AI Guides / Law Firms

AI and automation for law firms

A small firm leaks money in six-minute units — the calls and emails that never reach the timesheet — and leaks risk on the deadline calendar, where a missed limitation date is an insurance claim, not a lost sale. Your practice software was built for both: passive time capture that reconstructs the day for you, and matter-driven dates that don't rely on anyone's memory. The one hard rule underneath everything: nothing generated goes to a court or a client unverified.

Start at step one. Stop whenever you like — nothing below is needed for anything above it to work.

Start at step one Done this before? Jump to all 11 jobs

Prices checked by hand 27 July 2026 · nobody pays to be listed here

The whole page, in order

Week 1 · free$0

Enable automatic time capture for every fee earner and make the morning review of yesterday's entries the firm habit — captured, reviewed, billed.

Software: Smokeball AutoTime

Week 2$0

Audit the matter-type task lists: every matter type carries its critical dates and standard steps automatically, so no deadline lives only in someone's head.

Software: Matter-type tasks and critical dates in your practice platform

Week 3$0

Move the five most-used letters and forms onto precedents that fill from matter data — faster, and no more last-client artifacts in this client's documents.

Software: Smokeball or LEAP precedents

Week 4 · measure$0

Count recovered units per fee earner from passive capture, enquiries answered same-day with a booked consult, and unbilled WIP over sixty days. Only then decide whether anything needs building.

Software: Practice-platform time and WIP reports

Step one · start here

What your current law firms software may already include

On Smokeball, Your practice platform, these are settings, not another subscription — check your plan includes them. On something else, search its help centre for the same feature name.

Extra software cost

$0*

if included in your plan

Features ready

Task 1

Smokeball (Prosper+, add-on on Grow) → AutoTime passive time capture

saves recovered billable units

Why it matters

Activity across emails, documents, calls and matter work tracked in the background and converted nightly into time entries for review — the six-minute units that die in reconstruction, recovered by settings. Enabled per user under Staff & Users, and off until someone does it.

What to do

Open the official guide below. In Smokeball (Prosper+, add-on on Grow), find “AutoTime passive time capture”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.

Open the official setup guide ↗

1 hour per user · $0 extra if included in your current plan

Task 2

Smokeball → Time Finder — the unbilled-activity sweep

saves ≈2–4 units/fee earner/wk

Why it matters

A review pane surfacing tracked activity that never became a fee entry — the leak detector for anything AutoTime's nightly run didn't convert, run before invoicing.

What to do

Open the official guide below. In Smokeball, find “Time Finder — the unbilled-activity sweep”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.

Open the official setup guide ↗

30 minutes per cycle · $0 extra if included in your current plan

Task 3

Your practice platform → Matter-type tasks and critical dates

saves risk, then hours

Why it matters

Matter templates attach the standard steps and dates the moment a file opens. Every serious legal platform has this limitation-date and court-timetable machinery. Almost nobody configures it.

What to do

Open the official guide below. In Your practice platform, find “Matter-type tasks and critical dates”. Follow the guide once, switch it on for one real job or customer first, and check that it did exactly what you expected before using it everywhere.

Open the official setup guide ↗

1 day per matter type · $0 extra if included in your current plan

Different software? The same switch usually exists under another name.

Step two · first workflow to implement

An intake form and booking link with a conflicts step: Answer the enquiry with a booked consultation.

A person with a legal problem calls three firms and retains the one that answered like it wanted the matter. Same-day response with a consultation booked — and a conflicts check triggered — converts at rates the profession's callback culture never will.

Do this in order

1. Build a short intake form that captures the matter type, the other side's name, and the outcome the person wants. The other side's name is what makes the conflicts check possible.
2. Publish a consultation booking type and set the hours a fee earner will actually take a first consultation.
3. Run the conflicts check against the submitted names before the consultation is confirmed, and make one person responsible for clearing it.
4. Submit a test enquiry from an outside address. Confirm the conflicts step runs before confirmation, and that nothing in the automatic reply reads as legal advice.

Typical size

every enquiry

Setup

1 day

What to use

An intake form and booking link with a conflicts step

Calendly (or Microsoft Bookings) · Free tier ↗Make.com · $9/mo ↗

Buy or build: Small build

How you know it worked

Count it in week one, then count the same thing again in week four. If the number did not move, stop spending.

Keep this implementation simple

Use the steps above with the software you already have. Test the workflow on your own phone before adding another product or paying someone to build around it.

Step three · keep going without adding complexity

Once step two works, take the next three jobs in this order.

One at a time. Finish it, test it on real work, then start the next.

AutoTime + Time FinderTypical sizeper fee earner, weekly

Recover the units that never hit the timesheet

Passive capture plus a five-minute morning review turns yesterday's forgotten calls and email reviews into billed work. Across a firm, the recovered units are the cheapest revenue in practice — already earned, previously evaporating.

Setup effort: 1 hour

Platform WIP reportsTypical sizemonthly, all matters

Chase the unbilled WIP before it goes stale

Work in progress older than sixty days gets harder to bill every week it ages — the client's memory of the value fades faster than yours. A monthly WIP-aging review with a billing decision per matter keeps the lockup honest.

Setup effort: 2 hours

Closing checklist + templateTypical sizeevery favourable close

Ask for the review at the matter's good ending

The settlement that landed, the purchase that completed, the estate finalised — the close of a well-run matter is the one moment clients volunteer goodwill. One message with the review link, sent as a closing step, builds the profile that wins the next enquiry.

Setup effort: 1 hour

Step four · only once the first three are running

These are useful, but they are not the place to begin.

The first point where paying for a build makes sense — once the earlier steps are running.

Referrer list + templatesTypical size≈10 active referrers

Stay in front of the referrers

Conveyancers feed from agents and brokers, family lawyers from accountants and counsellors, commercial firms from advisors. A closing courtesy note per referred matter and a quarterly touch keeps the referral tap open — and its absence quietly closes it.

Setup effort: Half a day

Does this look familiar?

These are the problems the named tools above are meant to remove.

Answer the enquiry with a booked consultation

Recover the units that never hit the timesheet

Chase the unbilled WIP before it goes stale

Ask for the review at the matter's good ending

Stay in front of the referrers

Generate documents from matter data, not the last file

After thirty days

Four numbers. If they have not moved, stop and do not spend another dollar.

Number one

Answer the enquiry with a booked consultation

Write down the current monthly number before you switch anything on. Compare it with the same number after thirty days.

Number two

Recover the units that never hit the timesheet

Count it the same way in week one and week four. Do not change the definition halfway through.

Number three

AutoTime passive time capture

Use the history inside your existing software to count how often the automation actually ran.

Number four

Hours given back

Ask the person doing the work now. They will know before a dashboard does.

Every other figure here is a typical size. These four are yours.

Reference

All 11 jobs for law firms, in order of what they return.Open ↓

Wins work

Answer the enquiry with a booked consultation with Intake form + booking link + conflicts step

Typical size: every enquiry
Buy or build: Small build · Intake form + booking link + conflicts step
Effort: 1 day

Recover the units that never hit the timesheet with AutoTime + Time Finder

Typical size: per fee earner, weekly
Buy or build: Already paid for · AutoTime + Time Finder
Effort: 1 hour

Chase the unbilled WIP before it goes stale

Typical size: monthly, all matters
Buy or build: Already paid for · Platform WIP reports
Effort: 2 hours

Ask for the review at the matter's good ending with Closing checklist + template

Typical size: every favourable close
Buy or build: Small build · Closing checklist + template
Effort: 1 hour

Stay in front of the referrers with Referrer list + templates

Typical size: ≈10 active referrers
Buy or build: Small build · Referrer list + templates
Effort: Half a day

Saves hours

Generate documents from matter data, not the last file

Letters and court forms filled from the matter's parties, dates and details — faster than find-and-replace, and structurally incapable of leaking the previous client's name into this client's document.

Typical size: 6 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · Platform precedents / forms library
Effort: 1 day

File every email against its matter

Matter-linked email means the whole file — correspondence, attachments, history — is searchable by anyone on the matter, and the departed paralegal's inbox stops being a discovery problem.

Typical size: 5 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · Platform email integration
Effort: 2 hours

Let the matter type set the dates with Matter-type automation

Standard steps, court timetables and critical dates attached automatically at file-open — the diary system that doesn't depend on the person who was away that day.

Typical size: 4 hrs/mo, plus the claim it prevents
Buy or build: Already paid for · Matter-type automation
Effort: 1 day

Send the client updates before they call with Stage-triggered templates

A short templated status note at each matter stage — filed, listed, awaiting response — pre-empts the where-are-we calls that consume unbillable hours and goodwill in equal measure.

Typical size: 5 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · Stage-triggered templates
Effort: Half a day

Take payments and plans without the chase

Card payments on invoices and structured payment plans through the platform — collections handled by machinery, with trust-money rules never touched by anything outside the compliant system.

Typical size: 4 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Already paid for · Platform payments
Effort: Half a day

Answer the firm's questions once with ChatGPT Team

Fee scales, precedent locations, court filing procedures, firm policies — one internal place to ask, loaded from firm documents, never from client matter files.

Typical size: 4 hrs/mo
Buy or build: Buy · ChatGPT Team, $25/user
Effort: 2 days

The stack

The tools named, priced, and judged.

Tools named in this guide, what each one is for, its price, and the verdict.
Tool	What it is for	Price	Verdict
Practice managementSmokeball	Matter management with passive time capture, forms automation and matter-type workflows.	On quote, tiered ↗	AutoTime is the standout — but it's included on Prosper+ and a paid add-on on Grow, so price the tier that has the feature this page is built on. Desktop-app-centric; check the fit for a Mac-based firm.
Practice managementLEAP	The AU small-firm incumbent with a deep court-forms and precedent library.	Per user, on quote ↗	If you're on it, the forms library and matter automation cover most of this page — configure before comparing. Its time capture is more manual than Smokeball's; the morning-review habit matters more here.
Practice managementActionstep / Clio	The workflow-heavy and the cloud-global alternatives respectively.	Per user, tiered ↗	Both credible; the deciding questions for a small AU firm are local court-form coverage, trust-accounting compliance for your state, and migration pain. A platform switch is a year — don't do it for one feature.
ProductivityMicrosoft 365	Word and Outlook — the surfaces your practice platform integrates with and your time capture watches.	From $12.60/user ↗	You have it. The integration depth between it and your practice platform is worth an hour of configuration — that's where the passive capture and email filing actually live.
SchedulingCalendly (or Microsoft Bookings)	The consultation booking link that makes same-day intake real.	Free tier ↗	Free tier suffices. Put the conflicts-check question in the intake form, not after the meeting is booked.
Phone & messagingOpenPhone	A firm number with shared inbox and a searchable call log.	$19/user ↗	The searchable thread is genuinely useful in a business where who-said-what matters. Check your practice platform's own call logging first.
AutomationMake.com	The referrer touches and review-ask sequences outside the platform.	$9/mo ↗	Names and dates only — matter content never leaves the practice platform, and nothing touching trust money goes anywhere near a scenario. Few and auditable.
AssistantChatGPT Team	Internal firm-process questions from your own documents.	$25/user ↗	Useful for procedure and policy questions. It never sees matter files, and anything resembling legal analysis it produces is a draft for a practitioner's verification — courts have sanctioned lawyers over fabricated generated citations, and the citation-checking habit is not optional.

Do not bother

Three things not to buy yet.

Generated court documents without verification.

Lawyers in multiple jurisdictions have been sanctioned for filing AI-fabricated citations. Generation can draft; the practitioner verifies every authority, every fact, every figure before anything carries the firm's name — because the sanction, and the headline, are yours.

A website chatbot that answers legal questions.

A specific answer to a specific person's legal question is legal advice, with everything that attaches to it — conflicts unchecked, retainer unformed, liability live. Capture the enquiry, run conflicts, book the consultation. The bot books; it never advises.

Automating trust accounting outside your legal platform.

Trust money is strict-liability, audited, and career-ending to get wrong. It moves only inside the compliant system built and certified for it — no spreadsheet sync, no third-party automation, no exceptions for convenience.

Sources