Hivelight & Smokeball

Hivelight and Smokeball

Smokeball is a brilliant engine for running matters — documents, billing, and client records all in one place. But as your firm grows, a new set of questions starts eating your day: Where is every matter up to? Who is doing what? What's overdue? Are we on track?

Hivelight answers those questions automatically. It's a legal project management platform that connects to Smokeball with a live, two-way sync — so your matters, clients, and team flow into Hivelight without data entry, and your firm gains the visibility and delegation power that a practice management system alone can't provide.

You keep Smokeball. You keep your data. You add the operational layer that lets your firm scale.

Why Smokeball firms add Hivelight

Firms typically come to us at the point where success starts to hurt: more matters, more staff, more moving parts — and no fast way to see where everything stands. Partners spend hours chasing updates. Tasks live in inboxes and memories. Deadlines are managed by vigilance instead of by system.

Hivelight replaces the chasing with a live picture:

• Every matter, colour-coded by urgency. A live summary of all your matters, sorted so the ones that need attention rise to the top. No status meetings, no spreadsheet trackers, no "quick question" interruptions.
• Every task, visible and owned. Each matter gets a task board broken into milestones, so anyone in the firm — from partner to paralegal — can see what stage a matter is at, what's next, and who owns it.
• Every person, working to priorities. Each team member logs in to a dashboard of their most urgent tasks and deadlines across all matters. The day is run by priorities, not by whoever emailed last.

New to running a firm this way? Our complete guide to matter management covers the approach in depth.

How the Hivelight–Smokeball sync works

Most project management tools fail at law firms for one reason: someone has to set them up and keep them up to date. The Smokeball integration removes that job entirely.

Your firm imports itself. When you connect Smokeball, Hivelight imports your open and pending matters, your contacts — people, companies, and trusts, with their emails and phone numbers — and your staff. Clients and other parties come across with their roles on each matter. Matter numbers are preserved and searchable. Practice areas are automatically matched to Hivelight matter types. Even the responsible and originating staff on each matter are mapped, so ownership is in place from day one.

It stays in sync on its own. From then on, Hivelight listens to Smokeball in real time. Open a new matter or add a contact in Smokeball, and it appears in Hivelight — already tagged, typed, and assigned. Close a matter in Smokeball, and Hivelight archives it. Nobody maintains a second system, because nobody has to.

One click back to Smokeball. Every synced matter in Hivelight links directly to the same matter in Smokeball. Plan and track the work in Hivelight; jump straight into Smokeball for documents and billing. Two platforms, zero friction.

The integration is available wherever Smokeball runs — Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Workflow automation for Smokeball matters

Delegate years of work in a matter of clicks. Hivelight workflows let you codify how your firm runs each matter type and apply it in seconds. Load a roadmap of milestones and tasks onto any matter, set your target pace, and Hivelight tracks progress automatically.

Unlike rigid automation tools, Hivelight is built for the reality of legal work — litigation, family law, personal injury — where deadlines shift and cases change direction. Shift milestone and task dates in bulk when the schedule moves. Chain workflows together as a matter progresses. Improve a workflow and push the update to active matters.

If you can write a to-do list and break it into stages, you can build a Hivelight workflow. No coding, no branching diagrams, no consultants.

Run your intake in Hivelight, keep Smokeball clean

Smokeball leads sync into Hivelight tagged and ready, and pending matters land straight in your intake pipeline. Load your intake workflow, track every enquiry through to sign-up, and let nothing fall through the cracks.

It works in the other direction too: start a new enquiry as a matter in Hivelight, and when the client signs, push it to Smokeball — client, matter type, and responsible staff included — as an open matter or a lead. Enquiries that don't proceed are simply archived in Hivelight, so your Smokeball stays clean and accurate.

Reporting and analytics for Smokeball firms

Know your numbers without lifting a finger. Because your team manages their work in Hivelight, your reporting builds itself. Live analytics show new matters per month, top referral sources, workload and capacity across the team, and whether matters are progressing at the pace you set. Add custom data points to your matters and report on those too — the metrics that matter to your practice.

Onboarding and support for Smokeball customers

Smokeball customers get a dedicated onboarding experience. Our team works with yours to establish a clear implementation plan, build your first workflows, and guide you through to launch — backed by a comprehensive support library, in-app assistance, and structured training. And with consumption-based pricing, there are no per-seat fees standing between your whole team and the tool.

Most firms are surprised how quickly the picture changes: connect Smokeball, watch your matters flow in, load a workflow, and for the first time see your whole practice on one screen.

See Hivelight with your own Smokeball matters

The fastest way to understand what Hivelight will do for your firm is to see your own Smokeball matters inside it. Book a personalised demo and we'll walk you through the integration live — from first sync to full visibility.

Request a demo — or talk to our team about your firm's setup.