Home › Case Studies › Catton & Tondelstrand
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.
of fee‑earner time returned to billable work every year, and counting
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, and all of it pulled qualified people away from the work clients pay for.
Pat · the email assistant
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.
Donna · the consultation assistant
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.
The Costing Agent · the billing assistant
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.
Built with
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ScanThe 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.
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.
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.
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.