Smokeball
Practice management for small law firms with automatic time capture
Pricing on request
Category
The best Legal software
Legal & Compliance software and applications
- Tools listed
- 6
All 6 legal tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What legal software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 6 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- The only paid entry price
- $60MyCase
Only MyCase publishes a paid entry price here, at $60.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is MyCase's at $150 a month, 2.5× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
Nothing in this category publishes a $0 plan, all 6 listings are paid from the first day.
1 of 6 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 6 legal listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- quote
- 4
- Per-user subscription with published tiers; contact vendor for current rates
- 1
- subscription
- 1
Separately, 1 of 6 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What “Legal” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 6 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- legal4
- billing2
- compliance2
- Document Review2
- Ediscovery2
- Law Firm2
- Litigation2
- practice-management2
Carried by a single tool: Enterprise, time-tracking. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Budget for day one, because nothing here is free
No listing in this category publishes a $0 plan, and the cheapest way in is $60 a month with MyCase. That changes how you evaluate: ask for a trial in writing before you shortlist, and treat any tool you cannot try as a tool you cannot verify.
Read the spread before you read the features
$60 to $60 is a $0 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $60 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
1 of 6 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 3 billing models: quote on 4 listings, Per-user subscription with published tiers; contact vendor for current rates on 1, and 1 other arrangement across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare legal tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
Go straight to the numbers
- Smokeballpricingalternatives
- Relativitypricingalternatives
- Cliopricingalternatives
- Everlawpricingalternatives
- Ironcladpricingalternatives
- MyCasepricingalternatives
Questions people ask about legal software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does legal software cost?
- Across the 6 legal tools listed here, paid plans start between $60 and $60 a month, with a median entry price of $60. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $150 a month (MyCase).
- What is the cheapest legal software?
- Among the ones that charge, MyCase has the lowest published entry price at $60 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free legal software?
- Not in this set. None of the 6 legal tools listed here publishes a $0 plan, and the cheapest paid entry is $60 a month. Some vendors offer time-limited trials, which are listed on each product page rather than here.
- How is legal software usually billed?
- quote (4), Per-user subscription with published tiers; contact vendor for current rates (1), subscription (1), counted across the 6 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 1 of 6 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does legal software actually cover?
- The 6 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are legal (4), billing (2), compliance (2), document review (2), ediscovery (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under legal may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do legal tools offer?
- 2 of 6 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 1 of 6 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many legal tools are listed on Softwr?
- 6 approved legal listings appear on this page, including Smokeball, Relativity, Clio, Everlaw. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/legal, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 6 picks
The shortlist for “Legal”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.