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Foundations Lounge

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Start Here: Welcome to the Foundations Lounge!

Handy Smokeball resources

kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Start Here: Welcome to the Foundations Lounge!

We’re so glad you joined this space, designed specifically for you during your Smokeball onboarding. Every week, we’ll share a few posts that contain feature tips, training resources, and reminders to help keep you on track as you learn our software. A few notes: Bookmark this post. All new content will be linked in the table of contents below so everything is in one spot. You’ll also be notified of new posts via email. Share feedback and start conversations. Reply to any post with your thoughts and tag users by using the @ to pull them into the thread. Don’t stress! Onboarding happens at different speeds. If you’re ahead or behind the tasks or milestone being discussed, that’s okay. Commit to learning something new in Smokeball every week, and you’ll be on track. Your onboarding specialist is always there for you. This Lounge is an additional space where you can get feedback and see how your peers are customizing and using Smokeball. Onboarding is a key moment in your partnership with

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Important reminders & resources

We know you’re all at different stages of your onboarding journey. For those that have graduated onboarding: Congratulations! 🎉 If not, you’re getting closer every day, and we love seeing you commit to learning Smokeball. If you’ve found value in this Lounge and received help from your Onboarding Specialist and Training team, we’d love you to leave us a review . If not, please tell us how we can improve. If you know someone else that would benefit from Smokeball, refer them . You’ll get a $300 Amazon gift card when they sign up. Smokeball is always here for you. If you ever have a question or need help, we’ve got your back: Community : We encourage you to get active in the main feed. Ask questions, share ideas, and discuss best practices with Smokeball users and staff. Knowledge Base : It's the Google of Smokeball. Super handy and available 24/7 with step-by-step instructions on any Smokeball topic. Academy: Self-guided lessons and courses so you can become a Smokeball super-user. Sup

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Successful with Smokeball: Jim Coogan

We hope you’re now seeing how Smokeball makes you more efficient and productive. (If not, please let us know so we can assist you!) Personal injury attorney Jim Coogan says he’s at least 50% more productive now that the law firm no longer wastes time printing emails, searching for documents and handling paper files. Jim estimates that administrative work that used to take an hour now takes 5-10 minutes. “Smokeball has amplified the amount of work we do,” Jim says, “I can’t even imagine having to go back to the old ways.” 📢 Tell us: how are you benefitting the most from Smokeball right now?

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Right click is magic

You’re getting the Smokeball basic and essential features under your belt and are well on your way to becoming a power user. Congrats! To give you an extra boost, our training experts compiled a list of pro-tips they like to call “right click is magic.” These right-click shortcuts open up additional Smokeball functionality and help you navigate faster. Right click in Smokeball… To link to a task. To see deleted items. You can do this in calendar, documents, or tasks. To show former staff in the calendar tab or in the drop-down boxes to select staff. To add another contact type on a matter for multiple plaintiffs, defendants, etc. On matter list display to show the client’s full name. On any file in your matter to create a PDF or a multiple file PDF . The latter allows you to add a cover page, TOC, bates stamping, pagination, and more. To copy a document to another matter to "reuse" it .

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with Smokeball's client portal

Smokeball’s client portal is the best way to share confidential information with clients. In addition to offering secure messaging and file sharing, messages sent through the client portal: improve internal firm communication avoid noisy client email inboxes to get a faster response are discrete and outside of normal channels for clients who are concerned about others reading their attorney communications are tracked by Smokeball so you can capture the time Note: the portal was formerly known as Communicate and you might still see/hear it referred to as such. In Smokeball, it is found under the Messages tab. Here are some best practices for the client portal: Have your clients sign up for the app* right away. Many firms create documentation, like the attached PDF, that they send to clients. (Thanks to @Maria Berger of Berger Law Firm for sharing her documentation!) Set an out of office message in the client portal when you’re away to manage expectations both for internal staff and clie

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Office Hours: Smokeball Essentials

Wondering why you should use activity tracking? Aren’t sure what activity codes you want to use? Not sure about workflows? Join Smokeball Senior Trainer @Sara Sultan on Wednesday, February 7 at 11am CT to ask your questions and get advice live. Register now! Sara has worked with thousands of firms and can answer technical questions, as well as suggest how your firm might adapt processes to incorporate Smokeball’s key features. If you need a quick review of Smokeball Essential features, check out this refresher. 📝 Note: this is not a presentation but an open Q&A session. Bring all your questions and listen in as other Foundations Lounge members ask theirs.

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Successful with Smokeball: Abigail Camino

If you’ve explored Smokeball’s automation features, you know they’ll save you tremendous time, errors, and stress. Family law attorney Abigail Camino says she’s able to provide high-touch, family-oriented service because Smokeball—specifically its automation features—is “the machine helping her firm work efficiently and quickly.” Abigail can take an emergency case at night and file it the next day because document drafting is so quick with Smokeball. “We’ve tripled revenue since our first year of business, and we’ll double our revenue this year over last. There are many factors in that success, but it centers around Smokeball,” says Abigail.

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with Document Automation

For everyone who’s submitted documents to Smokeball for automation—awesome work! Now you’ll experience this feature’s power. Document automation refers to any document or form that you can produce more quickly and accurately because it auto-fills information from the Smokeball matter. This includes both proprietary documents that Smokeball automated for you, as well as documents from our Forms and Templates library. Get a quick refresher on Forms and Templates Important document automation call-outs: Remember garbage in, garbage out? Document automation is useless if the matter isn’t completely filled out. Be vigilant about getting the info in (and use Smokeball Intake to save time and errors!) and future you will thank past you. Designate a person at your firm to organize your Forms and Templates Library. They don’t need to follow Smokeball’s default folder system. The folder structure should be set up however your firm currently operates. Again, this will save tons of time and help e

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with automatic time tracking

This week, we're diving into one of Smokeball's most beloved features: automatic time tracking, which is included in the Prosper subscription and can be added to a Grow subscription. Tracking time is almost universally hated--but this feature does it for you! Client Alan Funk @Funkytown describes it as, “like having someone stand behind you and record everything you do so you can just focus on the work.” Overview Automatic time tracking (or AutoTime) is driven by Activity. This AI feature tracks and remembers everything you do throughout the day including events, tasks, documents, emails, memos, and even matter administration. Read more about Activity > AutoTime uses Activity data to automatically generate time entries and can be customized to each user. AutoTime will also know whether to make your time entries marked as billable or not billable depending on whether the matter is fixed fee or time based. Read more about AutoTime > In short: Activity is always on. AutoTime can be turned

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
We need your feedback

We’ve been doing a lot of the talking in this space. Now it’s your turn! Please take our 3-minute survey. We’d love to know how we can improve your experience. Thanks for your time.

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Successful with Smokeball: Kelly Wambold

As we’ve discussed, Smokeball Billing helps you bill more without working more, invoice faster, and see where your firm is most profitable. Estate planning attorney Kelly Wambold is partner at a 40-year-old firm and experienced the power of Smokeball Billing firsthand when her firm transitioned from manual to automated billing and saw a 70% time savings! Remember to book your Billing Training Previously, invoices took hours to create in Word and were manually added with a calculator. With Smokeball, invoices are generated in a few seconds, and Kelly just needs to review the final document. “We capture a lot more billing now because of the Smokeball system,” she says.

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with Smokeball Billing

Smokeball Billing is how you'll get paid faster, have a better understanding of your firm’s financials, and save tons of time. How your firm does its accounting, holds client funds, and other factors influence the best way to approach this part of the software, so we won’t get into the details here. Here's how to prep for Smokeball Billing success: Attend the Billing Training Introduction. You’ll learn how to set up and create invoices, add expenses and time entries, how to undo payments, and more. Schedule now > Book a Billing Q&A. For more advanced questions about how to tailor Smokeball Billing to your firm’s needs, Grow and Prosper+ clients can take advantage of our Billing Q&A. Our experts will work with the person at your firm that manages billing to ensure everything is set up correctly from the start. Schedule now > Smokeball Academy. If you prefer self-guided learning, you can work through our Smokeball Billing courses. This is ideal for those who want to learn at their own pa

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with Smokeball in 2024

Happy 2024! Hope you enjoyed some relaxing days off. I wanted to welcome our new users: @Docho6969 @lauren_manatt @chanisco @Matthew Howeth and @AmyfromPA. 👋 This Lounge is your space to ask questions as you explore the pro-tips and resources we post. You’ll get notified with each new post, and can bookmark the “Start Here” post to have everything in one place. Since it’s the first week of the new year, I wanted to highlight a timely post from the main Community. If your billing rates are changing in 2024, here’s how you can easily adjust them in Smokeball. Here’s to getting started with Smokeball in 2024!

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting Started with Smokeball Tasks and Workflows

Welcome to our new members! Before we break for the holidays, we want to highlight two powerful features that will save you tremendous time and errors: tasks and workflows. Because these features affect internal processes, it’s important to meet as a firm to discuss how you’ll implement these tools. A few examples of what to decide as a firm: Will your firm use activity tracking? What internal processes should be adapted as workflows? What activity codes do you want to use? Once you’ve decided these things, you can jump into Smokeball Tasks and Workflows. Here are some pro-tips as you start using these features: Name tasks actionably. When a task pops up, you want it to tell you what to do. So you’re your tasks accordingly with actionable titles. For example: “book venue for mom’s birthday” NOT “mom’s birthday party.” Sub-tasks should nest under the larger task. Think of sub-tasks as a smaller piece that informs the larger task. Going off the example above, “pay venue deposit” might be

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with Smokeball Matters

Once Smokeball is configured, you’re ready to create matters—the core of Smokeball. Without these you can’t do much else, and it only takes a few minutes to get started. Here are some matter pro-tips from our trainers: Create a fake matter. Use your personal information so you can test and learn without worry. Practice entering contact info, attaching documents and emails, and sending messages via the client portal. Prioritize active matters. Don’t sweat entering all your matters at once. Focus on inputting your firm’s active matters so you’re set up success for current cases. Turn on notifications settings in Outlook. This will prompt you to attach each email to the matter. Avoid the debtor section—for now. Don’t touch the debtor section of the matter until you’ve talked to a Billing specialist. There’s some nuance to this section and by entering information incorrectly here can create duplicate contacts and other headaches. Wait until your Billing training to cover this. If you haven

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Onboarding check-in

Hi everyone! Quick check-in to see how your onboarding is going so far? Reply and let us know in the comments. We’re here for your questions. If you didn’t previously bookmark this Smokeball Resources post, take a second to do so now. As you progress in the software, you’ll want to have quick access to these training resources, articles, and contact info. 📢 Are there additional resources that you would find helpful, or are you equipped with everything you need?

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Smokeball Training team has entered the chat

Just want to shout out our amazing Training team who are also in the Lounge to answer questions. 👋 @zac.meyer @Sara Sultan @emily142 @Maureen.Usher @Roy Clifton have worked with literally thousands of firms and have deep legal expertise. Be sure to take advantage of their knowledge here in the lounge and during your Smokeball Trainings when you’ll get to know them better.

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Roy Clifton
Community Manager
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Submitting documents for automation

Smokeball has a library of 20,000 forms you can use to generate documents faster and more accurately. We’ll also automate your proprietary templates or forms. Think of your most commonly used forms and submit those to us now so they’re ready for you when we dive into document automation later in your onboarding journey. How to submit documents for automation We ask that you submit your documents in batches of 5 to help us service clients more equally. Total number of documents available to automate: Prosper+ clients: no limit Grow clients: 10 automated templates (no limit on containers) Smokeball’s document automation is a HUGE time saver. Stephanie Gibson, Chief Operating Officer at Martinez Law says, “a land trust used to take close to 45 minutes and now takes me less than 10 minutes. Smokeball’s forms and templates are a huge time-saver." 📢 Reply in the comments: which documents take you the longest to prepare? Note how long your most dreaded document takes so you can compare the t

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
E
Smokeball Team
emily142Smokeball Team
Deciding What to Send for Automation

A Note from a Family Law SB User: When my firm started using Smokeball back in 2017-2018, I remember being very excited about the robust document automation feature in Smokeball. There was already so much to learn, all of the new bells and whistles, pretty pie charts and graphs. When I sat down and thought about what documents to send over for automation, I recall feeling a bit overwhelmed. I started to think to myself “What can I NOT live without?” My firm was roughly 70% family law, and those documents were the most time consuming. Here are some ideas of documents that my firm decided to send over for automation: Notice of Motion - seems so simple right? Well, having a fantastic firm template (not a court form) for the NOM ended up saving us tons of time. Preparing a NOM with SB’s document automation took maybe 3-5 mins after we had our firm form automated. Literally! Petition for Rule to Show Cause/Civil Contempt: how many times do parties fail to abide by the orders of the court, o

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Successful with Smokeball: Bill Chatt

We’re excited to have you here! Onboarding requires patience and commitment but pays off big time. Real estate attorney Bill Chatt’s biggest piece of advice to new Smokeball users reiterates our Training Team’s favorite phrase: garbage in, garbage out. Bill encourages users to, “commit to putting the information in Smokeball and the automation will save you hugely on the back end. We're really big about making sure all the information is in the file. You've got five attorneys on an insurance case? Make sure they're all there. Once it’s there you’ll save hours down the line.” 📢 Share with us: what Smokeball functionality are you most excited about learning?

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Getting started with contacts import

Once you’ve installed Smokeball, one of the first things your Onboarding Specialist will have you decide is whether or not you want to import your contacts. (Note: this is for Grow and Prosper+ users.) Things to know about importing contacts into Smokeball As our Training Team likes to say, “garbage in, garbage out.” If your contact list isn’t in great shape (e.g. multiple entries for the same contact with current and old information) it might be better to rebuild in Smokeball. Steps to importing contacts: Decide whether you want to import your current contacts list into Smokeball If so, export your contacts formatted in this .CSV sheet Send them to your Onboarding Specialist and Smokeball will import contacts for you Reminder: business contacts must be formatted to Smokeball’s specifications to avoid importing them as individuals. They cannot be converted from an individual contact to a business contact after import. Once your contacts are imported in Smokeball, follow these best prac

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrich
Smokeball Team
kuhrichSmokeball Team
Handy Smokeball resources

Your onboarding specialist is your main Smokeball point of contact who will guide you through the onboarding process. Additionally, Smokeball has several resources in place that you can access as a new user and continue to leverage once you’re a power user. Online Resources Jump-start your Smokeball user experience with these educational tools. Smokeball Community : You’re already here! Meet your peers, share ideas, and discuss best practices with Smokeball users and staff. Smokeball Knowledge Base : Search for articles, like this glossary to Smokeball terms, and step-by-step instructions on any Smokeball topic. Smokeball Training & Webinars : Your onboarding specialist will prompt you to book training with our team so you learn the Basics and Essentials of Smokeball. We also offer live how-to webinars so you can continue to learn best practices after you’ve graduated from onboarding. Smokeball Academy : Learn your way around Smokeball and reinforce your onboarding with these self-guid

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kuhrich
Smokeball Team

About this lounge

Welcome to the Foundations Lounge

This space is for new Smokeball users. We’ll share best practices & pro-tips, training resources, and reminders. Together, we’ll build a solid foundation for your firm’s future with Smokeball. 

 

Join the lounge to:

-Access content and resources that accompany your onboarding journey

-Meet other Smokeball users and staff

-Discover the best ways to make Smokeball your own

-Jump start your Smokeball experience

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Community Manager
Sara Sultan
Smokeball Team
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Smokeball Team
atharkhan
Roy Clifton
Community Manager
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