An email manager that scans, classifies, renames and files hundreds of client emails into Smokeball, with staff reviewing the exceptions.
Before
1 hr+The first hour of every day spent processing the overnight email queue by hand, with more arriving continuously
After
$28.2KIn documented monthly savings, with 7 hours a day recovered across support staff and 3 across lawyers
Overview
Hundreds of emails a day, filed without a hand touching them.
A Sunshine Coast law firm with over 40 years of experience faced a modern problem: email overload. With hundreds of client emails arriving daily, legal assistants spent significant portions of their day manually renaming, categorising and filing them.
NFI built an intelligent email management system that integrates directly with Smokeball, automatically scanning, classifying, naming and filing every email into the correct client folder.
“Our legal assistants were spending hours each day just filing emails. We needed a system that could handle the volume without compromising accuracy.”
Catton and Tondelstrand Lawyers
The problem
Hundreds of emails a day, all filed by hand.
For a busy firm, email management isn't just organisation. It is compliance, client service and operational efficiency, and manual processing created significant bottlenecks.
01
Email volume overload
Assistants spent the first hour of every day just processing the overnight queue, with more arriving continuously.
02
Manual filing burden
Every email had to be opened, matched to a matter, renamed to convention and uploaded to the right Smokeball folder.
03
Inconsistent naming
Naming varied between staff, emails were misfiled, and finding a communication later wasted billable time.
The solution
From inbox to Smokeball, fully automated.
Automatically scans incoming email and categorises by content, sender and context, identifying the relevant matter, determining document type and flagging priority items.
Every email and attachment is renamed to the firm's standard, extracting date, sender, matter reference and document type for reliable future retrieval.
Processed emails upload to the correct client folder, maintaining the firm's existing structure and filing logic, with comprehensive logging for audit purposes.
100%Consistent naming and filing across every matter
Questions
About this project.
Each incoming email is classified by matter, document type and priority from its content, sender and context, renamed to the firm's naming convention, and uploaded to the correct client folder in Smokeball with the existing folder structure preserved and a full audit trail.
The firm documented $28,200 a month in savings, with seven hours a day recovered across support staff and three hours a day across lawyers, and 100% consistent naming and filing across every matter.
The same approach applies to any practice or document management system with an integration point: classify, rename to your convention and file, with people reviewing the exceptions. Contact us with the system your firm uses.
