Has your client signed up as a volunteer for an organisation that works with children? Or applied for a new role and is going through a recruitment process which includes a police check? There are many scenarios where your client may be required to consent to a police check.

To acknowledge the important work that small law firms do in their communities, we will be presenting the first ever legal community award in 2021. The prize is a luxury trip valued at up to $5,000.

Smokeball is busy right now with a lot of communication around best practices for working remotely, and importantly, engaging staff remotely. Because how much can you really get done if your staff aren’t engaged, right?

Law firms are telling us that they have more emails than ever. Not only do they have their normal, overwhelming number of emails from clients, other lawyers and so on, now they also have most of their internal conversations through email too.

Computers are important members of your support staff in your legal or conveyancing business. To be operating at the top of your game, and to be ethically compliant, your computer must be reliably up to date.

We’re enabling law firms to oversee a whole new area of their practice. Our Lead Management feature gives law firms the tools they need to manage and follow up with potential new clients before a matter is even created.

We are excited to announce that Smokeball now integrates seamlessly with Court Sync. Once documents, orders and judgements are submitted, clients can click the ‘Court Sync’ button within Smokeball and any updated documents will be automatically saved to the corresponding matter.

When we launched our suite of communication and collaboration tools in Smokeball, we worried we were too far ahead of the curve: that small law firms would fail to embrace messaging each other internally, sharing documents with each other, and also messaging their clients and third parties from our software.

The legal industry has a reputation for long hours and high stress. Lawyers frequently report working longer than a standard 9 to 5 workday, yet studies have shown that the average lawyer spends just over two hours each day on billable work.

Are you wondering: “Should I turn off my computer every day?”. Many people leave their computers on for days or even weeks at a time, but is that really a smart choice? There are many benefits to shutting down your computer every day, let’s take a look at a few.

Document automation has become the foundation of most modern small law firms. The ability to use software to quickly produce documents has transformed the way lawyers and conveyancers service their clients and has significantly improved the productivity of their businesses.

Small law firms are witnessing an increase in requests for fixed fees, as well as greater profitability – and the future looks bright for charging in such a fashion, too.

To acknowledge and celebrate our legal admin superstars, we asked our clients to nominate their remarkable paralegal or secretary and tell us how they go the extra mile for their practice, for their chance to spoil them with a luxury hamper valued at $250.

This guide will cover the technology you’ll need in order to work remotely no matter the technology you’re using. It includes tips on tools to work better together when you’re not in the same office, as well as guidance for where to find help.

When working remotely it is vital to establish clear and consistent communication with your clients and co-workers. Regardless if you’re the only one working remote, or if your firm has shifted to a "virtual" office, you need to make sure that your entire team is in constant communication to sustain productivity and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

With face-to-face meetings often replaced with video conferencing right now, we wanted to provide Smokeball users with a seamless way to incorporate video into their workflow. In a recent update, we’ve made client and co-worker communication even more effective by integrating it with the most popular video chat application on the market: Zoom.

How can Lawyers Witness a Will Remotely? 27/3/20202 Comments Picture Estate Planning is the bread and butter of many small law firms. Wills, powers of attorney, guardianships and medical directives are important documents that require proper execution. Without the necessary witnessing and execution requirements met, it is easy to contest these documents when they come into effect.

When looking to move to the cloud, is there a difference between ‘cloud’ from one vendor to another? Yes, and the differences can be profound. The majority of providers use the purely browser-based technology to take you to the cloud, but, there are a few that go the extra mile and implement all the cloud benefits right into your desktop, into your existing applications, and the into the workflows that you use every day.

Once legal and conveyancing businesses are set up to work remotely with communication and practice management software, their next thought should be how to make sure everyone in the firm is remaining productive and accountable.

Legal and conveyancing businesses are sacrificing a lot of control as their employees work from home in light of Covid-19. Lawyers and conveyancers are paradoxically more autonomous in staying on top of their daily tasks while relying more on each other to make sure nothing falls between the cracks.

The new “Joint Practice Direction 2 of 2020 - Special Measures in Response to COVID-19” was issued by the Family Law Courts on 31 March 2020 in order to help combat the daily practical challenges now faced by Family Law practitioners as well as prioritise the health and safety of the wider community, Judges and Court staff.

Email is a great way to quickly and easily communicate with clients and colleagues about a matter, but if not managed effectively, email can become a productivity killer. There are a few things every conveyancing and legal business can do to improve email management.

While social media and text messaging have gained popularity with the masses, email is still the primary way that conveyancers and lawyers communicate with clients. Email is a private and flexible communication tool accessible to everyone, but are you getting the most out of your email management feature, especially if you’re using Microsoft Outlook? Let’s take a look at a few powerful Microsoft Outlook tips and tricks that you can use to increase your productivity and communicate effectively.

The hardest part in making the transition to the electronic world and operating a paperless office is working out where to begin, followed by removing the overwhelming thought of having to find the time to make the transition. Most of us have this notion of how hard and time consuming the transition is going to be. The transition itself is easy and when completed in stages it is no longer overwhelming or time consuming.

Quick and easy document creation is crucial to keeping your conveyancing or legal business running at the speed clients need and expect from modern firms.