Abstract Despite the ubiquity of time and temporal references in legal texts, their formalization has often been either disregarded or addressed in an ad hoc manner. In this paper we address this issue from the standpoint of the research done on temporal representation and reasoning in AI. We identify the temporal requirements of legal domains and propose a temporal representation framework for legal reasoning which is independent of (i) the underlying representation language and (ii) the specific legal reasoning application. The approach is currently being used in a rule‐based language for an application in commercial law.