MyCase vs Smokeball
Both aim at solo and small firms, which is why they end up compared, but they optimise for opposite ends of the day. MyCase is strongest at the client-facing side: messaging, portal, mobile. Smokeball is strongest at the production side: automatic time capture and heavy document automation. The right answer follows from which half of your week is worse.
Written by the team behind CaseSuite.ai. We are not a neutral party, so this page sticks to what each product is built for, and we have put our own tool at the end where you can weigh it or skip it.
How they differ
| MyCase | Smokeball | |
|---|---|---|
| Optimised for | Client communication and ease of use | Document production and time capture |
| Time tracking | Manual and timer-based entry | Automatic capture of work as it happens |
| Document automation | Standard templating | Deep automation with a large legal form library |
| Client-facing tools | Built-in texting, portal, strong mobile app | Present, but not the centre of the product |
| Platform | Cloud, with a strong mobile experience | Historically desktop-centred, which suits some offices and not others |
Choose MyCase if
Your friction is client contact — chasing people, fielding the same questions, clients who do not read email. Built-in texting and a good mobile app address that directly, and the product is quick to get running. If your documents are mostly bespoke rather than templated, you will not miss Smokeball’s automation.
Choose Smokeball if
You produce a high volume of documents from templates, or you lose billable time to unrecorded work. Automatic time capture is the feature firms cite most, because the money it recovers is money that was already earned. The trade-offs are a heavier setup and a more desktop-oriented way of working.
A third option, if the problem is the evidence
Both of these help you produce and bill the work. Neither helps with getting through the evidence — the recording, the transcript, the discovery you were handed. If that is where your hours actually go, it is a different tool entirely, and it is the one we make.
Common questions
- Which has better AI features, MyCase or Smokeball?
- Both have added AI to products designed before it, and in both cases it assists with drafting and summarising inside the platform rather than being the point of it. If AI capability is the deciding factor rather than a bonus, it is worth looking at tools built around it from the start instead of choosing between two practice management systems on that axis.
- Does Smokeball really capture time automatically?
- Automatic time capture is its best-known feature and the reason many small firms choose it — it records work as it happens rather than relying on you to remember. Firms that lose meaningful billable time to unrecorded work tend to find it pays for itself; firms with disciplined timekeeping already gain less.
- Is MyCase or Smokeball better for a two-person firm?
- It depends which half of the week hurts. If it is client contact and chasing people, MyCase. If it is producing documents and capturing time, Smokeball. Both are aimed at firms your size, so the deciding factor is your bottleneck rather than your headcount.
Both products change what they offer, and pricing changes more often still — check directly with each vendor before deciding. Nothing here is a claim about current pricing.