General Q&A

Have any precedents been moved to market place precedents once the addon service was introduced? 

I’m a long-time RingCentral user, but am considering switching to Zoom Phone.  I would appreciate hearing of anyone’s experiences with Zoom, especially those who may have already made that switch.Thanks!Sally

I have a case where I will have over 50 clients in the same case, and I need a contract for each one.  I have an automated form for individual cases that automatically puts in the client name, address, phone and e-mail address in the contract.  This works great for 1 plaintiff cases, but I can’t figure out an efficient way to do the automation for individual contracts for cases with more than 1 client.  Is there a way to do this?

In family law property matters, it's not uncommon for the parties to agree to split the fees for drafting and filing consent orders (particularly if the other party is unrepresented).I made a costs agreement to that effect with the OP for limited scope works clearly stating they are not my client etc.Do I have to create a new matter for this other party to be able to send them an invoice for half the fees?Or is there a way to create two invoices within a matter, for each party to pay their half?

Hi All, If anyone out there is running Smokeball on a Surface Pro 9 5G, I would love to hear how your experience has been with the SQ3 chip.  (You’re welcome to send me an email directly.) I have tried running Smokeball on a Surface Pro X which had the SQ2 chip but the emulation was too much for the chip to keep up with.  Additionally, the embarrassingly low amount of RAM on the Surface Pro X made it pretty frustrating to use.  Now that Microsoft has decided to stop including LTE/5G connectivity with any Intel-based Surface Pro models, we will have to choose between having a network connection or dealing with lag-ridden performance due to emulation.  I am positive that at some point, Smokeball will be ported to Windows on ARM but until then -- as my kid said to Alexa, after being given the cold shoulder by the cat -- “Alexa, play sad cat music.”

Is there a place to see Smokeball's roadmap? I know other software companies share that so people can see where features are in the pipeline.I love Smokeball and talk it up all the time, so being able to talk about features that are in the pipeline is helpful. I am also hoping more features get added to the Lawmatics integration soon. The intake automation has been awesome! 

Hi, We sometimes share documents in office 365 with opposing counsel and our clients. That way we can edit as we go easily. Does smokeball have a way to integrate the different versions of our word documents with 365? Or do we just have to download each version specifically before we edit further?

Most immediately, I could use some help to be able to use email again, and then I can start to think about other functions. After I click email from my matter, and select who to add, clicking Next no longer brings up an email Window.Thanks for and help. I'll look in Faqs now.Stu

Hi All, We are 6 months into our SB experience and now have our precedent / work flows working well. We are now focusing on how to understand and optimise the practice management reporting from WIP which is noted as billable.  We have finally figured out, that unless we set up a file as “Fixed fee $0.00”, and then every week, write off the time on the file, that we can then generate the report “Unbilled Time and Expenses” to enable us as a firm to have a clear idea of total WIP which can be converted into Debtors > income. We have now figured out when we generate a ‘pre matter billing guide’ (which SB calls “Time, Fees & Expenses”), that this enables us to see at a matter level what fees are written off or non-billable. But, we would like to generate on a monthly basis a report to see how much time is written off. Can you advise where we can get this report from?Thank you Claire  

I am interested in hearing from other Lawmatics users about how you handle the fact that Company matters cannot convert to SB. Has anyone come up with a good workaround? I currently switch the Company matter in LM to an individual matter, convert to SB, then change it back to a Company matter in LM and change the client in SB. The amount of manual work really detracts from the benefits of automation.I am also interested to hear if anyone sends invoices from LM. I like how the invoice can automatically get sent based on a trigger, but then I have to manually enter the payment in Smokeball. Even worse, when it is a flat fee, I have to create the invoice in SB then pay it. Here’s to hoping the SB/LM integration improves soon!

It is the end of October and only 70 days left this year. At this point, the majority of your business is probably there. But how did it get there? Do you know? One of the best reports you should be using in Smokeball to plan your best 2023 when you throw on that marketing hat yourself or are talking to your marketer is the matter referrals report. What matter type was your most opened type? Who referred you the most business? Are you getting a lot more of one type of law than another and need to rebrand your firm? Hire on another staff member or associate who is an expert at that type of law? Adjust your campaign to figure out why you are getting too little of one matter type than another? Send a thank you letter and a charcuterie board and some gift cards to that old client of yours who brought you 10 cases through their word of mouth alone? This will give you the push you need on where to devote those marketing dollars in 2023 and know why you

How do you add attendees so that you can create an event?  There are no names from which to select when I click on that box. 

I am starting to do estate planning work and I have a question to see how other people are doing things. First, when I speak of estate planning it would involve anything from drafting Wills, Trust, Heath Care Proxies, Advance medical directives and POA. What are people doing when you have a client who wants all of these done for them? What matter type are you using? Are you using a new matter type for each of the items listed above? If doing it this way it would seem like you would be re entering info more times then not? or do you have all the above forms automated and just use one matter type? Any help suggestions and such would be greatly appreciated.  

Hi, When is a conveyancer obligated to give their own vendor the statement of adjustments?Is it 2 days prior to settlement?Many thanks in advance

Does anyone have a form Subpoena Duces Tecum for medical records for Shelby County Tennessee that they would be willing to share?  Thank you!

How long (on average) do you spend following up your client to send through statements and other information for financial disclosure? Have you used any software to help with this?

I have a sceretary who has access to my smokeball data.She gets copied into a lot of emails, some with attachments.I dont want to duplicate these attachments - is there a way of telling if the other user has already saved an attachment without having to open the matter?OrIs there some feature/system/”hack” which will elt the other user know its already been saved??

I know I can creat an envelope in Matters (using our template) but is there a way you can create a template to use in contacts for those who doesn’t have a matter number?  Thank you

Hi, Is there any way to add the option of where to automatically assign an email in a matter rather than directly to documents? We have a documents - correspondence - emails folder and it’s an absolute pain to have to go through each file manually, highlight all the emails in documents and then move to the specific folder. 

Is there a way to assign an email to multiple files?  Often I receive documents in a single email that belong to more than one file.   Right now I can only assign the email to one file.   How nice.  I have a typo in my first post.   

I’m entering in my client’s medical bills for each provider and I’m wondering if there’s a way to add more columns, or change the names of the columns. For example, she has a denied work comp claim, so her health insurance has paid money but she has co-pays as well. There’s no place for the Copays. 

Is there a full list of fields available somewhere, I can't find some fields required for a new precedent, but I know they exist such “Executor”, “Attorney” etcThey are not listed in the list to the right when working on the document.

Hi there, I’m curious as to how people store their non-client files in Smokeball. Such as HR records (contracts etc), staff training etc etc…Do people set these files up as non-billable? or fixed fee with $0 balance? Thank you,  Claire

Hi… I’m checking to see if the Support tab (sitting next to Community) is blank because it is a weekend? (which is completely fine!). I’m just surprised it is blank. I’d like to enter a qu - but happy for it to be returned on a weekday…I’m a bit new to SB…. (the lightbulb only went off about a month ago, so it is now making sense...) so I suspect this is a silly question! Thanks in advanceThank you

We have matters that require us to keep track of income, like for Medicaid applications. Is there a matter type that includes iincome that we can add to our Medicaid Application matters so we can keep track of the income in the matter like we can do with the assets?