What results did Catton and Tondelstrand get from AI?

The 20-person family law firm recovers the equivalent of $1.3M a year in productivity from two AI assistants. Pat reads and files over 4,000 emails a month into the correct Smokeball matter, returning around $81,000 a month in fee-earner time. Donna turns client consultations into file notes and letters, returning around $35,000 a month. The figures are measured on real usage rather than projected.

How long does it take to write a client letter with AI?

At Catton and Tondelstrand a client letter and file note now takes 12 minutes, down from 45. The AI drafts from the transcribed consultation in the firm's own tone and format, and a lawyer reviews and signs off before anything leaves the firm.

Is client data safe when a law firm uses AI?

Enterprise AI systems process data through encrypted API calls, retain nothing after processing, and are contractually excluded from model training. The systems at Catton and Tondelstrand work inside the firm's existing Smokeball environment rather than requiring client data to be exported or migrated.

Does a human still check the AI's work?

Yes. Every letter and file note is reviewed and signed off by a fee earner before it goes out. The change is where the lawyer starts: reviewing a draft rather than writing from a blank page.

Home › Case Studies › Catton & Tondelstrand

Client case study

Family law 20 staff Sunshine Coast Smokeball Build plus fully managed

Three AI assistants, working inside one law firm.

A busy family law practice on the Sunshine Coast, with solicitors and paralegals spending the day on paperwork instead of legal work. We took the admin load off them one assistant at a time.

$1.3M

of fee‑earner time returned to billable work every year, and counting

The situation

The bottleneck was never the legal work.

More than 4,000 emails landed every month, each one read, matched to a matter and filed into Smokeball by hand. After every consultation, a solicitor or paralegal spent 30 to 45 minutes on a file note and a client letter that followed the same shape every time. None of it was difficult, all of it was necessary, and all of it was pulling qualified people away from the work clients pay for.

What we built

Three assistants, each with one well‑defined job.

Live

Pat · the email assistant

Reads and files every email

The moment an email lands, Pat reads it, works out which matter it belongs to, names it and files it into Smokeball. Anything it is unsure about goes to a person rather than being guessed at.

4,000+emails read, named and filed every month

18fee earners and support staff, every day

Live

Donna · the consultation assistant

Turns talk into letters

Every call and consultation is transcribed, then the client letter and the file note are drafted in the firm's own tone, ready to check.

12 minutesto a client letter and file note, down from 45

Two documentsthe client letter and the file note, both drafted

In build

The Costing Agent · the billing assistant

Prices and drafts the bill

It reads the whole matter, prices every letter, call and attendance against the scale of fees, and drafts the itemised bill. Still being built, so it carries no result yet.

Same cyclean itemised bill inside the same billing period

Was ~1 monththe old wait for an external costing assessor

Built with

n8n Claude OpenAI Gemini Smokeball Airtable

Where the human stays

Nothing leaves the firm without a lawyer seeing it.

A fee earner reads every letter and signs it before it goes out, and no bill is sent until a lawyer has checked it. What changed is where the lawyer starts: a draft instead of a blank page, with the filing already done.

The numbers

Where the $1.3M comes from.

Measured on the firm's own usage: logins, email volume and consultation counts.

System	What it takes off the team	Fee‑earner time returned
Pat	Reading every incoming email, working out the matter, and filing it by hand	~$81,000 a month
Donna	Writing up each consultation from scratch afterwards	~$35,000 a month
Together	Roughly $116,000 a month	$1.3M+ a year

Their numbers, on their volumes. The AI Savings Calculator runs the same arithmetic over yours.

The question every firm asks first

Before anyone asks whether AI works, they ask what happens to client correspondence and privileged material. These systems run inside the firm's existing Smokeball environment: data is encrypted in transit, nothing is retained after processing, and the enterprise agreements exclude the firm's data from model training.

Read the straight answer on AI and client confidentiality

Would this work in your firm

The signs we look for.

Correspondence is filed to matters by hand, every day.

The same letters get written from scratch after every meeting.

Billing lags because the costing sits outside the firm.

Something takes 30 to 45 minutes a day and nobody wants to do it.

Where would it start in your firm?

The AI Scan is a short look at your workflows. We tell you where AI would earn its keep first, and where it would not. Always happy to have that conversation.

Book Your AI Scan