Ralph Lake

Lake Legal is a progressive Townsville based law firm serving North Queensland. I operate a paperless practice that offers services across multiple areas of law. Currently, I have one full-time practitioner working with me at the firm.

Smokeball practice management software has multiplied my firm’s productivity through its innovative features. By doing so, it has enabled me to support and grow my firm without having to take on more staff - which has had a positive impact on the profitability of my business.

Smokeball’s powerful legal document automation with robust Microsoft Word integration would have to be my favourite software feature. All your legal forms and letters automatically fill with the matter information already saved in Smokeball. This saves serious time and eliminates the need to manually input information before submitting. In particular, I find the 'If / Then / Else' functionality to be very valuable for creating my own templates.

The secure Smokeball Communicate app is useful for keeping your clients informed. With simple conversational style messaging, you can provide updates on how their matter is progressing, or send reminders on upcoming court dates. Communicate also has access to any messages or files related to a matter, so you can easily share large files with your clients via a web browser or mobile phone.

These two tools combined have greatly improved my overall efficiency. For example, after court, I typically need to produce a dozen letters for a client regarding their matter. Using Smokeball it now takes minutes instead of hours to draft up the letters and send them off to clients via the Communicate app.

Smokeball’s unique automatic time tracking takes into account all time and activities and provides data-driven insights into the health of your business. I utilise this feature for my private billing matters. It delivers detailed breakdowns on exactly how much time I’ve spent on specific matters and the true cost of performing the work for each client. I can see which clients and practice areas are the most profitable - enabling me to optimise my practice and take on the best work.

What really sets Smokeball apart from other legal software providers is their phenomenal client support team. You get to speak to a real person, and they are always available and incredibly helpful. The support team also made the process of switching software systems very smooth. From onboarding and beyond, your firm has the assistance it needs to run powerful software successfully.

The investment in Smokeball has been worthwhile. I highly recommend other small law firms to implement this cutting-edge legal software and take their productivity to the next level.