John Zachara
"Smokeball gives you kind of one-stop shopping of keeping track of everything.”
AREA OF LAW
Real Estate
FIRM SIZE
Solo
LOCATION(S)
Chicago, IL
When attorney John Zachara began to realize that his firm’s antiquated filing system was getting in the way of client service, he turned to Smokeball. His practice experienced one of its best years to date after signing on with Smokeball, John has been able to dramatically improve turnaround time and client service as a result of the change.
Transcription
[John] Tomorrow I’ve got two closings.
[Debbie] What time?
[John] Nine o’clock. – Are you gonna be the buyer or the seller?
I’m buyer on both. Buyer’s attorney for both. We have a law practice. I’m an attorney and Debbie is my good right arm and you always need one of those to back ya up all the time, you know, so it’s pretty cool. And she’s also my wife and my best friend. I get ll three in one. The client’s giving the purchaser $1,875 back so we gotta show that as a closing cost credit. On the closing statement.
On our closing statement which you prepared through Smokeball.
Smokeball is a database program that integrates all of the information that you would have for any given matter and then saves it in a secure place. It gives you kind of one stop shopping for keeping track of everything.
With Smokeball I’m able to find whatever I need to find in one place and quickly, rather than leafing through 50 pages in a file. My old system was finding a prior document that was similar to the one I needed and then go in and change the names in those documents. Sometimes you forget to change a name. It’s kinda embarrassing, you know. But technology’s changed so much, it’s incredible. Everybody wants to get responses quickly. There’s no 24 hour window. If I don’t call somebody back in a half an hour they’ll go find another lawyer. That’s why Smokeball’s in. I mean I get to save everything to Smokeball. You know, it’s all stored in the cloud on my laptop. On my wife’s laptop and it makes it a lot easier, a lot faster. – Last year was one of the best years John’s ever had as an attorney.
This past March I probably got about 10 phone calls from clients from last year, can you send me the settlement statement cause I’m tryin’ to do my taxes. Well now with Smokeball they’re all in there. I open up the matter, have the settlement statement, send it right to them. Boom, it’s done. They get it in minutes and they’re like wow, amazed.
People that John has been dealing with for a long time have noticed that there’s a difference.
That, in and of itself, makes Smokeball priceless as they would say. Gives me more capacity to get more files and do more work. And have another good year, we hope.
