It was clear to Robert Curcio, better known as R.J., from the start of his tenure as a fresh attorney at his family’s personal injury firm that he wanted to continue his father’s legacy of adopting legal technology to better serve clients. R.J. understood immediately the importance of having a system that everyone could use; without that, the firm could never become truly efficient.“ As I did the research—and I spent months researching case management software—I kept coming back to Smokeball. I knew for a fact it could help us go green and it would also make things a lot more efficient. One of the best parts about this is that everybody at the firm knows how to use Smokeball. Now, everybody has a little bit more independence, which really helps keep things moving throughout the course of the day,” R.J. Curcio says. Part of the Curcio Law Offices success story came from Smokeball’s commitment to comprehensive onboarding, training, and support: all three coming from a real person managing the project and easing the burden of transition.
The Right Fit
But why is Smokeball suited especially for personal injury firms? The answer was a simple one for R.J. and his team, and it’s one that not all personal injury firms are focused on because they do not typically bill by the hour. Smokeball’s automatic time tracking features and the related profitability and efficiency reporting features began to make a big difference in how Curcio Law Offices gauged productivity. “Having the matter insights tab available to me, you can see the different types of cases and the best way for us to break them down by value,” says Curcio. This data, automatically gathered and compiled in Smokeball, truly helped R.J.’s team analyze efficiency and quality for their clients with real numbers. For R.J. and the rest of Curcio Law Offices, Smokeball means efficiency. It’s the overarching reason Smokeball delivers for personal injury firms. “You want to make sure that you’re maximizing every dollar. And you want to make one dollar do the work of 10. Smokeball has allowed us to become more efficient, which has allowed us to maintain static overhead. That’s why Smokeball is important to a plaintiff’s personal injury firm likeours.” With the generational change that R.J. has brought to Curcio Law Offices by returning to practice at his family’s side, he also brought a once-in-a-generation practice management system to the team by implementing Smokeball.