Smokeball vs SettleWise
Smokeball is a document-automation and matter-management platform with strong form libraries, automatic time tracking, and pre-built templates across practice areas including family law. SettleWise is purpose-built for family-law financial discovery — automatically sorting client financial documents, detecting missing statement periods, and drafting the financial affidavit and marital balance sheet from data extracted directly from client uploads. Smokeball assembles forms from data the firm supplies; SettleWise produces that data automatically, eliminating the manual extraction step that costs paralegals roughly 16 hours per case.
| Feature | SettleWise | Smokeball |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic document sorting (35+ family-law types) | Auto-categorizes client uploads into 35+ document types with consistent file naming — no paralegal sorting required. | Document management and organization tools are available, but documents are not auto-classified from client uploads. |
| Gap detection for missing statement periods | Detects missing statement periods down to the month and flags them before the firm's next client call. | No gap-detection capability; paralegals must manually audit uploads for missing statement periods. |
| Financial data extraction from client documents | Extracts figures from bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, investment statements, and K-1s into an editable draft for review. | No financial extraction from client documents; form templates must be populated with data gathered and entered by hand. |
| Auto-drafted financial affidavit and marital balance sheet | Drafts the financial affidavit and marital balance sheet from extracted data, ready for attorney review and filing. | Pre-built form templates are available for the financial affidavit, but the attorney or paralegal must populate them manually. |
| Document assembly and form templates | Generates court-ready documents from automatically extracted data rather than manually completed templates. | Strong document assembly with extensive form libraries; a genuine strength for firms that need templated legal documents across practice areas. |
| Automatic time tracking | Not a billing or time-tracking tool — focused on financial-discovery workflow. | Automatic time capture tied to document activity is a distinctive Smokeball capability that reduces billing leakage. |
| Branded client upload portal with compliance task list | Branded portal sends clients a document checklist with progress tracking; firm sees compliance status in real time. | Client-facing document sharing is available, but without document-requirement task lists or month-level compliance-status tracking. |
The difference that matters
Smokeball's document-assembly strength is real, but it starts after someone has already gathered and organized the financial data. SettleWise eliminates that upstream step — extracting the numbers from client documents automatically so the affidavit is drafted without manual re-entry. Smokeball fills forms; SettleWise fills them with data it produced itself.
FAQ
- We already use Smokeball's family-law templates — why add SettleWise?
- Smokeball templates still require someone to supply the financial figures from client documents. SettleWise extracts those figures automatically from uploaded bank statements, tax returns, and investment documents, then drafts the affidavit from that data. The two tools handle different stages of the same workflow.
- Can SettleWise work alongside Smokeball?
- Yes. Smokeball handles matter management, time tracking, and document assembly; SettleWise handles financial-document intake, gap detection, and data extraction for the financial affidavit. They are complementary.
- Is SettleWise more expensive than Smokeball?
- Pricing depends on your firm's size and active caseload. Contact SettleWise for current pricing and a per-case cost comparison relevant to your volume.
- Does SettleWise replace Smokeball's automatic time tracking?
- No. SettleWise does not track billable time. It focuses exclusively on family-law financial-discovery workflow — document sorting, gap detection, data extraction, and affidavit drafting. Firms can keep Smokeball for time tracking and billing while using SettleWise for financial discovery.