General Q&A

7+ years Smokeball small solo firm here.About 99% of our firm’s work is under the practices of:Professional Responsibility EthicsAs smokeball adds new great functionality, we are seeing that practice areas don’t include these two important categories. Example is the new “Intake Forms” where “Select Practice Area” has no category that would describe these two areas above.Ideally we would like to see these two practice areas added across the board for any functionality that requires “Selecting Practice Area”.How to other firms handle this situation? I’ve searched the community and cannot find any relevant material.Is there a workaround or can Smokeball developers add this to the system?Thank you,Dan AustinBrotmanLaw / US  

Is there a way to add this disclaimer to the new Intake Form templates?This request does not establish a client/attorney relationship. Thank you,Dan Austin / BrotmanLaw

Hi  Team,We have recently adopted Smokeball. The real-time time tracking through the timers has a few limitations. It would be great if you could add the following:Show the total amount of time tracked on the list of the timers. At the moment you can’t see how much time you have recorded until after you add the time. Being able to see the total time throughout the day is really handy and has always helped me encourage productivity without having to finalise the time entries, as you may jump back and forth between different tasks so it is not practical to add time to SB all the time. Also a lot of firms have daily targets. The ability to manually adjust the time tracked through the timers. We are humans. There will be situations where eg we go away from the desk to grab a coffee but forget to stop the timer, or reversely, we stop the timer but then we get back to work and forget to restart

I have a single trust deposit that needs to be split over 2 separate matters, how do I issue this trust receipt?

Wondering if there is a Power and Estates Register within the Safe Custody Register? Thanks.

Hi thereI need to report at the end of each month how much is in WIP (unbilled time & fees), however, if I bring up the “Unbilled Time & Fees” report, it only shows the figures as at today’s date.For example, today is the 17th of the month, I have only just returned from leave, so was unable to print the report as at 30th of last month.How can I obtain the figure as at the end of last month?  Can you please insert a “date” feature, so that we can take a snapshot of the figures as at a certain date?Thank you.

I have a PA who often gets cc’d into emails, and we both save the email/any attachments into SB. We then send the documents to the client, and they are often saved again into the file. Is there any way to prevent documents/alerts that I can set to notify me if the document appears duplicated?

HiDoes anyone know how to add a column when in the Matters tab, Conveyancing then the Open Conveyancing Matters home page?I’ve tried right clicking on the column titles, but I want to add “Sellers Agent” but the option for that column isn’t available to select - any ideas how to add a column that isn’t in the drop-down menu?Thanks

Is there a way to quickly save attachments sent to us from another firm who also uses smokeball and has sent 38 attachments via messages (previously  known as communicate) I have had to go and download each item individually and save it. It does not automatically save the documents. 

How do I add a fee if our firm works on contingency.  

Currently, the parties who the letter is addressed TO has the CC’d person’s details come underneath the TO person’s address and the emails are all grouped together at the top of the letterhead.  We would like to format it so that the cc’d parties are listed at the end of the letter.  Is this possible?

I have recently issued new invoices for the month of December. Some had balances carried forward from earlier months’ invoices. The December invoices therefore show total owing on the matter however, now that I am due to dire4ct funds from trust to some of them, I can only direct funds in the amount of the amount owing for the last invoice - not an amount inclusive of the carried forward amount.Example - Clt G is on a payment plan of sorts where they pay a small amount of $90 into  trust fortnightly. They had $1000 remaining from invoice owing in November. $1000 carried forward to the December invoice, but the December invoice was only $50. The invoice sent out for December notified $50 owing for this invoice and a total of $1050 owing all together.At the time of issuing the December invoice I informed the client they had $270 in trust and this amount would be directed towards payment of this invoice.7 days have passed and I can direct $270 to payment of the inv

I’m a new user.Is there a way to enlarge or zoom a dashboard for a visually impaired user?  So far it looks like I can only add/remove items from my dashboard, but I cannot make the font larger or increase the contrast.Edited to add, I think the solution is to set my computer system to display everything in larger font, but that is not always desirable so please let me know if I’ve missed something.  Thanks!

Is there any way of returning to the option to ONLY email precedents through Outlook? there is now a button that has 'send’ and then I have to select email or communicate. It's just adding one more step - whereas previously I could go right to email.

Legal ethics sometimes require that members of a law firm be prevented from accessing another firm client’s information (due to, for exaample, a conflict of interest). I know that in Smokeball you can simply “uncheck” a particular staff member from a matter to prevent that person from accessing the matter. However, how about a group of people, or for all matters for a particular client?(our problem - we have hundreds of matters open for a particular client, and going through each one to “uncheck” a particular staff member is time consuming; and, if a staff member is added in the future that can’t have access, we have to re-do the unchecking)It would be great if the “rate sets” concept was incorporated into matter access (meaning, employees could be assigned to group “access” and they would automatically be precluded from accessing matters that are not accessable to that group).

Hi thereI need to report at the end of each month how much is in Work In Progress (unbilled time & fees), however, if I bring up the “Unbilled Time & Fees” report, it only shows the figures as at today’s date.This is not good enough.How can I obtain the figure as at the last day of last month?  Can you please insert a “date” feature, so that we can take a snapshot of the figures as at a certain date?This is imperative and my boss is wanting me to continue chasing you until you can provide this vital figure.Thank you.

Is there a way to limit (allow) only certain things to be viewed in file? 

For those of you handling civil litigation where your Plaintiff seeks bankruptcy protection, how are you managing filings and related information in your civil matter? Do you set up a separate matter for the bankruptcy or do you integrate the information into your existing civil matter (and if so, how do you input information like the trustee’s name/contact information, case number, etc.)?

Smokeball is currently exploring meaningful ways of linking your related matters together within the program, and we want your input! We want to hear from you, our users, how such a feature may provide utility and solve problems you face on a daily basis. We are especially interested in the types of relationships between different matters in Smokeball and how users need them to interact with each other. If you are interested in learning more about this endeavour, please fill out the survey at the link below:https://forms.office.com/r/9cgYHxhkPjFeel free to respond to this post as well, and thanks in advance!

 My prior balance owing is not showing on the new invoice. How do I show the prior balance? 

I am trying to automate a letter to send to our clients’ medical providers for unresponsiveness. I have gotten it to prefill just about everything, except for one section within the letter. I created an ask that should insert the medical provider selected, but when I select the medical provider, it does not fill the field. Instead, it just leaves a blank space. How do I fix this? Is there a different ask type I should make?  For context, the ‘Ask’ I have is a Party Selection Ask, with Medical Provider being the Party. What have I done wrong?

Anyone using Ai software to write demands?

Will there be a way to create our own customizable forms for Matter Flow? When sending a form to a client, there are only 2 options under Estate Planning, married or single. These go through ALL of the questions, many of which, we have already gone over in our initial meeting, and would seem redundant to send to someone who just went through all of the design questions or asset information. We have used forms with our other intake programs, but we are attempting to streamline our software and eliminate the ones that are redundant. We have several fully developed forms that address the information that we need to have for a successful matter, without being daunting to our clients.Having Intake Forms that we could customize and map with Matter Fields (once the prospect is converted to a client) would be very helpful. A form that gathers the family info, basic asset info, and any notes that we would need to know about before a meeting, and then puts that info where it nee

Is there a way to change the way we see the matters described. We would like to have the Decedent’s name shown instead of the personal rep/admin.