Recently active topics

This is INSANE. Has anyone seen this? Any Mississippi lawyers around to comment? I just read it this morning and was blown away.If you haven't heard of it, here’s the article. And here’s the opinion. Basically there is a case in MS federal court and both parties had hired out of state lawyers (I understand why MS wants that emphasized but I think it’s a silly distinction to make here given the actual story) and of course had local counsel. Out of state counsel apparently wrote the briefs, since it was likely “their” case, and the local counsel for both sides approved and signed the brief. Full disclosure, I have never had to do federal litigation in a federal court in a different state that I had to PHV into, since my practice is pretty local and I keep it that way. But I know that most federal districts require you to have local counsel, and they have to sign off on the briefs and many states require them to appear in person as well for at least some of the appearances. Here, out of s

I know we put on a lot of webinars and CLEs here at Smokeball, and we do it because we know it helps our clients. We pay attention to feedback and create programming based on what we hear from you, and for the last many months the focus has been AI, AI, AI. Understandable!That was part of why we developed the Archie Fireside Chat series, and made it a three part series for personal injury law, family law, and general civil litigation, which you can still watch if you weren’t able to catch them live. For general information and prompt ideas, click here. If you caught the civil litigation one with our dear friend ​@JKibler , you saw me as the moderator as we chatted about how Jonathan uses Archie in his practice, as well as how he felt when he saw legal AI first entering the scene in a serious way. It was my first proper webinar with Smokeball, and it was so much fun that I thought I’d share some Behind The Scenes insights and photos and give you a little snapshot of what webinars here a

If our firm decides to opt in on surcharges, that only applies to credit cards.  No fee for debit cards and echecks correct.

I would love to be able to search within a single folder (i.e. the Discovery/Disclosure folder) rather than the entire matter.  I can do that in other programs, but not in SB.Thanks.

I have bookmarked many pdf files and SB does not retain the bookmarks. Is there a trick or does SB simply not allow full function of Adobe’s features? When combining 2 or more pdfs outside of SB, I am forced to first save the combined pdf somewhere before saving it to SB. Is there a trick or does SB simply not allow full function of Adobe’s features? Combining pdfs will auto-bookmark each pdf, but the bookmarks are deleted when the combined pdf is saved in SB. Is there a trick or does SB simply not allow full function of Adobe’s features?

 Late nights. Lunch breaks. Weekends.The five minutes between school pickup and soccer practice when someone finally works up the nerve to dial a number they've been carrying around for weeks.By the time someone is calling a family lawyer, they've usually been thinking about it for a long time.The call itself is the moment they decided to do something.And if it goes to voicemail, they go down the list until they get a firm that answers, now.  For the firms on the other end of those calls, this isn't news. Every family law attorney I've talked to has stories about clients who called late at night or said something like "I called three other firms before you." The hard part is that family law doesn't keep office hours. Custody disputes don't escalate at 10 AM on a Tuesday. Domestic violence situations don't wait for business hours. Divorce decisions get made on Sunday nights after a fight. The call happens when the chance to make it appears, which is rarely between 9 and 5. So what does

I need tips to create a Matter/Client list for all Estate Planning clients 2024-present listing:All Estate Planning Clients3 matter tags attached and also those that have no tagsMatter status - open/closed

I used Archie to draft a simple motion.  (Thanks, Archie!)  I then asked it to create the motion (which Smokeball oddly refers to as a “form”) from the Archie draft.  He was happy to do so!  Great.  But he did so using letterhead rather than pleading paper.How can I tell Archie that he is using the wrong format for litigation pleadings?Micah

Does anyone have experience with using Lawmatics, HubSpot, Intaker, or another tool alongside Smokeball for lead follow-up and engagement? I’m looking for a solution to help automate lead outreach, and I would appreciate hearing about what others are using, what works well, and what to avoid.Thank you in advance!

Good evening, Sometimes at the end of the day or week, I check my email box and make sure emails are properly assigned to a matter.  There may be several emails in my box that need to be assigned, or outgoing mails sent in a hurry or from my phone will also need to be assigned.  So I will tkae a few minutes at the end of the day to assign emails.  I am not reading them, I am only right clicking on the emails in outlook so I can assign them.  It seems like this creates a billable event and I do not want that.  I would consider this matter management and not bill for it.  Does anyone else have the same concern? 

We use Teams for telephone calling.  All of the telephone numbers we use are stored in Smokeball.  But Smokeball doesn’t exchange contact data with Teams or with Outlook.  And that is a big problem for us.If we could originate calls in Smokeball, that would solve the problem.  But no.If Smokeball would synchronize with Outlook, that would solve the problem.  But no.Does anyone have any idea how we can make sure that our telephone numbers in Smokeball are available to our phone app?Micah

I can’t get the date to line up on Quickbooks checks that I print on Smokeball. I tried what Smokeball recommends with not using fit to and changing percentages but it makes it worse. I have a Canon printer. Can anyone help me? I’ve reached out to Smokeball on this issue a week ago and nobody responds to me, other than to tell me what I already tried and didn’t work. 

How do I add multiple PDFs to add bates label all at once?

HiI have produced LPA drafts through Smokeball which are in pdf format.  I would like to add a ‘DRAFT’ watermark to the drafts - similar to word documents - does anyone know how to do this?TIA 

How can I run a report showing open litigation files for an assigned attorney?

Techy question- I am trying to get dialed in on best practices for inbox management after  an email is linked to a matter… I have been deleting these messages but this causes some of the the emails, though apparently not all, to be under a deleted email tab in smokeball rather than the received tab. Is it better to start using the archive feature? If it matters I am on classic outlook still due to an issue in installing the add-in but plan to switch to new outlook when that is resolved.   

I hope everyone had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend! I cleaned a ton, had dinner followed by 5 hours of coffee at a delightful cafe that is part of the ever-expanding Yemeni coffeehouse industrial complex here in the US (rose pistachio milk cake!), went shoe shopping (I hate all of them now somehow so we must make some returns), cleaned more, and went to the movie theater to watch Is God Is, which I enjoyed. (If you say it three times fast it sounds like goddess.) I’ve got a busy week ahead of me, and I’m sure you do, too! I always tried to keep the week following Memorial Day light in my calendar, but we all know that the work always expands to fill the space you give it, so I’d usually end up with a hearing or two and some emergency motions due, and it’s like why did I do this to myself.  So let’s jump into our weekly poll! I’m curious to know what you currently think is the best use of AI in legal practice right now, in this unique moment of time. Said another way, how do you speci