Smokeball sells four plans on a quote basis, with intake and its AI assistant as add-ons on most tiers. LawAOS publishes per-seat prices and ships every module on every plan, including a general ledger, payroll and AML/KYC.
Smokeball's pricing page lists Bill, Boost, Grow and Prosper+ with prices on request. Its trust pages claim three-way reconciliation, and its general ledger is kept in QuickBooks Online. LawAOS lists $29-$119/user/month with the ledger, trust, conflicts, AML/KYC and payroll in the product.
- Choose LawAOS when
- You want the general ledger, trust ledgers, conflicts, AML/KYC checks and payroll in the same system as the matter, at a published per-seat price.
- Choose Smokeball when
- Your firm relies on a large jurisdictional forms library, prefers a native desktop application, or wants automatic time tracking from the documents you work on.
Smokeball keeps trust and client ledgers in Smokeball and the general ledger in QuickBooks Online. LawAOS posts invoices, payments, trust and payroll to its own ledger.
Every panel below is rendered from the product’s own components with fictional records for Okafor & Byrne LLP.
The matter holds the work and the money
Conversations, workstreams, documents, deadlines, time, invoices and client access sit on one matter record, under one permission model.
Client money reconciles three ways
Each client has a ledger. The database refuses a drawdown larger than the client's cleared balance, and a filed three-way reconciliation compares the statement, the book and the sum of client ledgers.
Every LawAOS cell names a shipped module. Every Smokeball cell comes from Smokeball's own pages, read in September 2026; a row those pages do not mention says "not confirmed".
| LawAOSShipped modules | SmokeballVendor's own pages, September 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Practice management | ||
| Matter management | All plans | Higher plans |
| One workspace per matter | Overview, files, conversations, workstreams, invoices and proposals on one record | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Workstreams inside a matter and across the firm | Inside a matter, or on their own across the firm | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Boards, tasks, child tasks and saved views | Board and list views, child tasks, owners and saved views | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Documents with versions | Upload, create, edit, version and share from the matter | Higher plans |
| Matter and client conversations | Internal and client threads stay on the record | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Docket, deadlines and calendar | Court dates, filings and firm deadlines on one calendar | Via integration |
| Time tracking and billing | All plans | |
| Proposals with priced fee items | Draft, send, accept and convert | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Money and firm operations | ||
| Expenses, journals, budgets and reports | Expenses, journals, budgets and reports | Via integration |
| Trust-account reconciliation | Three-way: statement, book and client ledgers. No bank feed yet. | |
| People, roles and leave | Members, roles, departments and leave requests | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Payroll and payslips | Pay components, payroll records and payslips | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Documents and clients | ||
| Native e-signatures | All plans | Via integration |
| Client portal | All plans. Branded with the one-time white-label add-on on any plan; custom domain from Firm or with that add-on. | Higher plans |
| Risk and compliance | ||
| Conflicts checking | All plans | |
| AML and KYC screening | All plans | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Ethical walls | All plans; applied by an authorized administrator | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Knowledge and AI | ||
| Knowledge base and CLE tracking | All plans | Not confirmedNot found on the vendor's pages |
| Built-in AI assistant | Agents file tasks, documents and calendar events in the matter | Paid add-on |
| AI on every paid plan | Fair-use and rate controls apply | Paid add-on |
| Pricing | ||
| Published per-seat pricing | $29-$119/user/monthEnterprise quoted | Contact sales |
- Included: shipped in the product
- Offered in some form: depends on the plan, a separate product or an integration
- Not confirmed: not found in public documentation at the snapshot date
- Not offered: a well-known absence
Read on Smokeball's own site in September 2026. Vendor plans change; check the sources below before you buy. If a cell is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
- Smokeball: pricing (www.smokeball.com/pricing) (read September 2026)
- Smokeball: calendaring (www.smokeball.com/features/manage/calendaring) (read September 2026)
- Smokeball: trust accounting (www.smokeball.com/features/bill/trust-accounting) (read September 2026)
- Smokeball: Save a Conflict Check Report (support.smokeball.com/hc/en-us/articles/6112123480983-Save-a-Conflict-Check-Report) (read September 2026)
- Smokeball: templatelab (www.smokeball.com/features/do/templatelab) (read September 2026)
- Smokeball: about (www.smokeball.com/about) (read September 2026)
- LawAOS
The books live in the product
Invoices, payments, credit notes, expenses, trust postings and payroll post to a LawAOS general ledger with profit and loss, balance sheet and trial balance reports. Nothing syncs to a separate accounting package.
- LawAOS
Every module on every plan
Intake, the client portal, e-signatures and AI are part of every self-serve plan. The AI allowance, storage and the custom domain are what change between plans.
- Smokeball
Where Smokeball is ahead
Smokeball's TemplateLab lists a large library of jurisdictional forms and templates, its Grow plan includes a native desktop app, and Prosper+ includes automatic time tracking. LawAOS ships no court-forms library and runs in the browser only.
The questions a managing partner asks before moving a live caseload onto a new system, answered plainly. Anything the list leaves open, our team answers directly.