On July 31, 2024, Smokeball launched our first suite of legal AI tools, including our AI matter assistant for law firms, Archie AI. One year on, Archie has helped transform legal work across the globe.
As Archie’s first anniversary approaches, Smokeball CEO Hunter Steele reflects on the impact that Archie has had on the legal industry. “We have been blown away by the uptakes and feedback we have seen from users all over the world,” he said. “It has been amazing to see how Smokeball firms are leading the way in the adoption of AI in the practice of law.”
Archie is one of the first AI legal assistants designed for law firms and endeavours to help lawyers save time on menial tasks. It supports legal professionals by summarising matters, answering case-related questions, and drafting legal correspondence in seconds.
Since launch, Archie has been asked nearly 700,000 questions and data from a recent survey found that Archie has made tasks like reviewing and drafting 3-times faster!
In it’s first year, Archie’s has had some significant highlights:
These milestones highlight the growing role of legal AI in everyday practice, with more law firms turning to AI-powered solutions to improve productivity. This is supported by the rise in AI familiarity amongst law firms from up to 81% last year.
Archie helps automate legal workflows, acting like a ChatGPT for lawyers, but with legal context and secure integration inside Smokeball.
For example, Archie can review and analyse documents in your matter to provide a quick summary or highlight conflicting terms, so you don’t have to spend time manually trawling through them. Archie can also help you draft correspondence and legal documents, so you never have to stare at a blank page!Across Australia, forward-thinking law firms are embracing legal AI tools like Archie to reduce admin time and elevate client service. Some of the ways Queensland-based property law firm, Empire Legal, uses Archie to save time is by asking it to read PDFs to find specific details, like bylaws.
“It’s nice to see a product like Archie and Smokeball who are at the frontier in creating a product that is actually going to be used by lawyers.” — George Sourris, Co-Founder and Practice Director, Empire Legal.
Archie is used by the whole team at Empire Legal to help their firm run as smooth as possible. “I would say that Archie saves us each about an hour a day”, explains Chanel Thornton, Practice Manager at Empire Legal.
Maria Loukas, Managing Director at one of Perth’s most respected family law firms, Loukas Law, is also passionate about embracing legal technology to run her firm and uses Archie to support her firm’s strong growth. She says, “When Archie is there, it’s like having a companion or assistant at your fingertips. Archie is an essential tool. Why drive an old, beat-up car when you can drive a Ferrari?”.
“Why drive an old, beat-up car when you can drive a Ferrari?” — Maria Loukas, Managing Director, Loukas Law.
These stories reflect how AI and law can work hand-in-hand, with Smokeball’s platform to offer secure, purpose-built solutions for legal professionals.
As the presence of AI grows in the legal sector, many questions have been raised about the ethics around its use, including the confidentiality of client information. This was a critical safety element in the development of Archie. Smokeball’s Chief Technology Officer, Bart Vadala explains: “We use a private instance of OpenAI’s GPT 4o, which means that your data in Smokeball is never shared or used for training purposes. Your information remains secure and confidential at all times.” Archie only works within your Smokeball, drawing context from the files and information in your matters.
After we first launched Archie, one piece of feedback we received that resonated with us was how Archie users were storing prompts they used regularly in an external word processing document. Our goal in creating Archie was to provide a powerful AI tool to help lawyers save time on repetitive tasks, so in February, we announced our solution at our annual legal conference, Spark: the Archie Prompt Library.
The Prompt Library was designed to make it easier for those firms who wanted to reuse, share, or create more complex prompts by allowing users to store them within the Smokeball product. With a simple click of the button, users can run a saved prompt in Archie to get lightning fast results without have to switch windows!
We launched the Archie Prompt Library in March, preloaded with a number of high-value prompts designed by Smokeball to help clients get started using it right away. It has been an exciting first year of upgrades and improvements for Archie!
Archie is evolving beyond a simple assistant and becoming a full-featured legal AI platform supporting every part of your law firm. The Smokeball Dev Team are hard at work on exciting new features due to be released over the next few months.
Archie Apps
We are developing a number of AI apps for Archie to solve even bigger tasks for our clients, such as analysing bank statements, creating chronologies, and reviewing standard contracts all related to your matters. This will help to make Archie and even more effective legal AI solution.
Beyond your matters
AI can be a powerful tool in all aspects of a business. That’s why we are working to bring Archie outside of your matters and to the rest of you firms. Upgrading from “AI matter assistant” to just “AI assistant”, extending Archie to help with other time-consuming tasks, such as drafting marketing content or helping build a social media schedule.
With a power legal AI like Archie, Smokeball will not just be a powerful legal practice management software, but a system to support every part of your firm.
As we celebrate Archie's first birthday, we mark a transformation in how Australian legal professionals work, with thousands of lawyers now relying on AI to help with everyday tasks. The impressive adoption rates and exciting client testimonials for Archie confirm we've created something valuable, but what makes us most proud is seeing how Archie empowers legal professionals to focus on what truly matters: their clients and the quality of their legal work.
Discover how Smokeball’s legal AI assistant can save your firm hours each week. Learn more about Archie or speak to your Client Success Manager to start your trial today.
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