Smokeball is a practice management platform for solo, small and midsize law firms, delivered as a Windows desktop application with cloud services and in the browser. It is built around Microsoft Word document automation with more than twenty thousand forms, AutoTime passive time recording, matter, email and calendar management, LeadPro intake, a client portal, invoicing, payments and trust accounting. Its AI layer is Archie, a matter assistant launched in July 2024 that drafts, reviews and answers questions inside the matter the user is working in, embedded in Word and Outlook.
Archie Apps adds partner tools for tasks such as bank statement analysis and legal chronologies, and Playbooks review documents against rules the firm sets. An integration with LawY answers legal questions by jurisdiction, with optional verification by a lawyer. Smokeball Incorporated of Chicago also runs businesses in Australia and the United Kingdom and serves more than five thousand firms. Its terms say the AI should be used only under the supervision of qualified legal practitioners, and its security page describes firm level isolation, AI access limited to the matter, no customer data given to third parties for model training, and ISO 27001:2022 certification.
Side by side on the same 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals: where the two part company, and what neither one publishes.
Vendors in the same categories as Smokeball whose graded profiles look most alike, with a line on what each product does.
Similar is not the same, so check that each one does the job you need. No vendor pays for placement.
Ordered by how closely the graded profiles match across the 15 capability axes, inside the same categories. See how each axis is graded in the methodology.
All 15 axes, graded from public sources on the date shown. Hover a grade to see what the letter means on that axis.
How much of the product is actually AI. Whether the machine learning is the mechanism the buyer is paying for or a feature layered onto conventional software, and whether the vendor is specific about which is which.
Archie, sold as an add on to the Boost, Grow and Prosper+ plans, works inside a matter to draft, review and answer questions with nothing to upload; Playbooks check each document against rules the firm defines; Archie Apps is a marketplace of specialist AI tools that analyze bank statements, build chronologies and transcribe audio; and legal questions surface LawY's jurisdiction aware guidance. Smokeball AI also powers intake and client communication on the higher tiers, and AutoTime captures time passively.
Without the models, the core Smokeball has sold for years remains: Word document automation from a large form library with practice area templates and calculators, matter and calendar management, email management, billing, trust accounting and payments. Smokeball's pricing page lists Archie as an add on rather than a feature of every plan.
Whether the vendor publishes measured accuracy on citations and assertions, grounds output to primary sources, and says plainly what its system does when it does not know. Legal has a documented public record of fabricated citations reaching filed briefs, so an untested claim of accuracy is not evidence.
Archie drafts and answers from the matter's own documents and compares documents to find conflicting terms. It also surfaces LawY's guidance on legal questions by jurisdiction, with an option to have a lawyer verify the answer. Section 24 of the Terms of Service, last updated 9 July 2026, says answers from Smokeball AI or Archie may contain inaccuracies and may not reflect recent changes in the law, that notifications and generated forms may not be accurate, and that Smokeball makes no warranty as to results.
No accuracy figure, test set, error rate or evaluation is published for Archie, Playbooks or Archie Apps, including the transcription and chronology tools, and LawY verification is a review step rather than a measure. The Archie page carries a customer's claim of a 117 percent productivity increase, which concerns speed, not accuracy.
What the system decides on its own, what a lawyer must approve, and whether the vendor documents where the review point sits. A tool that drafts under review and a tool that files without one are different products and different risks.
Section 24 of the Terms of Service says Smokeball AI and Archie should be used only by or under the supervision of qualified legal practitioners, and that the firm must validate every notification and generated form with its own professional judgment. Playbooks flag issues against the firm's own rules and suggest fixes for a person to accept, and LawY answers can be sent to a lawyer for verification. Archie drafts in Outlook and Word can be adjusted for tone and length before anything is sent.
The security page limits Archie's reach to authorized users, authorized matters and the firm's own environment. Where automation stops is not published. AutoTime captures billable activity passively without saying whether entries need approval before billing, and Smokeball AI handles intake and client communication on the higher tiers without a described handoff rule. There is no route back after a wrong answer beyond the firm's own review.
Named, dated evidence that the product works in production at real firms or legal departments. Case studies with figures and identified customers count. Unattributed testimonials and launch announcements do not.
The case studies page, filterable by state, practice and firm size, profiles named firms and people. Jon Crannell of The Crannell Law Group reports three to five times the efficiency at his Illinois personal injury firm, and Daniel Huestis of the Law Offices of Bonnie M. Benson in Delaware doubled his caseload. At Chuck Franklin Law in Arizona, Archie matter assistance is said to save two named paralegals hours every day.
Strohman Ford Attorneys grew from a solo practice to 14 employees, Melrose Law reports a 25 percent caseload increase after migrating decades of data, and the founding partner of Ashton & Price says Smokeball brings millions more in case resolutions each year. The Archie page quotes Liana Mahoney reporting a 117 percent productivity increase, and Smokeball's pricing page says more than 34,000 legal professionals use the platform. The results are the customers' own, undated and without a stated method.
How client confidences are handled: attorney client privilege and work product treatment, segregation of one client matter from another, whether client data trains any model, and what the vendor commits to in writing rather than in marketing.
Each firm's data is logically isolated, and Archie can access only the firm's own data and cannot access or learn from other Smokeball firms, according to the security page, last updated 9 July 2026. Archie works within a single matter and is designed not to cross reference other matters, and the Archie page adds that it is visible only to staff already assigned to the matter. On third parties, the security page says Smokeball does not give customer data to third parties for AI model training, and the Archie page says Archie runs under enterprise zero data retention agreements, so data is never shared for viewing, training or modeling.
The Terms of Service treat client data as confidential, with prompt prior notice before compelled disclosure, and delete it after a 30 day retrieval window at termination. The training commitment is on web pages rather than in the agreement, Smokeball's own use of data to improve its models is not addressed, and privilege and work product are not named.
Whether the vendor is clear that it supplies a tool rather than legal advice, who its audience is, and how it addresses unauthorized practice of law, competence and supervision duties, and jurisdiction limits. ABA Formal Opinion 512 is the reference point. Where the advice line is not the duty a product raises, the axis is read through the nearest professional duty it does raise: judicial conduct rules and the reviewing duty for products sold only to courts, and the duty to bill for time actually spent for products that draft time entries.
Section 24 of the Terms of Service, last updated 9 July 2026 and headed Disclaimer of Legal Advice, says Smokeball is not a law firm, that the system may not have been developed or approved by legal practitioners and carries no legal opinion or endorsement, that Smokeball AI and Archie are not a substitute for legal skill, judgment and experience and should be used only by or under the supervision of qualified legal practitioners, that notifications and generated forms must be validated with the lawyer's own professional judgment, and that content may not reflect current law.
Jurisdiction is handled feature by feature: LawY answers are jurisdiction aware with optional verification by a lawyer, some features have been released market by market, and the product runs through separate national businesses. The buyer is always a law firm and the AI serves its staff. No bar opinion is cited.
Published governance over model behavior: who owns it inside the vendor, what is tested before release, and what is disclosed about disparate output across matter types, parties, or populations.
The security page, last updated 9 July 2026, describes Smokeball AI as designed and operated to protect confidentiality, integrity and availability in line with ISO 27001 controls. It limits AI access to authorized users, matters and firm environments, and commits to purpose limitation by not giving customer data to third parties for model training. It notes that AWS, Smokeball's host, holds ISO 42001, the AI management system standard, which describes the infrastructure provider rather than Smokeball's own AI practice.
No one is named as accountable for how Archie drafts or answers, and nothing describes testing before a change reaches firms. No finding addresses whether Archie, Playbooks or the partner Archie Apps perform unevenly across practice areas, jurisdictions or document types. The Apps marketplace brings partners' AI tools into a firm's matters, and nothing says how those partners are vetted.
Retention, deletion, access control, and what happens to prompts and documents after they are processed. Whether the vendor states its subprocessors and its incident practice, or leaves the buyer to assume.
Hosting on Amazon Web Services with geographical redundancy covers disaster recovery, per the security page, last updated 9 July 2026. It describes multi factor authentication, role based access on least privilege, periodic privilege reviews, and automated monitoring and alerts for abnormal access. Regular audits, penetration testing, staff security training and incident response planning are listed too, all aligned with Annex A of ISO 27001.
For AI it adds firm and matter level isolation, zero data retention agreements with AI providers and no provision of customer data to third parties for model training. The Terms of Service give 30 days after termination to retrieve data before deletion. No list of subprocessors is published, including the AI providers behind Archie and the partners in Archie Apps, and neither is a retention period for Archie prompts and outputs in Smokeball's own systems or any commitment on how quickly a firm is told of a breach.
What the vendor stands behind contractually when its output is wrong. Indemnities, caps, carve outs, insurance, and whether any of it is published or only reachable through a negotiated agreement.
Section 26B of the Terms of Service, last updated 9 July 2026, gives the firm a defense and indemnity against third party claims that the subscription infringes United States intellectual property rights, with the usual remedies to procure a license, modify, or terminate and refund. Section 25 caps each party's aggregate liability at the subscription fees paid in the preceding year and excludes consequential loss, carving the indemnities and data migration out of the cap.
Section 23B warrants that the subscription conforms to its product description and that Smokeball uses commercially reasonable malware protection. Sections 23D and 24 disclaim any warranty as to results and as to the accuracy of AI answers, generated forms or notifications, and the firm indemnifies Smokeball for its client data. No insurance is stated, and no recourse is offered for defective AI output.
How deeply the product reaches into the systems legal work already lives in: document management such as iManage and NetDocuments, Word and Outlook, contract lifecycle management, matter management, e-billing, and court filing systems.
Archie works across Word, Outlook and Smokeball with the matter's full context, summarizing email threads and drafting replies in Outlook and drafting in Word without the matter being explained again. The Grow tier adds Word and Outlook integration for document automation and email management. Smokeball's pricing page lists Microsoft 365 Outlook and calendar integration, Office 365 calendaring, unlimited electronic signatures through InfoTrack, electronic filing, accounting integrations on the Bill tier, and LawY inside Archie for legal questions with optional lawyer verification.
Archie Apps adds a marketplace of partner AI tools for bank statement analysis, chronologies and transcription, and Smokeball runs a separate partner marketplace for other integrations, organized by region. The product and pricing pages do not describe what each connection moves in which direction, or what a firm configures.
Where the software runs and where the data sits. Multi tenant cloud, single tenant, private deployment, on premises, and whether region of residence is a published option or an enterprise conversation.
Amazon Web Services hosts Smokeball with geographical redundancy that keeps the service running through regional outages, according to the security page, last updated 9 July 2026. Each firm's data is logically isolated, with Archie confined to the firm's own data and to one matter at a time, a multi tenant model with separation down to the matter. The product is offered in the browser from the Boost tier and as a Windows desktop application with cloud services.
Smokeball runs separate businesses and sites for the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, with regional pages aligned to Australian privacy law and the UK GDPR. Which AWS regions hold a US firm's data, whether a firm can choose, and where the AI providers behind Archie process a matter's documents under their zero data retention agreements are not stated.
Independent attestation a buyer can pull without a sales call: SOC 2, ISO 27001, penetration test summaries, a trust center with current reports and named scope rather than a badge image.
The security page, last updated 9 July 2026, says Smokeball is an ISO 27001 certified organization, and the Archie page repeats that Smokeball is certified to ISO 27001:2022 and independently penetration tested every year. The security page describes the program behind it: controls aligned with ISO 27001 Annex A, regular audits and assessments, penetration testing, compliance reviews, staff security training and incident response planning, with hosting on Amazon Web Services and its own certifications.
The page attributes SOC 2 and ISO 42001 to AWS rather than to Smokeball. The certifying body, certificate number and scope, including whether Archie is inside it, are not published, and there is no trust center or route to request the certificate or a penetration test summary.
Which models sit underneath, whose they are, where they run, and whether the vendor commits to telling customers when that changes. A legal buyer inherits every dependency it cannot see.
The Archie page says Archie runs under enterprise zero data retention agreements so a firm's data is never shared with third parties for viewing, training or modeling, and the security page says Smokeball does not provide customer data to third parties for AI model training. Both confirm that outside model providers are in the chain. LawY is named as the source of the legal guidance Archie surfaces, and Archie Apps brings in tools from specialist partners that are named in the product but not on a published list.
The model provider or providers behind Archie's drafting, review and answers, the models and versions, where inference runs, and any commitment to notify firms before a provider or model changes are not published.
Whether a buyer can learn what this costs without entering a sales process: published rates, the unit being charged, what sits behind an enterprise tier, and what implementation adds.
The pricing page sets out four plans on one platform, Bill, Boost, Grow and Prosper+, with a comparison feature by feature. Bill covers invoicing, time and expense tracking, payments and trust accounting. Boost adds browser based matter, task and calendar management, Microsoft 365 integration, the client portal, electronic signature and electronic filing. Grow adds practice area templates and calculators, advanced document automation and email management, and Prosper+ adds firm insights, lead management, advanced intake, custom workflows and automatic time capture.
Archie is an add on from Boost upward, and AutoTime, Intake and Workflows are add ons below Prosper+, where they are included. Every plan shows a get pricing button rather than a figure. The Terms of Service add that fees are per user for a fixed term, that Flex Users pay a higher monthly rate, that upgrades are allowed during a term and downgrades only at renewal, and that renewal pricing comes with 60 days' notice. No price is published.
Who the product is actually built for. AmLaw, midlaw, small firm and solo, in house departments, government and courts, and which practice areas are supported rather than merely claimed.
Smokeball publishes solution pages for family law, personal injury, real estate, criminal law, civil litigation, business law, general practice and probate, for solo, small and midsize firms, and for eight roles from solo attorney and managing partner to paralegal and billing manager. Its case studies can be filtered by US state, practice area and firm size, and run from solo practitioners in Louisiana and Texas to twenty person firms in California and Oregon.
Its pricing page says more than 34,000 legal professionals use it, and it operates through separate businesses in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Some features, including Archie Apps at launch, have been released market by market, AI features are add ons rather than standard on every plan, and section 24 of the Terms warns that content may not reflect current law. Which practice areas Playbooks and Archie Apps serve well, and where Archie's drafting is weaker, is not stated.
The public pages on file for Smokeball, with the recorded signals each one supports and the date it was last read. Open any of them and check the reading against the record.
Prompt and Output Retention, Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice, Bar Guidance Alignment
Read Sep 6, 2026
Client Data in Training, Ethical Walls and Matter Segregation
Read Sep 6, 2026
Fabricated Citation Record
Read Sep 6, 2026
The structure is published in the terms and on the pricing page, and no figure is shown. Pricing is per user for a fixed subscription term, and the user count cannot be reduced until renewal. Smokeball's pricing page names four plans, Bill, Boost, Grow and Prosper+, with Prosper+ as the default and Archie as a paid add on from Boost upward, and each plan shows a get pricing button rather than a figure. Flex Users pay a higher monthly rate, upgrades are allowed at any time and downgrades only at renewal, renewal pricing comes with sixty days' notice and non renewal needs thirty days' notice, and terms renew automatically for twelve months at the standard pricing then in force. The absence of a published figure does not mean the product is free.
Archie, Smokeball's matter assistant, now highlights placeholders in its drafts and prompts the user to fill in any missing information. Drafts also keep their formatting when moved into Word and email, including table borders, column widths and multi section layouts, and letters use the firm's own Word template.
Smokeball Desktop App Version 10.1, released to beta testers, reworks matter permissions and adds a Manage access control to the Smokeball Web App, where a matter can be set to Open (all firm users) or Restricted (only staff with roles on the matter plus selected users). A new option, Restrict users created after today, keeps staff who join the firm later out of the matter by default, and settings sync between the desktop and web apps.
A signal records what public sources say on the date shown. It is not a grade and it is not a recommendation. Where a signal reads Not addressed, it means the index did not locate the material in public sources on that date, which is a statement about disclosure rather than about the product.
Can material a lawyer puts into this product be used to train a model?
A public policy or trust page states no training on customer content, with no matching term located in the published agreement.
The security page states that Smokeball does not provide customer data to third parties for AI model training or third party AI modeling, and the product pages say Archie runs under zero data retention agreements and that data is never shared with third parties for viewing, training or AI modeling. Every statement is about third parties, and Smokeball's own use of customer data for its models is not addressed. The Terms of Service of 9 July 2026 contain no clause that names training; section 18 says Smokeball AI and Archie processing aligns with the product's primary uses and the privacy policy.
How long does the product keep what a lawyer typed, and can that be set to zero?
A specific retention period is published and the customer cannot change it.
Terms section 14 permits deletion of the account and data thirty days after termination, and section 15 gives thirty days of access for retrieval, with a defined data backup on request. The period is set for the platform, and the customer cannot change it. The product pages say Archie runs under zero data retention agreements with its AI providers, which covers retention at the model provider rather than in the platform. Nothing states a shorter or configurable window for Archie prompts and outputs inside Smokeball during the term.
Does retrieval respect the firm’s ethical walls, or can the model read across them?
The product maintains its own permission model, documented, requiring the firm to keep it aligned.
The security page states firm level logical isolation and says only users already permitted on a matter can use Archie for that matter, consistent with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 expectations on access control. The product pages say Archie works only within the matter the user is in, never cross references other matters, and is visible only to staff assigned to it. The product keeps its own permission model and documents it at matter level.
If someone subpoenas the vendor for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?
Terms commit to notice where lawfully permitted. No transparency report located.
Terms section 22B requires the receiving party, to the extent permitted by law, to notify the disclosing party promptly and before any compelled disclosure so it can seek a protective order, to assist in opposing the disclosure, and then to disclose only what is legally required with efforts to obtain confidential treatment. Section 18 separately provides that Smokeball will give notice of legal process for client data, to the extent allowed by law, as soon as reasonably possible. No transparency report is published.
Where does the law in this product come from, and does the vendor have the right to use it?
Coverage is described by jurisdiction with no identification of the underlying corpus.
The LawY integration answers legal questions with guidance described as jurisdiction aware and tailored to matter type, and Smokeball's own form library is stated at more than twenty thousand forms across matter types. Nothing states what primary sources sit behind LawY's answers, under what license, or how often they are refreshed, and the terms warn that content may not reflect recent changes in the law.
Does the product tell you when the authority it just cited has been overruled?
No located public material addresses whether authority is checked for subsequent history.
No public material addresses whether authorities in LawY's answers are checked for later history. Smokeball's control on citation risk is the option to have a lawyer verify an answer, which is a review step rather than a citator or treatment signal.
What does the product do when the answer is not in the corpus?
No located public material addresses what the product does when it cannot ground an answer.
No public material describes what Archie or the LawY integration does when it cannot ground an answer. Playbooks flag issues against rules the firm defines, and the lawyer verification option acts on an answer already given; neither is a way to decline, and no confidence signal is described.
Does a public court record exist addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations in output from this product?
No court order, opinion or disciplinary record addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations produced by this product has been located as of the date shown. This is a statement about the public record on that one subject, not a finding about the product, and this signal is not a litigation history.
The AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin records no case naming Smokeball, Archie or Smokeball AI; the sanctions reported in court findings involve general purpose chatbots. No court order, opinion or disciplinary record naming the product appears in the public record. This is a statement about the public record, not a finding about the product.
Has the vendor engaged in public with the ethics opinions its buyers are bound by?
Public materials refer to professional responsibility in general terms without naming guidance.
Section 24 of the Terms requires that Smokeball AI and Archie be used only by or under the supervision of qualified legal practitioners and that outputs be validated with professional skill, judgment and experience, and Smokeball offers bar association discounts. No ethics opinion, bar rule or guidance from any bar or regulator on AI use is named.
Does the vendor address what happens to the bill when the work takes an hour instead of six?
Public materials claim time savings without addressing billing or disclosure, and the product sits inside a fee relationship between a lawyer and a client where those savings would change the bill.
The buyer is a law firm and the product issues the client's invoice, so it sits inside the fee relationship. AutoTime records time passively and is described as gaining Smokeball AI, Archie is marketed as delivering work faster, and the terms price by user rather than by usage. Nothing addresses how AI assisted work is recorded or disclosed on the client's bill when the work takes less time.
Can a firm get this vendor through a client’s AI clause without a bespoke negotiation?
No located public material supports a client side disclosure obligation.
No subprocessor list or model provider list is published. The product pages describe zero data retention agreements with unnamed AI providers, and the security page says no third party model training takes place, which states terms a firm could forward rather than who sees client content. The terms address third parties a firm chooses to connect without naming processors.
If a judge’s standing order requires an AI disclosure, can the product produce one?
No located public material addresses court disclosure or verification certification.
No public material addresses court disclosure, or certification that AI assisted work was verified. Archie's outputs and Smokeball AI summaries are described as visible only to firm staff, and the lawyer verification option on LawY answers produces a checked answer, but nothing says that a record for each document of the model used, the sources and the human verification can be exported for a court.
Every grade and every signal on this index is drawn from public sources and dated. If a record is wrong, out of date, or missing an artifact the index did not locate, send the source and it will be reviewed and the record redated. Vendors are welcome to submit documentation. Nothing on this index is for sale, including a listing, a placement, or a grade.