Smokeball vs Filevine Compared for Law Firms 2026

Key Takeaways

• Choose Smokeball when the week is repeat forms, Outlook mail, and time the firm currently rebuilds on Friday. Choose Filevine when you will design long matter phases and staff someone to administer them. Both products are still sold under these names.

• Smokeball's US pricing page lists four plans and says the company is trusted by Trusted users: 34,000+ professionals, with the Grow plan designed for firms with three or more staff, no stated user cap, and AutoTime included on Prosper+ and sold as an add-on on Grow, according to Smokeball (2026). The same page does not list a US dollar price.

• Base Filevine AI is a small monthly allotment, not an open meter. The exact cap, the per-Project LOIS minimums, and the Lead Docket limits are in the contract section below. The US platform price is Quote-based.

• AutoTime is not on every Smokeball plan. The public grid marks time tracking as manual on Bill, Boost, and Grow. Archie, the assistant, remains an add-on even on Prosper+.

• A deadline chain is a draft until a person checks the current court rule. Filevine's own Timely terms leave that read, and the reminder setup, with the firm.

• Review scores are a shortlist signal, not a quote. The Software Advice and G2 figures below keep their original denominators. Neither score tells you the second-year invoice.

What a managing partner is choosing

TL;DR: Pick Smokeball if captured time and forms that fill from the matter are the purchase, and pick Filevine if custom phases, per-project AI, and a partner-led setup are the purchase. Treat both US list prices as Quote-based until the order form arrives.

Law firm case management software is the shared record of a matter, including the people, dates, documents, time entries, and the bill. You are not buying a brand. You are choosing where that record lives when a date changes, an email arrives, or a client payment has to be applied without touching trust money by accident.

Neither named product has been discontinued or folded into the other. Smokeball still sells Bill, Boost, Grow, and Prosper+ on its pricing page. Filevine still sells the platform by custom package. One module inside Filevine did change names: LOIS for Word was formerly Pincites, which matters if an older proposal used the old name for contract review. The rest of this guide keeps vendor facts in their own sentences and keeps our reading of those facts separate.

Firms that also have Clio on the shortlist can set this pair beside Clio versus Smokeball for law firms and beside what changes when that Clio and Smokeball choice includes automation. Those pages answer a different finalist. They do not change the public limits below.

The decision usually fails in one of three places. The firm buys a billing ledger and discovers matters live somewhere else. The firm buys a phase designer and discovers nobody will maintain the phases. Or the firm compares a third-party "starting at" number with a custom quote and thinks those are the same kind of price. They are not. This check uses only figures printed on pages opened for this guide, and it leaves US subscription prices as Quote-based where the vendor page has no dollar amount.

Who this is for

This comparison is for a managing partner at a small or mid-size firm who will use the system this quarter, not a committee collecting brochures. You are deciding the matter record, the path from a date change to a checked deadline, and the path from time on the file to an invoice. You are in the right place if Friday time reconstruction, email that never lands on the matter, or a docket that lives in one person's inbox is already expensive.

A five-line check before the sales call keeps the demo honest. Write down the matter types you open every week. Mark whether time is captured by a person or by software. Name the person who reads the court rule today. Ask both vendors for a written quote that lists users, term, AI meters, and implementation. Name the person who must clear any change that touches trust money or a client email.

Red flags: you need a public dollar list before any sales call, you want the vendor to own the accuracy of every court deadline, or you have no one who will administer templates, phases, or a review queue.

Our reading, separate from the vendor pages: Smokeball's own plan guide points Grow at firms with three or more staff, and Filevine markets both a small-firm page and big-law packaging. Those are their words. They are not a revenue cutoff, and they are not a promise that a small firm will find the admin light.

How we evaluated these tools

We weighted the decisions a managing partner can check on a public page before signing. We did not run either product, and we did not turn a review score into a lab rank. A weight is our judgment of what hurts if you choose wrong. A page count is how many primary pages we opened for that row.

The weights sum to 100%. Deadline control and billing sit highest because a wrong date or a trust mistake is harder to reverse than a missing dashboard. AI sits lowest on purpose. Both vendors talk about assistants, and both meter or add-on that layer. It should not outvote the matter record.

Category context, not a score for either finalist: that G2 guide also reports a category adoption rate of 87 percent and an estimated 14-month payback period for legal practice management software, according to G2 (2026). We use the 14-month figure only as a reason to weight implementation. It is not a forecast for your firm. The 87 percent here is category adoption in that G2 guide. It is a different statistic from the recommend rate later on this page.

Smokeball in the public plan guide

Public record, from the pricing page cited in the first takeaway: Bill is the billing slice, with invoicing, time and expense tracking, online payments, trust accounting and reporting, and accounting integrations. Boost is browser-based case management on top of that, adding client and matter management, tasks and calendar, Microsoft 365 Outlook, calendar, and Word, a client portal, an automated letterhead, eSignature, eFiling, and Communicate powered by Smokeball AI. Intake and Archie are add-ons on Boost. Grow is marked Best Value and adds practice-area templates, calculators, advanced document automation, automated forms, email management, Word and Outlook integration, and the web app. The plan guide on that page says Grow includes the native desktop application for firms that collaborate on matters. Archie, AutoTime, FamilyPro, Intake, and Workflows are add-ons on Grow. Prosper+ adds firm insights, lead management, inquiry intake, advanced matter intake, custom workflows, workflow templates, staff activity reporting, and profitability reporting. On that tier, AutoTime, Intake, and Workflows are included. Archie and FamilyPro stay add-ons. The comparison grid marks time tracking as manual on Bill, Boost, and Grow, and automatic on Prosper+.

That split is the buying fact. Communicate, which Smokeball describes as powered by its AI, is listed on Boost, Grow, and Prosper+. Archie is a separate add-on on every one of those tiers, including Prosper+. A demo that shows an assistant drafting in Word is not proof the assistant is inside the tier you were quoted. Ask the proposal to name Archie, AutoTime, Intake, and Workflows as included or added.

G2's Summer 2026 write-up of its Grid Report puts Smokeball's average time to go live at Go-live time: 1.8 months, document-management satisfaction at 95 percent, support quality at 97 percent, ease-of-use satisfaction at 93 percent, and the small-business share of reviewers at 99 percent, according to G2 (2026). That 1.8 months is an average across G2's report, not a clause in your statement of work. Smokeball's own pricing FAQ says training is tailored by plan through live sessions, guided resources, and the Smokeball Academy, and that data migration depends on the source system, the data types, and the complexity, with cost confirmed in the quote. Firms leaving a lighter file can read why firms outgrow PracticePanther on the way to Smokeball before they assume a migration is only a file copy.

Our reading: Smokeball fits a people-law docket, the phrase Smokeball uses for practices whose week is documents and client communication, when Microsoft Word and Outlook are already the workbench. It is a weak fit if you need deeply custom phase logic and you will not live in their templates. Bill alone is the right stop if you only need the bill and the trust records. It is the wrong stop if you thought you were buying matters.

Filevine in the contract and the quote

Public record: Filevine's product specifications meter base AI at Metered AI chats: 3 per user, include up to 100 LeadsAI summarizations and 100 automation actions per user each month on Lead Docket, bill LOIS Assistant, LOIS Advanced, and LOIS Expert per Project, pool 200 pages per active Project on LOIS Contracts and LOIS Government, set Periscope Enterprise at 15 raw data sets and 10 user licenses and the small-business package at 15 raw data sets and 3 user licenses, include up to 500 automation actions per user each month on the purchased Lead Docket automations package, and include up to 1,000 Lead Docket email sends per user each month on licenses purchased after May 8, 2026, according to Filevine (2026). LOIS for Word on that page was formerly Pincites. Unused Project minimums do not roll into the next billing year. A Periscope data set chosen at signing cannot be swapped during the initial term or a renewal term.

The same specifications say LOIS Legal Research output is informational, that the firm must verify citations, and that the tool does not create an attorney-client relationship with Filevine. They say the firm configures Timely reminders, obtains the current court rules, and compares Timely's chain with those rules. Use of Timely is limited to a licensed attorney or a person under that attorney's direct supervision. They name Stripe as the processor for Payments by Filevine, and they state that the payments section does not permit Filevine to debit a subscriber trust account. Filevine Automation on that page is set up through Workato, and LOIS Workflows are a separate task-metered product. Advanced automation is therefore a line item, not a hidden switch inside the base login.

Filevine's pricing page does not list a platform dollar amount, describes every package as custom, says certified implementation partners have handled hundreds of implementations, says the platform is hosted on AWS across over 200 data centers, describes Timely as automatic court-deadline generation for any jurisdiction in the country, and offers a LOIS Explore trial with no credit card that does not include case management, according to Filevine (2026). On its small-firm case management page, Filevine says automatic time tracking captures every minute no matter which application is in use. That claim sits on the small-firm page. It is a different sentence from Smokeball's AutoTime grid, and it does not publish a price.

Our reading: Filevine fits a firm that will design phases, fields, and permissions, and that will read the order form for Project floors, chat caps, and add-on packages such as Timely, Periscope, Lead Docket, Vinesign, and Payments. It is a poor fit if you want a single public tier and a short setup. Marketing to small firms does not remove the contract meters. A base login with 3 chats per user per month will feel empty the week someone tries to summarize a medical record on every file.

Head to head on the daily work

On the October 9, 2026 comparison, Smokeball score: 4.8 from 360 reviews and 87 percent of reviewers recommend it, while Filevine scores 4.4 from 292 reviews and 82 percent recommend it, with 90 percent of Smokeball reviewers and 86 percent of Filevine reviewers in legal work and 35 percent of Filevine reviewers naming legal case management as the top use case, according to Software Advice (2026). Software Advice also says providers can pay for sponsored profiles and that the payment does not change the review method. We treat the scores as review-site scores. The 87 percent in this sentence is a recommend rate. It is not the category adoption rate cited earlier.

The satisfaction rows use those review sets. Ease of use is 4.7 for Smokeball and 4.4 for Filevine. Value for money is 4.5 and 4.2. Customer support is 4.7 and 4.3. Functionality is 4.6 and 4.4. The feature rows are a different cut. The feature scores in the table are on a 5-point scale and are drawn from 652 Legal Case Management reviews, according to Software Advice (2026).

Our reading of that table: Smokeball's public reviewers score the everyday layer, calendar, portal, communication, and document generation, higher on this cut. Filevine's lower calendar score matches a product that sells deadline chains as Timely, a separate package, rather than as the thing every login includes. A 3.0 does not mean Filevine cannot track a date. It means reviewers of the compared product were less satisfied with calendar management than Smokeball's reviewers were. Contract and CRM scores on that page are published for Filevine at 3.0 and are marked not available for Smokeball, so they are left out of the numeric rows.

A proposed US Tech Automations workflow can sit under that grid without replacing either product. The trigger is Smokeball's matter.updated event, which the webhook docs list by that name. The action writes the matter id, status, and event time to one review queue. The output is a single row a paralegal opens, not a deadline filed on its own. Prerequisite: the firm authorizes a webhook subscription and the receiving endpoint answers inside the time limit cited in the next section. Human review: the paralegal compares the row to the court rule before anyone treats the date as the docket date. This is a proposed design, not a live deployment and not a measured result.

The same US Tech Automations design can listen for invoice.finalized, park the matter id and the timestamp, and refuse to email the client. The billing partner marks the row as trust or operating. The output is an exception list the partner clears. Prerequisite: that same authorized subscription, plus a house rule that trust movement stays inside the billing product the firm already trusts. The review point is the partner, not the software.

Pricing checked against the public pages

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. Smokeball's US pricing page offers a quote that depends on user count, plan, contract term, and optional products. Filevine's pricing page says each organization receives a tailored plan. Third-party writeups display dollar figures for one or both products. Those figures are not repeated here, because they are not on the vendor US pricing pages opened for this guide. Until a proposal arrives, both US platform prices are Quote-based.

Score, review count, and recommend rate are the Software Advice figures cited above. The chat cap, the summarization cap, and the license count are the Filevine contract figures cited above. The 1.8 months figure is the G2 figure cited above. Empty public prices stay Quote-based. A table of quotes is not a discount.

Ask each seller to put the same lines on the proposal. Named users. Contract term. The plan or package name. Every AI meter and what happens when you pass it. Implementation and data migration as their own lines, not a verbal promise. For Smokeball, the page should be echoed in the quote: whether AutoTime, Intake, Workflows, and Archie are included or added, and whether you are on Bill, Boost, Grow, or Prosper+. For Filevine, the quote should say whether you are buying base access, a LOIS tier, Lead Docket, Timely, Periscope, Vinesign, and Payments, and whether unused Project minimums expire at the end of the billing year. A lower-looking user line with a use-it-or-lose-it Project floor can outrun a higher-looking user line that already includes the assistant. Compare the lines. Do not compare a rumor of a starting price with a custom quote.

Renewal is part of the price. Smokeball's pricing FAQ says that at renewal you can keep the current plan, or move up or down. Filevine's specifications make a chosen Periscope data set stick for the term. Read both before you treat year one as the whole cost.

A deadline week, with the hours written out

Smokeball's webhook documentation tells the receiving system to answer within Webhook reply limit: 10 seconds, lists matter.updated and invoice.finalized among the event types, warns that the same event can arrive more than once and out of order, and states that from May 30, 2025 a subscription is removed if the refresh token expires or the firm revokes access, according to Smokeball (2026). The docs also say to keep a single subscription per firm and to send a RequestId header so a write you caused does not bounce back as a new change. The manual version of a per-matter date check is laid out in a per-case court-filing deadline recipe.

An illustrative week, not a customer result and not a published study: six lawyers each have about 40 open matters, and each lawyer spends 20 minutes a day retyping a deadline that already changed on the matter. Six times 20 minutes is 120 minutes, which is 2 hours a day. Across a 5-day week that is 10 hours. At an illustrative $275 an hour, 10 times $275 is $2,750 of lawyer time on re-entry before anyone checks the court rule. A listener on matter.updated would not file the date. It would hand a paralegal the matter id, the new status, and the event time so one person compares that change to the rule once, instead of six people retyping it. The $275 rate is a teaching number for the arithmetic. It is not a Smokeball price and it is not a Filevine price.

Our reading of the two deadline tools: Smokeball's pricing page describes a calendar of court dates, deadlines, and appointments, synced with Outlook and linked to the matter. It does not, on the pages opened here, publish a jurisdiction rule engine with a disclaimer of the kind Filevine prints for Timely. Filevine does publish that engine, and it also publishes the warning that the chain can go stale when the rule changes. If your malpractice carrier asks who calculated the date, the answer has to be a person at the firm either way. The software difference is whether the chain is generated for you and then checked, or tracked on a calendar you build.

A published Software Advice review dated April 30, 2026, from a chief operating officer at an 11-to-50-person law firm, said that automation past the basics pushed that firm toward Workato, described there as a separate system. That review matches Filevine's own specification that Filevine Automation is set up through Workato. Budget the connector work on the quote if your phases are not the default ones. Do not discover it after go-live.

Connecting the record without a second inbox

Many firms will try to stitch the gap in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or they will ask an associate to script it. That is a fair alternative. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence when someone configures them. The buyer then owns observability, idempotency, escalation, access controls, and maintenance. Smokeball's docs, cited above, say delivery can repeat and can arrive out of order. A Zap that creates a task on every delivery will open two tasks for one date change unless you store the event id and drop the duplicate. A scenario that also emails the client will do that twice. The maintenance does not end at launch. Tokens expire, and the May 30, 2025 rule on that same doc page drops the subscription when access is revoked, so someone has to notice the queue went quiet.

A proposed US Tech Automations design can configure that differently, still as a proposal rather than a deployment. It can keep one subscription per firm, store the event id so a repeat does not create a second task, ignore events whose RequestId shows the design caused them, and hold any client-facing message or trust-related flag for a named reviewer. Prerequisites are an API credential the firm has authorized, an endpoint that answers inside the 10-second limit, and a person on the calendar who clears the queue. If those three are missing, the simpler path is to stay inside the product you already pay for and use its own tasks.

Stay inside Smokeball when Boost or Grow already files the email, fills the form, and shows the date, and the only gap is a person checking the rule. Stay inside Filevine when the phase tasks already assign the next step and the AI meter on your order form covers the summaries you actually run. Add a connector when a change in one system must become a reviewed row in another, and when a duplicate or a silent failure would be worse than the hour you spend maintaining it.

Terms that change the quote

• Matter. The case file that holds the people, the dates, the documents, and the time. Smokeball uses this word on its plan guide. If you are quoted Bill only, you have not bought the matter layer.

• Trust accounting. The client-money ledger, kept apart from operating money. Smokeball lists trust accounting and reporting on Bill. Filevine's payments section, cited above, does not allow a trust debit for Filevine's own fees. Your trust account still needs its own process.

• AutoTime. Smokeball's activity tracking. Included on Prosper+. An add-on on Grow. Not the manual time entry shown for Bill and Boost.

• Project. Filevine's container for the matter. Several LOIS tiers bill per Project, and the contracted minimum is use-it-or-lose-it for the billing year.

• LOIS. Filevine's Legal Operating Intelligence System. The base subscription includes a metered slice. Assistant, Advanced, Expert, Government, and Contracts are upgrades with their own meters.

• Timely. Filevine's deadline-chain add-on. It can draft the chain. The specifications say the firm still reads the rule and sets the reminder.

• Lead Docket. Filevine's intake product, with monthly caps on AI summaries, automation actions, and, for newer licenses, email sends. Passing a cap is an overage conversation, not a free extra.

• Quote-based. The vendor's own pricing page does not print a dollar amount. The number you can hold them to is the one on the signed proposal.

Mistakes that survive the demo

• Treating a blog's starting price as the contract. The US pricing pages opened here do not print one. The proposal does.

• Assuming AutoTime is on Bill or Boost because a screenshot showed a timer. The grid marks those tiers manual. Grow needs the add-on. Prosper+ includes it.

• Assuming the Filevine login includes unlimited AI. The specifications cap the base at 3 chats per user per month. Higher tiers bill per Project, and unused minimums expire.

• Letting Timely, or any calendar, replace the read of the current local rule. Filevine says the firm does that read. Your carrier will agree.

• Locking a Periscope data set you cannot swap for the term, then discovering the report you needed was a different set.

• Building a Zapier, Make, or n8n scenario that creates a task on every webhook. Smokeball says the same event can arrive twice. Store the id, or you will work the same date twice.

Questions before you sign

Does either vendor publish a US dollar price?

No. Both US pricing pages are Quote-based on the check dated in the pricing section. Smokeball says the quote depends on users, plan, term, and optional products. Filevine says the plan is tailored. Pricing checked October 10, 2026. Ask for the line items in writing before you compare the two conversations.

Which Smokeball plan includes automatic time tracking?

Prosper+ includes AutoTime, and Grow offers it as an add-on. The public grid marks time tracking as manual on Bill, Boost, and Grow. Archie stays an add-on even on Prosper+, so an assistant in the demo is a separate question from the timer.

Is Filevine only a large-firm product?

No. Filevine publishes a small-firm page and also sells packaging aimed at larger teams. The cost and the admin load still follow a custom quote, per-Project AI minimums, and how much phase design your staff will own. Small-firm marketing does not erase the 3-chat base cap cited above.

Does Timely replace reading the court rule?

No. Filevine's specifications say the firm configures the reminders, obtains the current rules, and compares the chain with those rules. Use is limited to a licensed attorney or someone under that attorney's supervision. A generated chain is a draft until that person signs off. The same duty applies if you track dates on Smokeball's calendar without a rule engine.

How many AI chats does base Filevine include?

3 chats per user per month, the cap cited in the contract section, and then access waits for the next period. Unlimited use of the included LOIS features requires an upgrade such as LOIS Assistant, LOIS Advanced, or LOIS Expert, billed per Project, with a minimum that does not roll over. LOIS Explore, the trial on the pricing page, does not include case management.

Were Smokeball or Filevine discontinued?

No. Both are sold under these names on their pricing pages as checked for this guide. The rename to know is narrower: Filevine's contract-review tool, LOIS for Word, was formerly Pincites. If a proposal still says Pincites, ask which LOIS tier it maps to and whether it is in the base subscription. The specifications say it is not legal advice and does not replace a lawyer's review.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations?

Skip it when the firm already finishes the job inside one product, when a single connector scenario is enough, or when nobody will review exceptions. Smokeball's own workflows, or Filevine's own phase tasks, cover a firm that never needs a second system to see the change. Zapier, Make, or n8n can file one form into one matter if you accept owning the retries, the log, and the duplicate check. If the firm will not turn on API access and will not name a reviewer, an outside workflow only adds another inbox.

Write the choice down before the call ends. Smokeball if forms and captured time are the gap, on the tier that actually includes them. Filevine if you will design phases and you have priced the meters. Neither full platform if you only needed a billing ledger or a single calendar. For the deadline and invoice handoff described above, see how US Tech Automations configures this.