — you stay in control. PanelTime™ only works from what you recorded. It removes the manual retyping step; the voucher is still yours to approve.

Common questions

S.D. Cal. panel attorneys ask

Does PanelTime™ work with the S.D. Cal. eVoucher system?

Yes. PanelTime™ produces a CSV formatted for the national eVoucher platform used by all 94 federal districts, including S.D. Cal. in San Diego and El Centro.

Do I need to know the CJA service codes?

No. PanelTime™ reads your time entry descriptions and assigns the correct eVoucher service codes automatically. You review the result before importing and can correct anything.

I handle a high volume of short entries across multiple defendants — does PanelTime™ handle that?

Yes. PanelTime™ reads your entries as written and sorts them by type. Whether you have five entries or fifty, the process is the same — upload, review, import.

What about expenses — mileage, copies, travel to El Centro?

PanelTime™ separates expenses from time entries automatically. Our free Chrome extension then imports your expenses into eVoucher's expenses tab with one click.

Does this work for CJA-21 service providers in San Diego?

Yes. Include your hourly rate somewhere on the timesheet — for example, "RATE = $85" — and PanelTime™ will calculate compensation automatically for CJA-21 vouchers.

Free templates