After RJ Curcio joined the family firm, he saw an opportunity to build on his father’s legacy. Curcio Law provided excellent legal representation but struggled when it came to their internal technology. With Smokeball, staff now work efficiently, independently and accurately. Curcio Law has combined their history of success with powerful legal technology for an outstanding client experience.

Outdated technology causes inefficiency  

RJ shares: Curcio Law has the tradition that began in the 1950s when the firm was started by my dad. We also have a new face and a new way of doing things because I was able to join him. My dad had always hired great people. We still have people here today that have been here for 30-plus years. But our firm was lagging behind when it came to legal technology. I saw that as my opportunity to help make this a better place to work and began exploring different case management softwares to help us become more efficient.

There was a daily friction that prevented the attorneys from being able to do their jobs efficiently. Our technology at that point was a bit antiquated. And when somebody who has grown up with technology like myself can't figure out how to save something to our case management software—that wasn’t ideal. Our staff spent more time pulling things out of the electronic files than we did actually working on the files.  

Smokeball improved daily operations tremendously

We have to make sure that what we do have in the office is the most efficient means and methods possible of getting the job done. Smokeball is the heartbeat. It is what makes our office efficient and fast. Daily operation has changed tremendously since we started using Smokeball. Every day has gotten to be more and more efficient, as time has gone on. And as we've refined Smokeball continuously, it has only helped to increase the pace at which we can work our cases, move the cases, which in turn makes the clients happier. And that's what the end goal is.

The first thing that we find to be most helpful is the document automation. We have several letters that are automated that we use to have to do from scratch. Now we are able to just put together a letter. It automatically has our letterhead and footer. It formats the letters perfectly. We only have to type in the body, and we're done. So something that used to take perhaps 20 or 25 minutes to complete now takes no more than two minutes.

Stages are extremely helpful. When you're managing 190 files within our office, being able to judge where a case is based upon the stage helps us have a good oversight of exactly where every case is. It allows us to get a better insight into what we're doing on a day-to-day basis and which cases we need to move along faster without having to get into each and every single case.

Whenever we receive certain types of pleadings or documents, there's a workflow that we've created that's associated with those pleadings or documents that's then instituted. And the workflow gets generated for the people to whom the tasks are assigned. Smokeball has made our lives exceptionally easy by saving emails, generating emails, the document automation. It has made our entire firm much more efficient. It has made lives much simpler.

Empowered, efficient experts

The most important thing for us is that everybody can do their job without having to ask somebody else to help them figure out how to find it within the software. And it's also helped us reduce our paper waste, and our printing, and our file storage to the point where we were even able to get rid of a massive file room we have in downsize. It's changed the mindset a ton on a day-to-day basis. It's changed how we do everything.

Smokeball is the unnamed partner. The unnamed paralegal within the office. But it plays just as important role as every human that's in the office. Our goal is to continue to try to help as many Chicagoans and residents of Illinois as we can. Smokeball continues to play an integral role in that.