Two years ago, the law practice management company Smokeball gave me an exclusive preview of its plans for an AI ecosystem spanning the full client lifecycle, anchored by an AI matter assistant called Archie, which it formally launched in July 2024.
Now the company has released the next generation of Archie AI, a major overhaul that moves Archie from a one-shot RAG approach to agentic, multi-step reasoning; makes it more accessible by embedding it directly into matters, Microsoft Word and Outlook; gives it access to more of their Smokeball data; and adds purpose-built apps for workflows such as chronologies, audio transcription and bank-statement analysis.
In a recent demonstration for me, Smokeball founder and CEO Hunter Steele walked through the new release and shared usage data on how the product has fared since its 2024 launch, including what he described as exponential growth in usage since the company shipped the first wave of these updates earlier this year.
“AI shouldn’t feel like a separate tool lawyers have to learn or adapt to; it should work the way they already do,” Steele said in the company’s announcement of this update. “With Archie: Next Generation, we’ve embedded powerful, agentic AI directly into the core of legal workflows, so firms can move faster, work more accurately, and stay focused on what matters most.”
Smokeball, founded in 2012 and with offices in Chicago, Sydney and London, sells cloud-based practice management software to small and mid-sized law firms in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Most of its customer base is firms of two to 30 people.
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