For more than 35 years, Tacoma Injury Law Group has grown its expertise in workers’ compensation and other personal injury claims. The team of three attorneys, five paralegals and four admins collaborate on around 300 active cases at a time, striving to work accurately at pace to achieve winning results for their clients.

Going paperless

After decades of practicing with traditional physical files and methods, Tacoma Injury Law Group knew it was time to take a big step into the modern era. In 2017, the firm began searching for legal practice management software that would chart a course toward an entirely paperless firm. The goals:

• Streamline the creation, storage and retrieval of documents
• Create a single source of truth for every matter
• Empower the team to manage workloads more efficiently

A strategic choice for practice management

After assessing a variety of options, Tacoma Injury Law Group chose Smokeball as a strategic software partner for its paperless transition. Every document, form and communication within Smokeball is saved directly a matter and accessible to every team member, at any time. This ends the need for physical files and printing documents.

Smokeball also helps Tacoma Injury accomplish its goal of streamlining the document process. The seamless integration with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook means team members access and complete work in these platforms directly through Smokeball, eliminating the need to swap programs and lose track of progress. Now, documents and emails are quickly and easily filed to each matter, supported by powerful search capabilities, custom templates and preferred document folders.

Everything in its place

With Smokeball in place, every matter at Tacoma Injury is structured, streamlined and managed from the moment a prospective client contacts the firm. A prospective matter is created, and any data or communications are recorded in readiness for conversion to an active file. When the prospective is confirmed as a client, all information is automatically transferred to the newly opened matter. Not one document or piece of communication goes astray, and work begins immediately once the file is assigned to a staffer.

Because the matter holds all the necessary information, including manager, stage and associated documents and emails, every member of the Tacoma Injury team benefits from complete visibility into every case.

Teams can see who is managing which files and transfer tasks at the click of a button to balance workloads as availability changes. Key dates, including limitation dates, are managed via the calendaring function, ensuring vital milestones are always in clear view of Tacoma Injury’s paralegals and attorneys.  

A true technology partner

Throughout its years-long relationship with Smokeball, Tacoma Injury stays in close communication with the Smokeball customer service team, benefitting from input to new software versions and skills-boosting webinars.

Now, Tacoma Injury opens new matters in a few minutes rather than a couple of day, allowing work on a file to begin promptly, with correspondence, data and documents already attached to the new matter. Tacoma Injury’s stationery costs and paper use also are dramatically reduced, thanks to the firm’s universal ability to work with paperless files.

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