Legal Practice Management · Legal practice management
Smokeball
integration & API.
Document-driven PMS popular with small firms — we add the integration and automation layer.
S What is Smokeball?
Smokeball in plain English.
Smokeball is a Microsoft Word-integrated legal practice management platform popular with small firms. It captures every action against a matter automatically, including emails, documents, and time spent. Strong at automatic time capture and document automation within the Word ecosystem.
What businesses use it for
Common Smokeball
use cases.
- 01 Automatic time capture from Word, email, and calendar
- 02 Document automation using firm template libraries
- 03 Matter management for small to mid-size firms
- 04 Email and correspondence tracking against matters
- 05 Trust accounting compliant with state regulator requirements
- 06 Billing and invoicing tied to time entries
Why custom?
Beyond the default Smokeball integrations.
Smokeball is a document-driven practice management system widely used by small Australian law firms and sole practitioners. We build custom integrations that connect Smokeball to the rest of the firm's stack — client portals, accounting, e-signature, and AI-assisted document handling.
What we build with Smokeball
Common Smokeball integrations.
Branded client portals that present Smokeball matter status outside the platform
Structured intake that creates Smokeball matters with conflict checks
AI-assisted document classification feeding Smokeball matter records
Integration between Smokeball and Xero / MYOB for cross-system reconciliation
E-signature integration (DocuSign, Adobe Sign) for retainer agreements
Reporting that pulls clean cross-matter analytics from Smokeball
Commonly paired with
Smokeball works with the rest of your stack.
How we build
Production-grade.
Not Zapier in a trench coat.
Every Smokeball integration we ship handles failure properly: idempotent jobs, retry logic, dead-letter queues for unrecoverable cases, and observability so you can see exactly where data is at any moment.
Tested
Real test suite, real edge cases. Not just "it worked once."
Observable
You see what is happening — events logged, errors surfaced.
Maintainable
Documented, version-controlled, handed over properly.
More Legal Practice Management
Other legal practice management platforms we connect.
FAQ
Common questions about Smokeball integration.
Can you build integrations on top of Smokeball?
Yes — Smokeball has an API for the integration patterns we typically build. The quality of the API has improved significantly over the last few years.
Does Smokeball replace the need for Word templates?
No — Smokeball works with your existing Word template library, augmenting it with data from matters. We help firms automate this further with custom logic Smokeball alone doesn't cover.
Is Smokeball suitable for larger firms?
It's primarily designed for small-to-mid firms. Above 20-30 fee earners most firms move to LEAP or ActionStep, though Smokeball does scale further than that for some practices.
Related reading
Thinking we’ve published on this kind of work.
What AI actually costs to run in production
AI demos are cheap. Production is not. Where the money actually goes when you ship an AI feature, and how to size the engineering investment around the model.
Why integrations break in production (and what to design for)
Every integration that "just calls an API" eventually breaks. The five places they fail first, and the design patterns that keep them running unattended.
The hidden costs of SaaS once your business is established
The per-seat licence is the visible cost. Integration tax, lock-in, configuration drift, and the seat tax at scale are the SaaS costs no one quotes up front.
Get started
Ready to wire up
Smokeball?
A 30-minute scoping call — no pitch deck, no hard sell. Tell us what you're trying to connect and we'll tell you straight whether it's a fit.