Best Practice - Immigration

The Immigration matters in Smokeball have been carefully built to help record the information needed to run your immigration matters. Smokeball has contact cards and fields to help you keep track of important details and parties set up for each matter type.

Below are some examples of the key details you can keep track of within a few of our immigration matter types. Once you enter the information in your matter, it will populate throughout the automated letters and Court & Authority forms found in the Forms & Precedents library, including Immigration and Asylum Chamber forms.

Enter client details

Your client will sit in the matter details list immediately below 'Info'. Their role will be that relevant to the particular matter type, for example, in a Visa Application matter your client will display as 'Applicant'.

To get the most out of our automated Immigration documents, be sure to enter:

• Title
• Full Name (First, Middle, Last)
• Current Address
• Contact Telephone Numbers (Home, Mobile)
• Email
• Birth Details
  • Date
  • Place
  • Country
• Passport Details
  • Number
  • Issue Date
  • Issuing Authority
  • Expiry Date
• Country of Citizenship
• Nationality
• Language of Interpreter (if required)
• National Insurance Number

Note that some of the above details are located in the 'Additional Details' tab of the contact card:

Application Details

Open Application Details/Refused Application Details to enter the application type and category, date lodged, date granted, expiry date, key identification numbers (UAN, GWF, Home Office reference), Sponsor details, family details and residence requirements.

Case Details

Enter First-tier Tribunal and/or Upper Tribunal information, including the Tribunal, reference number and date of determination in the Case Details screen. Available in Asylum Appeal and Immigration Appeal matters.

Save Important URLs

The Smokeball Chrome Extension allows you to quickly save important URLs directly to your Smokeball matter, eliminating the need to manually track links and ensuring easy access to key resources when you need them.

Easily save your application URLs using the Smokeball Chrome Extension:

1. In Chrome, select Extensions.
2. Select Smokeball.
3. Select Save the URL.
   
4. Search for your matter in the Save to a matter window.
   • Use Comment to record any further information or notes that you need with this URL.
     

The URL will save as a Note on your selected Smokeball matter, ensuring quick and easy access whenever you need it throughout your application process.

Upload Documents

Documents saved in your Smokeball matters can be easily uploaded to the Immigration portal or an Application browser, streamlining the process and ensuring all essential files are easily accessible and organised.

To upload your documents to a browser:

1. Select the document(s) to be uploaded.
2. Right-click on the selected document(s).
3. Select Publish Online > Open Browser.
4. A prompt will appear asking if you want to combine the files into 1 PDF; select Yes or No as required.
5. A new browser window will open, along with a File Explorer folder with local version of the selected documents.

The documents can be dragged/dropped from File Explorer to your online application, or uploaded from the File Explorer folder depending on the upload format of your particular website.

Workflows

Workflows help eliminate extra admin work by allowing you to automatically designate tasks that happen for every matter, ensuring that nothing is missed and giving full transparency across the matter.

We have created sample workflows for the following matter flow patterns:

• Immigration

You can download our sample workflows and upload them into Smokeball. 

Since every law firm is a little different, we encourage you to make these workflows your own based on your own preferences or requirements.

Matter Stages

Matter stages are a way to keep track of the progress of a matter. They provide a clear and organised overview of matter progress and help to keep clients informed and involved in the process. You can also sort your Home Page to group by matter stages to give full visibility of progress across all matters.

We have created sample Matter Stages for Immigration that you can download at the following links:

• Immigration

You can upload our sample Matter Stages and modify to suit your firm preference.

Dashboard

The Smokeball Dashboard is an alternative entrance into Smokeball that places front and centre, everything you need to know to track and manage your work for the day more effectively. The Dashboard can be configured to your preferences, adding, resizing and configuring widgets to suit your needs.

The Tagged Matters widget is especially useful for Visa Application matters, allowing you to easily distinguish between different application types using tags:

See more on how to add and customise your dashboard widgets, or contact our friendly team for additional help on setting up dashboards to suit your Immigration practice needs.

Intake

Smokeball Intake help get client information quickly and easily, providing prospects and clients with an easy digital path to providing vital information. Fully customisable to your firm’s needs, intake forms can be shared via SMS, client portal, email, or your website—ensuring a seamless experience for every client. With automatic data syncing to your Smokeball matter, you can eliminate manual data entry, reduce errors, and save valuable time.

See more on how to:

• Create your own custom Intake forms to simplify the process of collecting information and documents from your clients.
• Set up and manage Lead intake, with customisable forms that can be integrated into your website, allowing potential clients to inquire about your services directly through your website.

Create new intake forms using Smokeball AI, or contact our friendly team for assistance on setting up intake to suit your Immigration practice needs.

Reports

Smokeball features many powerful reports which can be used to optimise your firm’s work routines, keep track of your deadlines, or maintain strong relationships with your clients.

Here are some of the helpful reports to help you manage Immigration matters. You can access these reports by navigating to the Reports tab in Smokeball, or Reports page on the Smokeball Web App:

• Matter - Full List report can be filtered to any matter type combination. This can be a helpful report to see all your Immigration matters opened within a particular period date range, including a simple summary of the fee estimate and billed amount.
• Firm Insights are available to firm owners to assist with managing and growing your law firm, by providing helpful insights and profitability estimates by matter and matter type. Find out more about Firm Insights and Reports. 

Matter Tags

Matter tags allow you to further categorise and organise your Immigration matters. You can apply an unlimited amount of fully-editable tags to your matter, and even run custom reports based on your tags, allowing you to use them in any way to suit your needs.

Here are some example matter tags to implement for a Visa Application matter

• Visa Type:
  • Visa Visa
  • Study Visa
  • Family Visa
  • Work Visa
• Status or critical information:
  • Application Lodged
• Differentiate between circumstances or process within a matter:
  
  • Sponsor

Find out more about how to create and apply matter tags to your matters. If you are unsure what tags could be useful to your firm, reach out to our friendly team for additional help.

Time and Billing

Smokeball makes it easy to keep track of your time for billing. Whether your matter is fixed fee, time based, contingency or something else entirely, Smokeball has robust settings to help your firm's billing and administration.

Here are some suggestions on how our Billing features can help your Immigration practice:

• Configure your Immigration matters as fixed fee, saving admin time having to set the billing type on each matter. 
• Set up time and fee activity codes for commonly added time and fees, to save you non-billable admin time from having to enter the same types of entries over and over. Some examples of Immigration activity codes include:
  • Visa application Fee
  • Citizenship application Fee
  • ID/AML check
  • Interpreting/translation Service
  • Court Appearance
  • Expert report
• Set up default fee entries to appear automatically when you open a matter. The feature is helpful to ensure you never forget to add charges to a matter and saves admin time having to add the same item to every matter
• AutoTime is a powerful feature for Immigration firms because it helps you understand exactly how much time you are spending on your matters and in turn what is your profitability on each matter. Even if you are charging a fixed fee for the matter, it can also be helpful to send an invoice or invoice receipt that helps your client understand exactly everything you did along the way.