Keito is a standalone workspace where captured fee-earner time, AI-assisted delivery costs, write-down decisions, and invoice evidence are reviewed together — without buying, or upgrading within, a legal practice management suite to get there.
Illustrative review queue
Illustrative bill run
Evidence ready
Entries reviewed
214
Write-downs decided
5
Matters cleared
23
Captured time attributed
Client and matter context confirmed on entry
Narratives settled
Thin descriptions fixed before the bill run
Evidence released
Approved record handed to the firm’s billing process
Smokeball publishes an AI-powered legal practice management platform: case management, document automation, flexible legal billing, trust accounting, firm reporting, and AutoTime — its automatic time-tracking feature that works with Microsoft Word and Outlook, included with its top plan and available as a paid add-on for its Grow plan. Keito asks what happens after capture: where does the firm review the record of billable work, human and AI-assisted, before anything is billed?
Set up the clients, matters, contributors, rates, reviewers, and billing periods that define the firm’s billable record in Keito — and leave cases, documents, and trust accounting wherever the firm already runs them.
AI-drafted and manually captured entries land in one review queue where thin narratives, billable-status calls, rate queries, AI-assisted delivery costs, and write-down decisions are settled while the work is still fresh enough to explain.
Hand reviewed hours, costs, and decisions to the firm’s invoicing process through an export or API handoff the firm designs and tests itself — Keito assumes no automatic Smokeball import or synchronisation.
Capture and review are different jobs
Smokeball is actively marketed AI-powered legal practice management software for solo through mid-sized firms. Its published scope includes case management with document, email, and calendar organisation, a large legal-forms library with document automation, flexible billing across hourly, fixed-fee, contingency, and LEDES arrangements, trust accounting, firm-insight reporting, and AutoTime — automatic time tracking that runs in the background with Microsoft Word and Outlook and lets firms edit every automatic or manual entry before invoicing. AutoTime is published as included with Smokeball’s Prosper+ plan and as a paid add-on for its Grow plan. Buyers should not treat Smokeball as software missing time tracking or billing; automatic capture is one of its headline features. Keito starts from a different question: capture, however it happens, is only the start of a defensible bill. Keito is a standalone workspace where AI-drafted and manually recorded entries, approved AI-agent and model costs, matter attribution, narratives, billable status, rate context, write-down decisions, approvals, and invoice evidence live in one reviewed workflow on flat team pricing — with nothing billing until a reviewer signs it off. That suits firms that want the billing record itself, not a practice-suite tier, to be the product they adopt, and firms whose AI-assisted research, drafting, or technical work needs to be costed beside fee-earner hours. The boundary is deliberate: Keito is not legal practice management software and does not reproduce Smokeball’s case management, document automation, forms library, or trust accounting, and it claims no native Smokeball integration, automatic import, or synchronisation. Before moving live time capture, the firm should fix system ownership, test representative exports or API handoffs, preserve historical records under its retention policy, and agree rollback steps.
Keep Smokeball when the firm wants automatic capture, cases, documents, billing, and trust accounting administered inside one tiered practice suite
Choose Keito when the reviewed record of human and AI-assisted billable work deserves its own workspace on flat team pricing
Agree ownership, retention, tested handoffs, and rollback in writing before live capture moves anywhere
Workflow fit
Keito keeps Smokeball time tracking alternative connected to client, project, billable status, approval, and invoice context before the work reaches finance.
Keep Smokeball when the firm wants automatic capture, cases, documents, billing, and trust accounting administered inside one tiered practice suite
Choose Keito when the reviewed record of human and AI-assisted billable work deserves its own workspace on flat team pricing
Agree ownership, retention, tested handoffs, and rollback in writing before live capture moves anywhere
Keito drafts time entries with AI from the work that actually happened and accepts typed, timed, API, CLI, and agent-sourced records, each carrying client, matter, duration, narrative, and billable status into the same review queue.
Reviewers settle thin narratives, billable-status calls, rate queries, and write-down decisions in one place, so every line the client eventually sees has an owner and an explanation.
Approved AI-agent and model costs are recorded against the same client and matter as the fee earner’s hours, giving the firm one delivery record — without implying any automatic activity feed from Smokeball or another platform.
The difference is not just recording time. It is whether the record can support billing, project decisions, and client conversations.
Product shape
A standalone workspace for reviewed billable time, AI-assisted delivery costs, billing decisions, and invoice evidence.
Smokeball publishes an AI-powered practice management suite: case management, document automation, legal billing, trust accounting, reporting, and AutoTime automatic time capture.
How time is captured
AI-drafted, typed, timed, and agent-sourced entries that carry matter context from the start, with nothing billed until a reviewer signs it off.
Smokeball markets AutoTime as background capture of activity in Microsoft Word, Outlook, and Smokeball itself, with every automatic or manual entry editable before invoicing.
How capture is packaged
Capture and review are the whole product, on flat-rate team plans that do not count seats.
Smokeball publishes AutoTime as included with its Prosper+ plan and as a paid add-on for its Grow plan, so firms should confirm which tier their billing workflow needs.
Data movement
Firm-designed, tested exports and API handoffs moved in deliberate stages.
No native Smokeball import, automatic synchronisation, or automatic reconciliation is assumed in either direction.
It is a different home for the firm’s billable-time record than a practice management suite. Keito is one such alternative: a standalone workspace where captured fee-earner hours, approved AI-assisted work costs, write-down decisions, and invoice evidence are reviewed together before anything is billed, adopted without taking on — or changing tier within — a full practice management platform.
They are different shapes of product. Smokeball publishes AI-powered legal practice management whose scope includes case management, document automation, flexible billing across hourly, fixed-fee, contingency, and LEDES arrangements, trust accounting, reporting, and AutoTime automatic time capture working with Microsoft Word and Outlook. Keito is only the reviewed record behind the bill — captured hours, AI-assisted delivery costs, write-down decisions, and invoice evidence — on flat team pricing.
Stay with Smokeball when the firm’s priority is running cases, documents, automated forms, billing, trust accounting, and background time capture inside one integrated suite. Keito covers a narrower reviewed-billing workflow and is not feature-for-feature practice management, so it is the wrong choice if the firm is really shopping for a whole-practice platform.
It involves a staged move the firm controls end to end: map clients, matters, people, rates, reviewers, and billing cutoffs; pilot a representative group of matters; reconcile complete billing periods against the existing process; and retain historical Smokeball records under the firm’s retention policy. Keito does not offer a one-click or lossless Smokeball migration, so every export or handoff should be tested before live capture changes.
Each reviewed record keeps the client, matter, contributor, duration, narrative, billable status, rate context, reviewer, approval state, write-down decision, and billing period, with approved AI-agent and model costs attributed to the same matter as the human hours. Trust accounting and client-money records are not part of this — they stay in the firm’s practice management and accounting systems.
No. Keito claims no native Smokeball integration, automatic import, activity ingestion, or two-way synchronisation. Capture in Keito is its own workflow — AI-drafted, typed, timed, API, CLI, and agent-sourced entries that pass review before becoming invoice evidence — and the firm designs, tests, and approves any transfer between Keito, Smokeball, its invoicing process, and its accounts. A firm can keep Smokeball for cases, documents, and trust accounting and run Keito alongside it as the billing-review record.
Solo includes 1 licensed user, unlimited AI agents, Mac desktop and iOS apps, Stripe payments, and standard CSV and Excel exports. Pro adds your team. Business adds integrations, planning, advanced reporting, and stronger controls.
1 licensed user
For independent consultants, freelancers, and small studios running work with AI agents.
Team collaboration
For teams that need shared workspaces, approvals, and team-level project visibility.
Advanced operations
For organizations that need integrations, planning, advanced reporting, and stronger controls.
AI agents do not require licenses on any plan.
Solo, Pro, and Business can use API keys for agent workflows.
Solo, Pro, and Business include standard CSV and Excel data export.
Start with Solo, add people on Pro when you need reviewers or collaborators, and see how Keito turns tracked effort into clearer reports.