How Fountain Law works smarter with Archie AI

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When Graham Fountain, Principal Solicitor at Fountain Law, acquired Taylor Splatt & Partners in 2021, the firm was running on onsite servers, backup tapes, and a practice management system that wasn’t built for the modern, agile firm environment that Graham had in mind. With 18 years experience as a CEO, senior executive, and board chair before entering the legal profession, Graham knew that transformational change was needed, quickly.

From the outset, Graham was in the market for a new PMS, and assessed several providers against his criteria. While he expected one of the other names to come out on top, Smokeball earned its place as his top choice through merit, and what followed was a migration of 78,000 files with Graham not looking back since.

More than a software vendor

Says Graham, “What sets Smokeball apart isn’t just the software, its the relationship. Over five years, the Smokeball team has consistently listened and developed the product to meet our needs. When we first came onboard, a secure deeds register wasn’t yet available; it was quickly built”. When Graham acquired a second firm, and needed multi-office reporting, he raised it with the team and it became part of the platform.

“That kind of responsiveness is what a true partnership looks like”.

Embracing AI with Archie AI

Graham has been using Archie right from the very beginning, and has watched it evolve rapidly. The key advantage that Graham and his team believe Archie has over other standalone AI tools is that it lives within the system, and understands specific matters across the firm.

Graham says, “It’s important to note, Archie hasn’t replaced people. Our strategic plan is growth and diversification, and what Archie has allowed us to do is pivot and restructure our resourcing across multiple offices and practice areas more efficiently. Like any AI tool it requires validation - we have policy and procedure guardrails in place - however Archie has genuinely increased our efficiency and productivity”.

“The profession has been fearful of AI, we have chosen to embrace it, and that decision has supported rather than diminished our team. The way the team have embraced Archie, its like Archie is another staff member within the team. Quite often you will hear staff say have you checked if Archie can assist, just like he’s a human member of the team”.

Impact

Smokeball and Archie have truly given Graham peace of mind to remain on top of his daily workload both as a lawyer and as business owner; he never misses important tasks with the flexibility to access Smokeball from anywhere outside the office.

“Quite often, I’ll be at home after dinner or in bed even, and I’ll think “God, I forgot to do that”. I’ll jump on my phone, I’ll do a task on Smokeball, and it’ll be there in the morning, and I can rest easy at night”.

Watch Graham’s experience with Archie AI.

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