Smokeball vs LEAP: how their AI compares for small Australian law firms

Smokeball vs LEAP at a glance

Sources: LEAP legal AI, LEAP AI Paralegal, Smokeball Archie and Smokeball pricing and LEAP's security statement.

One thing jumps out. Both lean on the same research engine. LEAP includes LawY directly, and Smokeball's Archie surfaces LawY guidance applied to your matter. So legal research is not where the two really differ. The differences are in pricing, in how each AI is packaged, and in the rest of the practice management system around it.

LEAP AI: Matter AI, LawY and AutoTime

LEAP describes its AI as working inside the practice management system, reading the documents, emails and correspondence already saved in each matter. What LEAP lists:

• Matter AI. Ask a question about a matter and it answers with references to the documents it relied on, including scanned PDFs and handwritten notes. Matter Summary reads the whole file and gives case details, issues in dispute, status and critical dates, with a chronology. An All tab combines matter facts with legal research.
• LawY. AI legal research and drafting. Any answer can be sent for verification by a qualified lawyer with at least five years' post-qualification experience. LEAP recommends removing personal information before you submit a question for verification. The same page also labels LawY as included at no extra cost for select matter types, so ask which matter types that covers.
• AI Prompts and Generator. A prompt library and template generator for letters, emails and forms, drawing on your firm's past work, LEAP forms and By Lawyers precedents.
• AutoTime. Automatic time recording.
• Model choice. LEAP says you can pick the AI model for the task, and the active model is shown on screen.

LEAP's FAQ says all of these are included in every LEAP subscription at no extra cost. That is a real advantage when you compare quotes: there is no separate AI line to budget for.

LEAP AI Paralegal

AI Paralegal is a separate LEAP product aimed at family law. LEAP says it reads, names and files financial disclosure documents into the matter, sources documents such as bank statements, tax returns and superannuation balances with minimal input from the client, and prepares first drafts of the Financial Disclosure Schedule, Balance Sheet and Application for Consent Orders for review. You give it a name and a charge-out rate, and it records its work under your costs agreement. LEAP says the firm keeps 70% of the revenue it generates and LEAP receives 30%. If you do a lot of family law property work, this is worth a demo on its own.

Smokeball Archie: what it does and what it costs

Smokeball describes Archie as an AI assistant that works inside your matter to draft, review and answer questions, with nothing to upload. What Smokeball lists:

• Matter questions and summaries. Ask what has happened, what is missing or what comes next. Document and matter summaries cover meetings, deadlines and tasks, linked to the source.
• Next steps. Archie analyses the matter as it changes and suggests next best steps.
• Document comparison. Compare documents to find conflicting terms.
• Word and Outlook. Archie in Outlook summarises email threads and drafts replies from the matter. In Word it drafts and edits from the sidebar.
• Playbooks. Review each document against rules your firm sets.
• Archie Apps. A marketplace of specialised tools, from analysing bank statements to building a legal chronology or turning a recording into a transcript.

On cost, people search 'smokeball archie cost' for a reason: Smokeball's pricing page does not show one. Archie is listed as an add-on on Boost, Grow and Prosper+ with a 'Learn more' link and no price. Ask for it in your quote. Smokeball says Archie runs under enterprise-grade zero-data-retention agreements, that your data is never shared with third parties for training, and that Archie only works within the matter you are in, visible only to staff assigned to it.

The gap in both: client phone calls

Matter AI and Archie work on what is already in the matter. For a small firm, a lot of instructions arrive by phone. If nobody writes an attendance note after the call, there is nothing in the matter for either AI to read, and nothing to show what the client said if the retainer is later disputed. Neither vendor's AI page describes drafting an attendance note from a phone call. Smokeball's Archie Apps include turning a recording into a transcript, which is a step towards it, but it starts from a recording.

To see what a call note can look like before you change anything, try the free attendance note generator on a sample. If unbilled call time is the worry, the billable time recovered calculator puts a number on it.

Actionstep AI

Actionstep calls its AI Actionstep Intelligence and pitches it at running the firm rather than practising law. What it lists on its AI page:

• AI time capture (Trace). An add-on module. Passively tracks billable activity across Actionstep, Outlook, Word and other tools, codes time to matters and drafts bill narratives.
• AI business intelligence (Acumen). An add-on module. Ask about matter profitability, billing trends and realisation rates in plain language.
• Workflow automation agents. Listed as coming soon.
• Data. Actionstep says it does not use your firm's data to train AI models and that every AI feature is opt-in. It has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination.

Actionstep's pricing page lists the AI time capture and Acumen modules as add-ons, each priced per user plus implementation fees, without a list price, so you need a quote. Actionstep suits firms that want to configure their own workflows. It is a heavier set-up than LEAP or Smokeball for a very small firm.

Clio AI for legal work

Clio has two layers of AI in Australia. Clio Work is its AI workspace: it reads across a matter to set out key facts, risks and gaps, builds a timeline from your documents, finds authority matched to your jurisdiction, and drafts in Clio Work or Microsoft Word. Clio says client files are processed under zero data retention agreements and are never used to train public AI models. Separately, Clio's pricing page says AI is included in Clio Manage on the Core plan and above, to draft client updates, flag risks, prioritise tasks and prepare billing. Clio's Australian pricing page says plans start at $39 per user per month (EasyStart), without saying whether that includes GST. Core, Signature and Elite are priced on request.

Clio is the one system here that CallNote connects to directly: a published note can go to the linked Clio contact. CallNote does not pick the matter for you. More in Clio attendance notes from client calls.

LEAP or Smokeball: which suits a 2 to 20 lawyer firm?

There is no single right answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling one of them. Here is how the published facts sort it:

• You want AI with no extra line on the bill. LEAP says its whole AI set is included. With Smokeball, Archie is an add-on you need priced.
• You want to see prices before you talk to sales. Smokeball publishes per-user prices for three of its four plans. LEAP does not publish pricing.
• You do a lot of family law property work. LEAP's AI Paralegal is built for financial disclosure. Weigh its 70/30 revenue share against the hours it saves.
• You live in Word and Outlook. Both work there. Archie in Outlook drafts replies from the matter, and LEAP has Matter AI for Word.
• You care about automatic time capture. LEAP includes AutoTime. Smokeball includes it in Prosper+ and charges $39 for it on Grow.
• You want firm-level configuration and reporting. Look at Actionstep as well, and budget for implementation.

Beyond AI, the bigger decision is the rest of the system: matter types and precedents for your practice areas, trust accounting, document automation and how migration works. Both vendors offer demos built around your area of law. Take a real matter type to each one.

Questions to ask in the demo

1. Is the AI included in the quote, or priced separately? For Archie, what does it cost per user?
2. Which plan includes automatic time capture, and does it pick up phone calls on a desk phone or mobile?
3. Where is our client data hosted, and is any of it used to train AI models?
4. Can the AI answer from attendance notes saved as text in the matter, as well as documents and emails?
5. How does the system connect to our phone system, and what does that cost?
6. What does data migration from our current system include, and what does it cost?
7. What is the minimum contract term, and what happens to our data if we leave?

Where CallNote fits

CallNote is not a practice management system and does not replace any of these. It does one job: it turns a call or meeting transcript that already exists into an attendance note in your firm's own format. Transcripts arrive automatically from Aircall, Dialpad or Microsoft Teams, or you paste, upload or forward one, or dictate a short voice memo after an in-person meeting. CallNote never records the call. You review the draft and publish it, and the published note is sealed with a SHA-256 checksum, with later changes kept as append-only amendments.

Be clear on the limits. CallNote has no LEAP, Smokeball or Actionstep connection. You copy the note into the matter or save the PDF there, and Zapier can help for some systems (the honest workflow is here). It creates no time entries. With Clio, it publishes to the linked contact. Once the note is in the matter, Matter AI, Archie or Clio's AI can read it like any other document, so a good call note makes those tools more useful. See real examples of the output or our page for law firms.

If your firm records calls to get transcripts, the state recording laws apply to that system: broadly all-party consent in NSW, WA, SA, Tasmania and the ACT, and one-party in Victoria, Queensland and the NT, with the federal Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 on top. See is it legal to record phone calls in Australia. If you would rather your phone system do the notes and the time entries into the matter, our VXT comparison covers that option fairly.

Common questions