Overall, an excellent software and definitely worth considering for your law firm, especially if you handle real estate transactions.

1. Smokeball is an "everything" platform. We realized we were only using the other softwares for billing/invoicing, but found little use for them otherwise. Smokeball, on the other hand, is much more versatile. We track our to-dos there, create workflows, assign tasks/projects to others at the firm (it avoids the back-and-forth internal emails), share our draft documents with client through a secure portal, and much more! 2. If you are a real estate transactions law firm (as we are), Smokeball is the only platform specifically designed for that practice area. We love that it automatically calendars deadlines, has templates built in, and otherwise automates much of the closing process for us (and avoids costly mistakes such as missing a deadline).

1. Cost (yup, it's one of the more expensive options you'll find out there). But when evaluating options, the thought process should be whether you will save some time by implementing the features of the software. And if so, a few extra bucks monthly is well worth it. 2. A little glitchy at times. We sometimes would create an invoice but would not be able to load it or send to a client until the next day. I have no idea why this happens, though it hasnt been a big issue for us. 3. Requires you to invest a lot of time to set up to automate your documents and learn how to modify them as you go. But, again, it is time well spent.

We needed a new software system because our old one (very old) was aging out of the version we used and was no longer going to be supported. When looking at other options with them, they determined that our firm just wasn't big enough for their software. They tried to sell us on a smaller platform that they had purchased, but after demo-ing for a week I knew it wouldn't work for us. Someone had mentioned Smokeball to me and to my boss. Since we had both gotten word of it from separate sources we decided to check it out. Kind of a "the universe is telling us something" sort of deal. Once I started working in the demo and seeing how integrated it was, I knew this is the one we wanted. And it was cheaper than our old system! Onboarding wasn't difficult at all. Because we are a smaller firm and we only wanted active cases in the new system we transferred the data from the old system to the new system ourselves. It took a few people a few weeks to get all the data in, but it was great because there was a field for everything and we were able to find a place to the put all the information. Since then, we have trained new employees very easily, we are all using the software to its fullest potential. We all watch extra webinars and training videos when they come up and are continuing to improve our use of the software. It is really a very easy system to learn. Everything is logical. The forms and templates are a dream to work with.

The thing I like most about Smokeball is how integrated with other programs it is. I can create and save Word documents from inside the software. E-mails and attachments in Outlook are so easy to link. We changed the way we use our scanner so that it goes to our e-mails instead of a folder on the old server because it is so easy to get the documents into the correct file and name them correctly at the same time through Outlook.

The only thing I feel like Smokeball is missing is a date calculator. I miss being able to calculate forward and backward choosing calendar days or court days and such. Calendaring rules are great, but sometimes I need to know when I can schedule a motion for BEFORE it is calendared.

I foolishly jumped in and signed up for a one-year deal with Smokeball. After I explained the shortcomings of their product and my need to buy additional software to make their software work, I asked to be released from my one year contract. Somkeball denied the request. I would strongly look for a product that is less expensive and has some type of money back guarantee.

The staff is friendly and tries to assist.

I bought the software for the forms library that you could use in your practice. I am a small practitioner in Oklahoma. However, the forms library for Oklahoma, and most states, is non-existent. Smokeball costs more than other practice software packages. I purchased it for these forms, but had to buy forms elsewhere. Smokeball does not interact with Google products including Google calendar even with work-arounds. My work was all automated through Google calendar. I worked with trying to use the work-around recommended, but none worked. To use Smokeball, I would have had to buy additional soft-ware. This made the one stop shop advertised by Smokeball not work for me at all.

Life-changing. Has made us so much more organized!

Organization of matters is great! Time Finder is also very useful

Could use different labels (ie “divorce” vs. pre-decree”)

My firm has used Smokeball for almost 5 years, and I'm still as happy with it as the day we onboarded. There are certainly cheaper options out there (most of them browser based), but you really do get what you pay for and Smokeball does pretty much everything. The main PC software is a tank, and there's also a lighter phone/tablet app for use on the go. My office uses tons and tons of features (most of which I don't see any other firms in our area using), and I bet we still don't utilize even half of what Smokeball has to offer. The integrations are excellent, and from both efficiency and organization standpoints I just don't think it can be beat.

Tons of features, useful integrations, time-saving, organization

There are so many features that sometimes it's hard to wade through everything at a glance, but when I make time to sit down and do a deep dive I almost always find what I'm looking for and the setup is easy and straightforward.