Smokeball vs Lexbe eDiscovery Platform Comparison

Quite an intuitive platform with easy to use features. Time recording and billing are our favourite features! Smokeball allows easy file access in an organised platform.

Cost, however that's a pretty standard dislike for any legal software.

What a time saver! Smokeball is by far the easiest to use matter management and timekeeping platform I have used in my career. As an associate I really appreciate all the bells and whistles I can access that make the admin portions of my work (especially timekeeping) so much easier! This is a huge benefit to me, the firm, and our clients! And I can access it on my iPhone in a pinch!

I only wish the automatic time capturing also captured my time spent in research online and in Lexis! Then practice life would be such a breeze!

1. Smokeball is an "everything" platform. We realized we were only using the other softwares for billing/invoicing, but found little use for them otherwise. Smokeball, on the other hand, is much more versatile. We track our to-dos there, create workflows, assign tasks/projects to others at the firm (it avoids the back-and-forth internal emails), share our draft documents with client through a secure portal, and much more! 2. If you are a real estate transactions law firm (as we are), Smokeball is the only platform specifically designed for that practice area. We love that it automatically calendars deadlines, has templates built in, and otherwise automates much of the closing process for us (and avoids costly mistakes such as missing a deadline).

1. Cost (yup, it's one of the more expensive options you'll find out there). But when evaluating options, the thought process should be whether you will save some time by implementing the features of the software. And if so, a few extra bucks monthly is well worth it. 2. A little glitchy at times. We sometimes would create an invoice but would not be able to load it or send to a client until the next day. I have no idea why this happens, though it hasnt been a big issue for us. 3. Requires you to invest a lot of time to set up to automate your documents and learn how to modify them as you go. But, again, it is time well spent.

Thanks for the review, Furqan.

It was very user friendly and looked easy to use. Very customizeable. The Email syncing feature is great if you use Outlook. You can not only send emails when you're logged-in to Smokeball (which connects the email to the matter), but you can also send emails out of Outlook and you can click on a button on the bottom of the email screen and connect that incoming/outgoing email to a Smokeball matter. Can create custom fields. Can set-up intake forms with fields, that can be sent to the potential client for them to fill-in that automatically in-loads to their contact info in Smokeball.

Not able to set-up automatic repeat invoicing. If you have a client (such as a criminal defense client that needs to make monthly payments and want to, when you're setting up the client's case, set-up future invoices to go out to the client for them to be able to pay on-line, Smokeball can't accomplish this. The only platform I found that was able to do that is MyCase. This is a lifesaver for my criminal-defense firm. It only syncs with Outlook and not Gmail.

Thanks for your review, James. We are constantly looking for ways to improve the user experience with our software, so this feedback is very much appreciated.