Smokeball Archie: What the AI Assistant Does and Which Plans Add It

Archie is Smokeball's AI matter assistant: it answers questions about a matter, drafts letters and emails, and works as a sidebar in Word and Outlook. Smokeball lists it as an add-on for Boost, Grow and Prosper+, not Bill, and publishes no price, so the cost arrives in a quote. Ask for it as its own line, per plan.

Feature pages say what Archie does; none says what it costs by plan tier. That is the gap here. Each tier needs its own quote because what surrounds Archie changes: Grow sells AutoTime, Intake and Workflows as add-ons that Prosper+ bundles, so the Archie line is one item in a larger comparison. Build that comparison, work out what Archie must save to cover its fee, and test it on one closed matter before you sign.

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What Archie reads, writes and refuses to read

Archie is matter-bound. Smokeball's help article (updated September 2026) says that once ingestion finishes it can use firm details, basic matter information, matter parties, tasks, events, memos and file notes, invoice and trust or operating account details, and the full text of matter documents. It cannot search the firm's wider contact list.

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The refusals matter as much as the features, because they decide whether a question you ask will get a real answer:

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• Billing data, where Smokeball's own pages disagree: the help article says Archie cannot access time and fee entries, expenses, payments or trust transaction history, yet the June 2026 release notes say Archie can now read read-only billing data such as fees, expenses and invoices. Until a test on your own matter settles it, a partner asking "how many hours have we billed on this matter?" should take the answer from reports, not from Archie.
• Not readable: images, rendered PDFs and spreadsheets. A matter whose key documents are scanned letters has less for Archie to work with than one built from Word files.
• Size limits: up to 20 files attached to one chat, with long text trimmed, and Archie indexes the 50 most recent matters. A firm with 400 open matters will find older ones slower to load.

What it does with the material: matter or document summaries linked back to their sources, next-step suggestions as a matter changes, comparison of documents to catch conflicting terms, and drafts of letters and emails built from the matter file. From a chat it can create tasks, memos and calendar events (every action needs your explicit confirmation), save an answer as a matter memo, or send it as a Client Portal message. In Outlook it summarises email threads and drafts replies with adjustable tone, length and style. In Word it sits in a sidebar and, according to the May 2026 release notes, works through Word's built-in Review feature, so you check its edits before accepting them. The June 2026 release notes say firms can pick which OpenAI GPT or Anthropic Claude model Archie uses in Archie Settings.

Two more pieces need a caution. Playbooks review a document against rules the firm writes and suggest fixes. And the LawY research feature gives jurisdiction-aware guidance with an option for a lawyer to verify it; Smokeball's help article lists estate planning, estate administration and probate, elder law, family law and real estate as the current areas. The same article tells users to "trust but verify" and to check the linked source documents.

Where Archie sits across Bill, Boost, Grow and Prosper+

This is the current picture from Smokeball's pricing page, with the AI items pulled out. None of its pages says that Archie's features differ by plan, so the table shows what surrounds it rather than a different Archie.

The history explains why older pages disagree. A July 2024 announcement described Archie as "available as an add-on for Grow and Prosper+ clients". An article titled "Getting Started with Archie for Smokeball Boost" is dated March 2025, and the current pricing page lists Archie under Boost as well. A May 2026 announcement says the newer reasoning, Word and Outlook features come to existing subscribers "at no extra cost, no add-ons", and tells firms without Archie to contact their account manager. If a page you find says Archie is Grow and Prosper+ only, it predates Boost.

Bill is the awkward case. Smokeball's FAQ calls it a legal billing solution, and Archie works inside a matter, so a Bill firm has little for it to read. The real question for a Bill customer is the price of moving to Boost with Archie.

Pricing Archie without a price list

Smokeball says its price depends on the number of users, the plan, the contract term and optional products, and that firms can request a personalised quote. Build the comparison in three quotes, not one:

1. The plan alone for your realistic user count, so you have a baseline.
2. The same plan with Archie, with Archie on its own line. Ask whether it is priced per user or per firm. Access is firm-wide by default, and a firm owner can switch it off for individual users, so Archie may be priced against every user in the firm even if only two will use it. Ask whether switching users off lowers the price.
3. The next plan up, with the add-ons it bundles. For a Grow firm that means Grow plus Archie plus AutoTime, Intake and Workflows against Prosper+ plus Archie, because Prosper+ includes the three at no extra cost. If the Grow stack comes within a few per cent of Prosper+, take Prosper+: for almost the same money you also get lead management, firm insights and profitability reporting.

Here is the third quote filled in. Every price is a placeholder I chose to show the mechanism; none is Smokeball's. The firm has four users:

With these placeholders the bundle is $480 a year cheaper than the stack, and it brings extra features. With other prices the stack could win; the table is a worksheet to fill in with the real quote, not a forecast.

Use the same user count and contract term in all three. A longer term usually lowers a per-user figure and raises your exit cost, so ask each quote to state its term and renewal rule. Smokeball's FAQ says that at renewal you can keep a plan or upgrade or downgrade, which is worth confirming applies to the add-on as well.

What Archie must save to cover its fee

Smokeball publishes no Archie price, so the figures in this section are placeholders chosen for easy arithmetic. Swap in the number from your quote. The sum is simple: break-even minutes per active user per month equal the monthly price divided by what a minute of that person's time is worth.

Two corrections stop the table flattering the add-on. First, saved time only pays when it becomes billed work or avoids overtime or a hire; ten minutes saved on a fixed-fee task is a pleasant afternoon, not income. Second, the count that matters is active users. Suppose a four-person firm on Grow is quoted a placeholder $60 per user for all four, but only the two fee-earners who draft will use Archie. The firm pays $240 a month for two active users, which is $120 each, so each must save 48 minutes a month at $150 an hour. If the representative agrees to price Archie for two users, the figure falls to 24 minutes each.

Turn the minutes into something you can check. A firm that hands matters over to a colleague about ten times a month might spend 20 minutes on each handover note. If Archie's draft brings that to 8 minutes after review, ten handovers save 120 minutes across the firm. The two active users need 96 minutes between them (48 each) to break even, so the margin is only a quarter, and a draft that takes longer to check than assumed would tip it the wrong way. Those handover figures are assumptions, and the one-matter test below is how you replace them with your own.

Communicate and Intake: the AI that comes with the plan

Smokeball's AI is more than Archie, and two pieces ride on the plan rather than the add-on, which changes how you compare tiers.

Communicate is listed as "powered by Smokeball AI" on Boost, Grow and Prosper+. The help article describes the feature as a summary button in the Messages tab of the client portal. It produces a "Conversation Summary (AI-generated)" for internal and external conversations you take part in, only internal users can see it, and pressing the button again replaces the summary with one that covers new messages. That helps a firm where a client thread runs to forty messages and a new colleague must catch up.

Intake is an add-on on Boost and Grow and included in Prosper+, where the pricing page labels it "powered by Smokeball AI". The Boost and Grow lists show it as a plain add-on, so ask whether the AI form generator comes with the add-on on those plans. Smokeball's help article says that from version 9.0 you can generate an intake form with AI: choose Matter or Lead, enter a form name, the jurisdictions and the matter types, and select Generate Form for a template. You can also upload a PDF, JPEG or PNG of a paper form and convert it. A firm that still collects details on a printed form can digitise it in an afternoon, then edit what the AI produced. Check every field, because a generated form is a draft, not a reviewed form.

Data handling: what Smokeball says and what to get in writing

Client confidences make this the section a partner will read first. Smokeball's help article on AI and data (updated June 2026) and its Archie pages make these statements:

• Archie runs under "enterprise agreements with a strict zero-data-retention policy"; data is "not stored, retained, or used for training".
• Client data is never used to train AI and is never shared with third parties for viewing, training or modelling, and one firm's data is never shared with another.
• Only users with access to a matter can use Archie on it, and Archie works within a single matter.
• A log of Archie questions is available to authorised users for the matters they can access.
• Data is encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 or later in transit; processing stays in the firm's home region; Smokeball is certified to ISO 27001:2022 and independently penetration-tested each year.
• The article does not name the AI providers. It says Smokeball's cloud and AI providers operate under data processing agreements and that sub-processors can be reviewed in the Smokeball marketplace.

Those are the vendor's statements, not an audit. Turn them into obligations by asking for the sub-processor list, the data processing terms and the zero-retention commitment to be attached to the order form, and for the Archie question log to be exportable. The wider supplier checks are laid out in the checklist for AI software on data, supervision and suppliers.

One matter, three jobs: a test before you sign

Ask for a trial or supervised demo on a real, closed matter with the client details removed. Run three jobs and write down what you had to fix. The sample outputs below are illustrations of what to look for, not recordings of Archie.

Job 1: the handover summary. Prompt: "Summarise this matter in five bullets for a colleague taking over: who the parties are, what has been done, what is outstanding, the next deadline, and any two documents that conflict. Cite the document for each point."

Illustrative output
- Parties: [client] and [other side], per matter details
- Done: engagement letter signed; first draft sent to other side [date]
- Outstanding: signed schedule not yet on file; invoice 2 unpaid
- Next deadline: [date], from calendar event "Exchange target"
- Possible conflict: draft clause 4 says 28 days; email of [date] says 14

What to fix: check each date against the calendar rather than the summary; test the "unpaid" claim, because the help article says Archie cannot see payments; and confirm the conflict by opening both documents. If a cited document is a scan, expect nothing from it.

Job 2: the Outlook reply. Open a long thread and ask for a reply to the latest message in a friendly, short tone. Illustrative draft: "Hi [first name], thanks for sending the signed forms. We have everything we need for now and will confirm once the other side responds." What to fix: strip any promise of timing that is not in the file, and any reassurance about outcome. The draft is yours to send; Archie does not decide what the firm commits to.

Job 3: the playbook. Write three rules the firm already applies and run them over an engagement letter. For example: the fee basis is stated; an exclusion of work not covered is present; and a conflict-check statement is present. A useful result lists each rule with pass or fail and the clause it relied on. Count how many results you would have changed, and note the time saved on each job against the 20-minute handover assumption from earlier. A trial scorecard for scoring accuracy, privacy and cost in a short trial is in the two-week trial scorecard for lawyers.

Eight lines for the Archie quote request

Send these in writing, so the answers sit in your inbox rather than in a phone call:

1. Is Archie priced per user or per firm, and does switching individual users off change the price?
2. What is the Archie price at Boost, Grow and Prosper+, as a separate line each time?
3. Do the Word add-in, the Outlook add-in, playbooks and voice dictation come with the Archie price, or are any extra?
4. What is the contract term, and can Archie be removed at renewal while we keep the plan?
5. Are there usage limits on questions, documents or drafts, and what happens at the limit?
6. Which AI providers and sub-processors does Archie use, and where is the zero-retention commitment written?
7. Is the Archie question log exportable, and for how long is it kept?
8. Is there a trial or supervised pilot on one real matter before the term starts?

Who should skip Archie for now

The refusals listed earlier translate into plain buying rules.

• A firm whose matters are mostly scanned PDFs and photographs. Archie cannot extract data from images or rendered PDFs, so it will answer from the notes and memos, which are thinner. Fix the document habit first.
• A firm that asks money questions of the matter file. The help article puts hours, expenses, payments and trust history outside Archie's view, and the newer read-only billing access is not yet reflected there. Billing questions stay with reports until your own test proves otherwise.
• A firm with many concurrent matters where older ones matter. With 50 matters indexed, a busy conveyancing or probate desk will meet slower loads on older files.
• A Bill-only firm. Without matters, Archie has little to read. Price the move to Boost first, and judge Archie on top of that.
• A firm that wants outside legal research in an unlisted practice area. LawY covers the areas listed earlier and says more are coming.

It is a better fit for a Grow or Prosper+ firm that drafts a lot from its own files, hands matters between colleagues often, or lives in Word and Outlook. For the full plan-by-plan breakdown, including onboarding and migration questions, see what Bill, Boost, Grow and Prosper+ include. If you are still choosing between systems, Clio against Smokeball on the AI assistant compares the two quotes side by side.

If you would rather have help comparing quotes and trying Archie on a closed matter, that is part of what my AI implementation consultation covers; reach me through the contact page.

Smokeball Archie questions

Can a Bill customer add Archie?

Smokeball's pricing page lists no add-ons for Bill and shows the Archie add-on only under Boost, Grow and Prosper+. Archie works inside a matter, and Bill is described as a billing product, so the realistic route is an upgrade. Ask the representative to price Boost plus Archie against your current Bill quote before deciding.

Does Archie cost extra for Word and Outlook?

Smokeball's May 2026 announcement says the new reasoning, Word and Outlook features are available to existing Archie subscribers at no extra cost and with no add-ons. Whether a new customer's Archie quote already includes the Word and Outlook add-ins is not stated, so ask for that line in writing before you sign.

Does Smokeball use my matter data to train AI models?

Smokeball says client data is never used to train AI and never shared with third parties for viewing, training or modelling, and that Archie runs under zero-data-retention agreements with nothing stored or retained. It also says Archie works only within the matter a user can access. Ask for the sub-processor list and the data terms to be attached to your order form.

Can I switch Archie off for some staff?

Yes. Smokeball's help article says all firm users can use Archie by default and a firm owner can disable it for individual users under Staff and User Permissions in Settings. A log of Archie questions is available to authorised users for the matters they can access. Ask whether switching users off lowers the price.

Which areas of law does Archie's legal research cover?

Smokeball's help article, updated in September 2026, lists estate planning, estate administration and probate, elder law, family law and real estate for the LawY research feature, with more promised. If your firm works elsewhere, expect Archie to help with your own matter files and drafts rather than outside legal research.

Further reads

• Best AI Platform for Law Firms: Clio, Smokeball and Lawmatics Compared — Clio, Smokeball and Lawmatics compared as AI platforms.
• Clio Manage AI Pricing: What It Costs and How to Switch It On — What the rival assistant costs and how to switch it on.
• Best AI for Solo Lawyers: A Stack That Fits One Person — An AI stack sized for one lawyer.
• Use the AI Already in Your Practice Software Before Buying More — Use the AI already in your practice software before buying more.
• Per-Seat or Pay-As-You-Go? Legal AI Pricing for Small Firms — Per-seat versus pay-as-you-go pricing for legal AI.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Smokeball pricing page and Smokeball AI pages, Smokeball support articles on Archie, data security, Intake and Client Portal summaries (updated February 2024 to September 2026), Smokeball community launch post (30 July 2024), Archie next-generation announcement (May 2026), Smokeball release notes for May and June 2026. Read 4 November 2026.