General Q&A

My old employer sent some documents to my new employer through communicate. I can see the documents in the communicate tab, but they are not populating, i.e. “downloading” to the documents section of the associated matter.

It would be appreciated if the MEMO tab became a different color once a memo has been saved. We use memos as a way to leave helpful notes for whoever looks at the matter next. Often, some of our staff will not realize there is a memo as they dont check the memo tab. There needs to be some sort of notification to make whoever is looking at the matter aware that there is a memo saved to that matter. I recommend just making the MEMO tab a different color. See image attached below.    

Hi folks, I had a great question from @Wendy Marroquin who’s new to running her firm with Smokeball. Welcome Wendy!I thought I would share her question with the community so that others can read the answer and benefit from it too. Here’s the question:“I am having trouble with the medical records requests and doctor's information. How do I add their names and faxes so it is automated?I can create the letter no problem, but adding all those details takes time.”P.s If you are in the Personal Injury space and have any tips for Wendy and her firm as they get started please do share with her.  

Is there the ability to make a two way automated form?  The Personal Injury Client Intake Form is a great way to get basic information but I want to be able to “talk” to Smokeball so the information from the Form is uploaded.  I don’t want to have manually enter the responses from the client.  We used to meet face-to-face with clients and input the info to our form while talking to the person.  It would be great to email the client an intake form and upload the information when it was emailed back. Thanks in advance,Andrea

I’ve been trying to automate my closing documents (real estate attorney).I can add the Full Name of “This Party” (i.e. Seller 1) to insert under the first signature line, however I can’t find the option to plug in Seller 2.This would be the second party or second Card (if there are two Sellers that need to sign a Deed).

Hello all.  Like at your firm, some of our clients prefer things via email, some by regular mail.  I checked with Smokeball experts, but there’s no data field to indicate as such, so we are just modifying the internal reference number with an “E” or an “M” as a quick way to separate the two camps.  Have any of you come up with something perhaps easier to implement and sort (esp for batch invoicing)?Thanks. 

Recently there was a change made to not allow creating a trust transaction with a future date which for me has become very restrictive.  When we have a Personal Injury settlement ready to disburse I typically create the checks the day before and date the checks for the actual disbursement date.  This allows me to get required signatures on the checks prior to the disbursement date so everything is set to go on the actual date the funds are available.  As an example, a client’s settlement funds become available on March 29.  I write the checks on March 28 and date the checks March 29.  I like to enter the transactions into Smokeball when I write the checks so that all systems are in sync for the monthly reconciliations.  Given the future date transaction in Smokeball I have to remember to enter the Trust transactions the day after the checks are written.  I think a better way to handle this is to provide a warning message when entering a future dated transaction as opposed to not all

How do I amend a Tax Invoice after it has been finalised

Looking for help from the community….For Estate Administration work, we’re not happy with the SB default when referencing a matter, which is “reference number-client-matter type”.  So, for any given estate admin matter, it’ll be listed as“230012 - John Doe - Decendent’s Estate”That’s not workable for us as we have many clients for whom we are handling several different estates, for example, an adult child with both parent’s separate estates.  The matter names are virtually identical (except for the reference number).  It’s a slight chore and mystery when searching and sorting reports and files b/c of this naming convention. Also, we usually reference the estate, the decedent’s name, when working with files - it’s more common than naming the client/executor.The workaround so far is to provide a more appropriate name in the matter description - which helps for invoicing purposes - but doesn’t help for SB day-to-day use.Anyway, for esta

How do I create a document where I can insert some but not all parties on a matter into a portion of the document? By way of example: the undersigned will move this Court at the Courthouse located at 360 Adams Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, on April 5, 2023, at 9:30 o’clock in the forenoon of that day, or as soon thereafter as counsel can be heard for an Order pursuant to CPLR § 3215 granting a default judgment against Defendants', I MAY NOT BE ENTERING A DEFAULT JUDGMENT AGAINST ALL DEFENDANTS. I MAY ONLY BE ASKING TO ENTER A DEFAULT AGAINST 2 OF 5 DEFENDANTS.  I WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHAT DEFENDANTS I AM SEEKING TO ENTER DEFAULT JUDGMENT AGAINST.Thank you

I need to run reports which show claim numbers. Under Reports, I can see all the matter numbers but we need to add claim numbers and there is no place to do that. 

We are new in Smokeball. I sent out a large batch of bills to clients and copied myself on these emails. It was my understanding that these emails, when sent, would automatically be saved into the matters for the bill recipients. I am not seeing them. Do I need to do something in set up? Am I not looking in the correct place? Do they not save automatically? 

Is there a field in Smokeball that I would be able to use to automate the amount we are suing for as well as the date of the breach.  For example:  YOU ARE HEREBY SUMMONED to appear in the Civil Court of the City of New York, County of Richmond, at the office of the Clerk of the said Court at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Anywhere U.S.A. 12345 , New York, in the County of  Translyvania, City and State of New York, within the time provided by law as noted below and file your answer to the complaint with the Clerk: upon your failure to answer, judgment will be taken against you for the sum of ???????, with interest thereon from the ????????????????, together with the costs, disbursements and reasonable attorney’s fees in prosecution of this action.Where the ques

How do I take a word like “demand” and have it automatically make it plural?  For example, in the following document: PLEASE TAKE NOTICE, that pursuant to CPLR §3120(a), Plaintiff, BILLY RAY VALENTINE demands that Defendants', RANDOLPH DUKE and MORTIMER DUKE permit Plaintiff to read the crop report before it is released on the day of trading. ORPLEASE TAKE NOTICE, that pursuant to CPLR §3120(a), Plaintiff, BILLY RAY VALENTINE demands that Defendant, RANDOLPH DUKE permit Plaintiff to read the crop report before it is released on the day of trading.ORPLEASE TAKE NOTICE, that pursuant to CPLR §312

How do you all set up attorneys and staff as far as billing permissions?

I am trying to customize my dashboard and for each widget I try to add I get the following message “There is no space to add this widget. Please create space on your dashboard and try again.” I have resized my current widgets. I am not sure what else to do. Is there a limit on how many widgets we can have on our dashboard? 

Can you please have all of the Separation Declarations in Family Law Financial Agreements updated in accordance with legislation to read:“OTHER PARTY NAME and I have separated and thereafter lived separately and apart for a continuous period of at least 12 months immediately before the time of signing this declaration;”

Is there a feature in Smokeball that automatically populates if a time entry or no work has been done on a file for a particular length of time?

We have situations were a member of our firm is the appointed executor of the estate (or will be the administrator of the estate). The relevant matter types in Smokeball automatically assume that the executor or administrator is the client.In these situations, it is often a beneficiary or beneficiaries who are the client for the matter and the executor is actually a member of our firm.Is it possible to create an estate probate or administration matter where a beneficiary or a number of beneficiaries are the clients?

This topic is tangential to Smokeball but it is law practice management / tech related.The Problem:I have used contact forms on our website for years to allow visitors to “request a consult”. In the last couple of years we have received an increasing number of scam consult requests. They have in common:Phone numbers that do not work; Unusual verbiage or stilted phrasing which suggests to me that the writer is speaking english as a second language; and, Scope of work related to large machinery/equipment/boat purchase or sale.Universally, these requests have a premise which sounds too good to be true but require them to quickly make a trust deposit by EFT and they request trust account information immediately. Previously I have screened these by asking for a valid driver’s license and working phone number. A recent scammer actually sent back what appeared to be a picture valid driver’s license but the

How do you automate adding Doe defendants to a pleading caption?  For example:  John Smith v. Betsy Jones, and Does 1 through 20, inclusive.  Under Matter Details, we would list John Smith as the plaintiff and Betsy Jones as the defendant for inputting to our pleading caption template, but we haven’t figured out a way to add the Doe defendants without adding them as another defendant. 

How do I make it so the Defendant appears on the list when I run it there is a column that says other side but it is blank?

We are using smokeball integration with our Rails application.We are using the following auth_host and redirect_url for the authentication step:AUTH_HOST = datastaging-auth.smokeball.comREDIRECT_URL = https://example.com/auth/smokeball/callbackalong with these, we have the required AUTHORIZATION_KEY, CLIENT_ID and AUTH_URL.The authentication works fine with Omniauth gem 1.9.2 and the following login page loads: The authentication breaks with Omniauth gem 2.0.0 and the following error page loads:

Is there an audible notification for tasks and or communicate messages?