Automated Legal Forms + Law Firm Admins = Major Time Saved

Law firm success is not just dependent on rainmaking and brilliant legal strategy. Increasing staff productivity at all levels is the smartest way to improve your profits and outcomes. Have you ever asked yourself or your legal staff what takes up the most time in their day? Or if they could offload any aspect of their work, what would it be? Smokeball clients find that automated legal forms are the best way to improve output, increase accuracy, and reduce tedious and time-consuming tasks. 

Automated legal forms take manual tasks off your plate 

Administrative work is crucial to your law firm’s success. But too much busy work is likely to bog down your legal secretaries and paralegals. They’re responsible for getting a client’s case off the ground— organizing research and documents, finding and filling out legal forms, and sending documents out for signatures. 

So much of this work requires a human to power it, but we identified one place where the power of technology could make an enormous impact for paralegals and admin, supporting them in juggling and toggling between tasks and caseloads. Smokeball’s automated legal forms and document library cut out repetitive manual tasks to save legal secretaries and paralegals hours daily, so they get more work done, more accurately, in less time.  

What are automated legal forms? 

Automated legal forms are the easiest way to accurately expedite your firm’s workflow or process. Smokeball automatically fills in the appropriate forms with related matter and client details. This feature reduces your time to complete a document to mere seconds and eliminates the need for manual data entry (saving you from mistakes). For example, the image below shows all the details automatically added to a client letter.

The benefits of automated legal forms include: 

• Reliability: Forms are always up to date, so you can rest assured that you’re using the most current version, and they are easy to locate 
• Consistency: Client and case details populate automatically, ensuring accuracy every single time
• Speed: Completion of many forms takes just seconds
• Standardization: The complete form library means everyone in your firm uses the same templates, creating uniformity
• Accessibility: Smokeball saves forms to the case files instantly, keeping everything organized  
• Consolidation: Smokeball’s time tracking features mean employees’ time is automatically tracked and billed 

There’s a template for that 

Smokeball’s searchable library contains more than 20,000 automated legal forms, organized by jurisdiction and practice area, including common correspondence templates.  

Need to send a welcome email to a new client or a request for evidence? There’s a template for that. 

Don’t see the template you need? Create your own custom-designed templates using Smokeball’s seamless automation with Microsoft Word.  

How automated legal forms save time for paralegals 

When paralegals can smoothly process routine tasks, they’re free to take on a larger share of the workload while improving their work-life balance. Here’s how the redundant task of filling forms becomes low or no-lift when paralegals use Smokeball: 

1. Paralegals start by accurately entering contact information and case details to set up a client’s initial Smokeball matter. Automated legal documents ensure client information is correctly entered into every case form and saved to the related matter, so they won’t have to hunt down documents in the future.  
2. Smokeball’s library of 20,000+ automated forms (above) covers federal, state, county, and administrative forms, saving time they would have spent hunting down the forms on government websites or in your firm’s storage. 
3. Even the best professionals are still prone to error. Now, you can prevent mistakes with Smokeball’s automated forms. The legal forms software automation inserts the correct matter information into every form and time without copying and pasting. Details such as a client’s date of separation or a real estate address automatically merge into forms. Not only does this automation save paralegals time re-entering the same information, but it also helps your firm avoid case delays due to re-filing. 

How automated legal forms save time for legal secretaries 

Document management is a key responsibility for legal secretaries. Instead of physically filing (and later tracking down) paper forms and correspondence, all digital forms are saved immediately to the related client matter. Essentially, Smokeball automates the paper chase. Here’s how: 

1. When you do deal with physical documents, Smokeball’s ScanSnap integration (shown above) allows you to scan them directly into a Smokeball matter without time-wasting steps like saving to the desktop or dragging and dropping into the correct case folders. Automated document management means files are organized and ready for any firm member to review at any time. Because every document is automatically saved to its related Smokeball matter, secretaries save time hunting down files and documents for review by attorneys — it’s all easily searchable by keyword and accessible to any member of your firm.  
2. Instead of wasting time chasing down clients for signatures, our DocuSign integration allows for the electronic signature of automated documents.  
3. Smokeball’s InfoTrack integration makes it easy for secretaries to file court documents, check acceptance statuses, and see case docket history. 

Maximize your talent pool 

Automated legal forms make your paralegals and legal secretaries more efficient and increase productivity and confidence in outcomes. When people feel supported and are confident in their contributions to the firm, they’re more likely to stay long-term. Software that maximizes and elevates your employees’ work results in a more cohesive and effective form.

Ready to get started with automating your law firm’s repetitive tasks?

Start with these free Smokeball resources:

• Before and After Implementing Legal Document Automation (free infographic to see what your legal staff’s process and day could easily look like with the right tech!)
• How to Prepare Your Firm to Adopt Legal Document Automation (article outlining the steps to help you get the most out of your software onboarding)
• Getting Automated: An End-to-End Guide to Law Firm Automation (free eBook)

Learn more about law firm automation

Join Smokeball’s Jordan Turk + Chelsey Lambert for “Embrace the Robots: Automate Law Firm Tasks + Grow Your Practice.”