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Case Study  /  Family Law  /  Tyler, TX

A Future-Proofed Firm.How AI Automations Save Hours Every Week in East Texas.

Griffith Law Office is growing steadily in a market with almost no lawyers to hire, and Rachael Griffith had been trying to make AI carry the firm’s administrative load on her own. It never held. Two months into AI Workforce Pro, client email logging and file management run themselves, the stretch from consult to first filing is shorter, and Rachael spends less of her day on case paperwork and more of it leading the firm.

Griffith Law Office Client since January 2026 AI Workforce Pro since May 2026
2.5 hrs Reclaimed every week from a single email workflow
30 min Of daily admin now handled without her team
45+ Law firm AI skills built and ready on day one
15 min To fix on a CTO call what took her six hours alone

“If used correctly, AI is going to help take that weight off of lawyers’ shoulders. That’s the first time in a long time that we’ve seen that help.”

Rachael Griffith, Managing Attorney
Firm Overview

A growing family law practice in a thin hiring market

Griffith Law Office, P.C. serves East Texas families through divorce, child custody, child support, guardianship, estate planning and probate, with offices in Tyler and Longview. Rachael Griffith opened the firm in 2019 after a decade of family law practice, and built it on resolving cases through negotiation and mediation where possible and trying them where necessary.

The Problem

Growth she couldn’t keep pace with alone

The firm kept growing and showed no sign of stopping. Rachael wanted a business coach who could help her track KPIs, lead her team better, and plan the next stage instead of reacting to it.

“I hit the ceiling of what I know to do and how I know to grow it on my own skill set. And I knew I needed someone there to help me.”

Rachael Griffith, Managing Attorney

The same ceiling showed up in technology. Rachael had been using AI weekly, almost daily, for about a year, and had tried to wire other AI products into Clio so they could handle the administrative side of a matter. It never held together. Of a team of ten, two or three were curious enough to experiment. Everything else, from building skills to connecting systems to troubleshooting, landed on the owner.

Why SMB Team

She had been shopping for a coach for five years

The coaching programs Rachael looked at over the previous five years met once or twice a year, taught generic business theory, and left her to translate it into a family law practice on her own. Nothing carried between sessions: no cadence, no accountability, no one who knew her market or her numbers. She wanted a partner in the weeds with her who understood how a law firm actually makes money and would tell her the truth about hers.

“It is easy to be surrounded by people who want to make you happy. That is very nice, but I need some hard truth. I need some accountability, and SMB Team does that for me.”

Rachael Griffith, Managing Attorney
Our Strategic Approach

Coaching sets the target. AI does the reps.

Griffith Law Office joined SMB Team in January for coaching, and by May the firm knew exactly what it was trying to become. AI Workforce Pro was the right next layer. A firm growing steadily in a market with a small hiring pool can only expand in two ways: add people it cannot find, or take work off the people it already has. The strategy was never a list of automations; it was a set of outcomes, with the technology chosen to serve them.

Strategic outcome Owner capacity
Strategic outcome Growth without headcount
Strategic outcome Firm-wide AI adoption
Solutions Implemented

What we put in place

AI Workforce Pro – digital employees put to work

SMB Team’s fractional CTO team kickstarted the configuration with Rachael, so the firm was running real automations in no time.

45+ skills already built for law firms

Building skills from scratch was the part Rachael had struggled with in every other AI product. The 45+ skills waiting on day one were the exact ones she would have built first, which is where most of her time savings came from.

Connected to Clio out of the box

The connection she had failed to build herself was already there. Logging client emails, tagging items to matters, saving documents: the manual file management work now happens without anyone touching it.

Weekly working sessions, not webinars

Users meet weekly to walk through problems and features. Rachael shares her screen and gets help on the thing she is actually building that day, and picks up use cases from other firms she had not thought of.

Security answered up front

Her concerns were addressed at the start: the highest tier plan, data encrypted, nothing shared or trained on, client files not exposed, and everything she shares staying inside her own environment.

On client data and security

“Security was my biggest concern going in. My clients’ information is not being shared, it is not being used to train anything, and it stays inside my own environment.”

Rachael Griffith, Managing Attorney

Coaching foundation to scale the firm

The KPIs she had never run

The first session mapped where the firm is against where Rachael wants it. Average case value came out of that math for the first time, so a revenue goal now converts directly into the number of cases the firm has to sign.

A staffing plan for a small hiring pool

Coaching worked through motivation and bonus structures beyond what she had already tried, plus creative outreach for attorneys and staff in a market with very few of either. Three new attorneys are starting.

A coaching portal for the whole team

Rachael trains her staff on sales inside the coaching portal (Growth Academy), and goes back to it herself for strategy at every stage: signing cases, managing cases, and managing and growing the team.

Accountability, plus a peer group

Monthly coaching keeps her honest about the goals; the group sessions and quarterly in-person workshops put her in a room with other firm owners solving the same problems.

“In my coaching meetings we talk about the problems I have and the KPIs I’m working to achieve, and then I turn the conversation to how AI Workforce Pro can help me achieve those things. I think they work really well together.”

Rachael Griffith, Managing Attorney
Results

Two months in, the admin work is already gone

What changed Before SMB Team Today
Client email logging Entered by hand, matter by matter 20–30 minutes a day backAbout 2.5 hours a week from one workflow
Consult to first filing Initial drafting and case steps waited on Rachael Shorter turnaroundA marked increase in new clients onboarded
AI skill building Built from zero, and often abandoned 45+ skills built for law firms
Tech troubleshooting Five or six hours, solved alone or not at all Accomplished in one 15-minute CTO call
KPIs Annual revenue and collection rate Average case value, tied to goalsRevenue targets converted into cases needed
The team Ten people, growth capped by hiring Three new attorneys startingAbout 15% growth projected for the year
And what it bought back
More time leading, less time on case paperwork Time that used to go to file management goes to billable and higher-value work.
Mental bandwidth A heavy, time-intensive job with some of the weight taken off, and optimism about the next stage.
A team that reaches for it Staff who watched the work product started finding use cases in their own job duties.
In her words: the results

“From the stage of initially having the consult to getting that first pleading filed, that turnaround is shorter. Having that cut down in the onboarding of a new client makes it possible to bring on more new clients at a faster pace.”

Rachael Griffith, Managing Attorney
Rachael Griffith, Owner and Attorney at Griffith Law Office, P.C.

“Working with SMB Team means I am not building this from the ground up or doing it all by myself. The product is already made for law firms, the support is always right on top of everything, and it pays for itself in the time it gives back.”

Rachael Griffith, Owner & Attorney · Griffith Law Office, P.C., Tyler & Longview, TX

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