Smokeball Virtual Assistant: a VA who runs the matters while you run the law

Nobody searches “smokeball virtual assistant” out of curiosity. You search it because the whole firm lives in those matters, and the person opening them, assembling the documents, prepping the bills and chasing the signatures is you, in the gap between a settlement and a client who needs advice now. Smokeball is built to make a small firm run like a bigger one. The catch is that almost every clever thing it does still ends in a step a person has to take, and in a one-to-three solicitor firm that person is usually the one person whose hours should be spent on the law.

And Smokeball is genuinely good at being run by someone other than the principal. It is matter-centric, so the file holds everything: parties, documents, emails, time, tasks and the trust ledger, all hanging off one matter. The document automation pulls fields straight from that matter. The time capture records what you do without you starting a timer. The LawConnect portal moves documents and signatures without an email chain. None of it requires legal judgement to operate. All of it requires someone to actually operate it, every day, which is exactly the shape of work a VA should be doing instead of you.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your Smokeball

Start with the new work. A matter comes in, and rather than a blank file, your VA opens it against the right matter type so the layout, the roles and the required fields come pre-built for a conveyance, a family matter or an estate. Parties and contacts go in once and link through the file, the conflict-check search runs across your existing contacts, and the matter is populated so it is workable from the first minute. A well-opened matter saves an hour of confusion later in the file, and it is the kind of disciplined setup work that a busy principal skips and then pays for.

Then the documents. This is where Smokeball earns its keep and where a VA earns theirs. The document automation engine generates letters, forms and court documents from your firm’s templates and matter-type packs, with merge fields pulling the client, party and matter details straight from the file, so there is no retyping a client’s name across fourteen forms and no transposed address on a contract. Your VA assembles the pack, saves it back to the matter, and queues it for you to read and settle. You are reviewing and signing off, not building from a blank page. The judgement is yours; the assembly is theirs.

Then the part that quietly funds the whole arrangement: billing. Smokeball captures time automatically as you work in documents and emails, which means the activity is already recorded, it just sits there until someone turns it into a bill. Your VA reviews the auto-captured entries, tidies and describes them in plain client-facing language, drafts the invoice on the fee arrangement for that matter, and presents it for your approval. The billable work that usually evaporates in a busy week, the six-minute emails, the quick file note, the call, is actually on the invoice. For most small firms this single habit recovers more than the VA costs, which is the honest reason to start here.

Through the day, the file is kept true. Inbound and outbound email is saved to the right matter through the Smokeball Outlook add-in rather than living in an inbox nobody else can see. The matter file is named and ordered consistently. The activity timeline stays current so that when you, or a colleague, or you in three weeks, open the matter, the history is accurate and in order. Tasks and key dates go in and get tracked, so a settlement date, a limitation date or a follow-up does not slip, and you get flagged before something time-critical lands, not after.

And the client-facing layer runs on LawConnect, Smokeball’s client portal. Documents are shared to the client there instead of as loose email attachments, e-signature requests are sent and chased, and signed copies file themselves back to the matter. Your VA keeps the portal moving and chases the slow signers on a follow-up cadence you have approved, while you keep full oversight, because everything the VA does in LawConnect is visible to you inside the matter.

There is a weekly rhythm sitting on top of the daily one, and it is the part most small firms never get to. Tasks and key dates across the matter list get a proper review: what is due this week, what is sliding, what needs a chasing letter before it becomes a problem. New matters from the week get an opening-quality check so nothing was started as a blank shell. Invoices drafted but not sent get followed up so they actually go out. Onboarding for new clients runs to a checklist, with the engagement and cost disclosure correspondence assembled and queued, so the client onboarding is consistent rather than whatever you had time for that day. None of this is hard. It is just relentless, and relentless is exactly what a dedicated VA is for.

The honest bit

A few things worth saying plainly, because a page that only lists features is a brochure.

Smokeball’s automatic time capture records activity, but it does not write your invoice for you and it does not know which entries are billable, which are no-charge and which need rewording for a particular client. Someone has to review it. That someone being a VA who does it every day, rather than you doing it once a month under pressure, is most of the value, but the review is real work, not a button.

Document automation is only as good as your templates. If your firm’s precedents are out of date or your matter types are not set up cleanly, the assembled documents inherit those problems. A good VA will flag the template that keeps producing the wrong clause, but they assemble from what is there; they are not your precedent lawyer and we will not pretend otherwise. Getting the templates right is a one-off project worth doing, and a VA can help drive it, but it sits alongside your legal sign-off.

And LawConnect moves documents and signatures, it does not give legal advice through the portal. A client question that comes back through LawConnect and is actually a request for advice gets escalated to you under a written rule, not answered by the VA. That is not a limitation of the software so much as a line that has to be drawn, and drawn clearly, in any law firm.

What stays with you

This is a law firm, so the line matters more than usual, and it is not a line we invented; Smokeball builds most of it for you.

Legal advice, in every form, stays with the admitted practitioner. The VA drafts correspondence to your instructions and assembles documents from your templates, but nothing leaves as advice without a solicitor settling it and choosing to send it. The judgement about what to advise, and whether a document is right to go, is yours.

Trust account authorisation stays with the firm, absolutely. Your VA can record trust receipts and prepare trust transactions inside Smokeball’s trust ledger, because that is data entry. Releasing a trust transaction requires an authorised signatory, which is you or whoever your firm and your state’s trust account rules have approved. The VA prepares; the authorised person authorises. Smokeball’s permissions enforce that separation, so it is a control the software holds, not a promise we make. The disbursement decision, the trust signatory and responsibility for the trust account never move to the VA.

And anything that requires a licensed person, certifying, witnessing, giving an undertaking, exercising professional judgement, stays inside the firm. The VA removes the typing, the filing, the chasing and the preparation, so that the work only you can do is the only work you are actually doing. The point of a matter-centric system like Smokeball is that the administrative load and the legal judgement can be cleanly separated. A VA is how you put a person on the administrative half without putting them anywhere near the half that has to stay with a solicitor.

What it costs and where to start

Smokeball admin sits on our admin tier, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, typically 10-15 hours a week for a one-to-three solicitor firm, which is roughly $500-1,100 a month. If the role grows into reporting, template projects or campaign support, that specialist work is $18-25. Placement takes 7-10 business days, with 5-7 days supervised inside your Smokeball before any solo work, a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice. The refundable $500 deposit credits to your first month.

If you want the industry view, the law firms page goes deeper on what a VA covers across the practice, the conveyancers page is the one to read if settlements are your bread and butter, and the VA cost guide lays out the full pricing picture with the on-costs of a local hire for comparison. Otherwise book a discovery call with Jenn, who has placed 87+ VAs into Australian businesses since 2024 and will tell you straight if your firm is not ready for one. Bring your last month of unbilled time and your three slowest-moving matters. That is usually where the first ten hours pay for themselves.