Product guide · checked September 2026
Which practice management systems ship AI, and on which plan
What matters is whether the plan you're on has AI. On three of these five products the answer changes depending on your tier, and on one of them there's nothing to find at any price.
Read on the vendors' own pages in September 2026. Where a price isn't published, we say so. We don't fill those gaps from comparison blogs.
The short version
- Clio. AI on Core and above, included in the plan rather than an add-on. Starter gets none. Only one price published at all.
- MyCase. Basic gets none. Pro and Advanced include it at no extra cost. Full prices published, which makes it the easiest of the five to budget.
- Smokeball. Some AI by tier, but the real assistant is a paid add-on on every tier. No prices published anywhere.
- 🔴 PracticePanther. No native AI at all. Prices published.
- LEAP. One subscription, AI included at no extra cost, price not published.
Clio
Four tiers: Starter, Core, Signature, Elite. Only one price appears anywhere: Clio's plans start at $49 USD per user per month, for Starter. Core, Signature and Elite all show "Get pricing."
⚠️ What Clio doesn't say is whether that $49 requires an annual commitment, which is the difference between a trial you can leave and a year you're signed up for. Ask before you sign.
AI comes with the tier you're on. Clio's own words: yes on Core and above, part of the plan rather than a separate add-on. Starter shows no on every AI row.
What it does: pulls deadlines out of court documents into calendar events, drafts invoices and routes them, drafts client updates, summarizes matters, prioritizes tasks. Announced October 2023 under the name Clio Duo. That name is gone: the old address now forwards to a page headed simply "Artificial Intelligence", and Clio describes it as Clio Manage turning routine tasks into completed work. If you're searching for Duo and finding nothing, that's why.
What sits outside it: legal research is Clio Work, a separate product that came out of the vLex acquisition, and it drafts as well as researches, covering memos, motions and client communications. Clio Draft is also a separate product rather than an add-on; the add-ons Clio lists on its pricing page are Clio Grow and Clio for Personal Injury.
We're not publishing file-size limits or court-rule caveats, because we couldn't verify them. If a comparison site quotes you those specifics, ask where they got them.
Probably not using it: Automated Billing. Clio's pricing table confirms the feature exists on Core and above. Set the rules once and it drafts the cycle's invoices on a schedule and routes them for approval. It runs on a scheduled overnight job, at 2:00 a.m. Pacific per Clio's help article, so time has to be entered the business day before if you want it on that run.
MyCase
⚠️ The names will throw off a search. Parent company AffiniPay now trades as 8am, and the AI is branded "8am IQ for MyCase" rather than MyCase IQ.
| Tier | Annual | Monthly | AI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $50 | $60 | None |
| Pro | $100 | $120 | Writing + Document Assistant |
| Advanced | $130 | $150 | Adds Case Assistant + OCR |
Per user per month. Ten-day free trial, no card. The AI is included at no extra cost on Pro and Advanced.
Writing Assistant rewrites tone and clarity and translates, inside notes, client messages, tasks and invoice text. Document Assistant summarizes a document and pulls details out. Case Assistant, which answers plain-language questions across an entire case file, is Advanced only. It's probably what you picture when you think of AI in a case system, and it's a $30 per user per month step up from Pro. Discovery Assistant is OCR, also Advanced.
The only published AI charge is an overage: Advanced includes 5,000 OCR pages per user per month, and extra pages are $30 per 5,000 for the firm as a whole.
Probably not using it: Smart Time Finder, which watches activity and lists billable work with no time entry against it. It's hard to find. Per MyCase's own support center it's "the link titled Smart Time Finder in the bottom footer next to your hours billed."
⚠️ And check one switch first: the AI features sit behind a firm-wide toggle. Settings → Firm Settings → Preferences → Edit Preferences → "Enabled." If you're on Pro or Advanced and see no AI, this is the likely reason. Discovery Assistant, the OCR piece, is the exception and takes a support request to turn off.
Smokeball
Four tiers: Bill, Boost, Grow, Prosper+. No price of any kind is published. Every button reads "Get pricing."
Bill has no AI. Boost and Grow include Communicate powered by Smokeball AI. Prosper+ adds Intake. 🔑 But the real assistant, Archie, is a paid add-on on Boost, Grow and Prosper+ alike. It isn't bundled with any tier, and its price isn't published either. So "which Smokeball tier gets me the AI assistant" has no answer. None of them do. You buy it separately.
There's no Smokeball product called "Matter AI." The assistant is Archie.
Archie reads documents and emails filed under a matter and answers questions, flags conflicting terms and leftover placeholder text, and drafts inside Word and Outlook. LawY, the legal research piece, is a separate company's product bundled in with the Archie add-on. Smokeball didn't build it.
Know the limits before you buy. LawY covers only Estate Planning, Estate Administration and Probate, Elder Law, Family Law and Real Estate, so litigation and business practices get nothing from it. Archie pre-loads your fifty most recent matters. Older ones take a while to load the first time. For medical chronologies, Smokeball now points you to partner apps inside Archie: CaseMark, Novo AI and Supio. And AutoTime is mostly not AI. It's included on Prosper+ and a paid add-on on Grow. The capture itself and the creation of time entries is a scheduled overnight run with no model involved. There's an optional AI step on top, still in beta, that writes the entry descriptions, based on your last hundred description edits. The two often get talked about as one thing.
Probably not using it: AutoTime, and grouping its entries. It's off for each person until the box is checked. Staff & Users → Billing tab → "Enable automatic creation of time entries." Same screen: "Group activities as one time entry" rolls several activities into one billable line.
PracticePanther: there's nothing to find
🔴 PracticePanther ships no native AI features as of September 2026. Not on the pricing page, not on the feature pages, not in a 90-URL sitemap, not in the help center, and not in the release notes going back to October 2025. We checked independently more than once, because a claim like this about a named company deserves it.
Tiers, per user per month: Solo $59 monthly or $49 annual, Essential $79 or $69, Business $99 or $89, Business Pro $124 or $114.
⚠️ The word "automation" is everywhere on their site and it reads like AI. It isn't. Templates fill in fields you already typed. Nothing reads a document, drafts, summarizes, or turns a call into a time entry. AI reaches PracticePanther only through separately paid outside services on its integrations page. One of them, VXT, connected its AI note-taker to PracticePanther on July 29, 2026.
If you're on PracticePanther, don't bother hunting through settings. There's nothing there to turn on. Your choice is an outside tool or a different system, and both are reasonable options.
Probably not using it: workflows. A saved checklist that builds its own tasks and deadlines off a single date. Automation → Workflows. It isn't AI, but it's useful, and you're already paying for it.
⚠️ One catch: a workflow doesn't branch on its own. PracticePanther's own guidance is to make the last task a reminder to switch the workflow manually. So it works as a checklist and won't make decisions for you.
LEAP
No tiers. One all-inclusive subscription, and no published price, just a Request Pricing form. LEAP's page does warn that a one-time implementation fee may apply, so raise it early when you ask for a quote.
The AI is included in the base subscription at no extra cost. Matter AI is available across all LEAP matter types. LawY, the legal research piece, is limited, both by state and by matter type.
Generator writes a first draft of a letter, client email or court form from details already in the file. Matter AI is a chat window inside a case: checks dates, drafts emails into Outlook, summarizes documents and folders, compares documents for discrepancies, extracts key terms, builds a timeline. AutoTime captures billable time automatically.
⚠️ Check coverage before signing. LEAP does publish its supported states and its practice areas as separate lists, so start there. What it doesn't publish is the grid: which practice areas are covered in which states. Your state and your practice area can each be on their lists and your combination still not be supported. Ask for that crossover in writing before you commit.
What we couldn't find out
Clio's Core, Signature and Elite prices, and whether its $49 is annual or monthly. All four Smokeball prices, and the Archie add-on price. LEAP's price. The original launch date for MyCase's AI and for LEAP's Generator.
Every one of those is unpublished or out of reach. We didn't skip them. If a comparison site quotes you a confident number for any of them, ask where they got it.
Want to know which of these applies to you?
The audit starts by opening your billing screen, because which tier you're on decides everything else. Then it goes through every other system you run and says what to switch on, what to buy, and what to leave alone.
Prices move and vendors reprice without announcing it. Everything here carries the date it was checked. If you get a quote that differs, tell us and we'll update the page.
None of this is legal advice.