Ajax's SurePoint Integration: Everything You Need to Know
At SurePoint LMS firms, the billable hours that go missing are almost always the small ones: the email after a deposition, the case law search before a partner meeting, the ten-minute call where you opened the case file but never logged the time. End-of-week reconstruction catches the big blocks. The small ones quietly disappear into the weekly chase-down report.
We built our SurePoint integration to close that gap. Ajax captures your work as it happens, drafts time entries in your voice, and syncs them into LMS with the matter, code, and rate already applied. No copy-paste from a Word doc, no end-of-month chase-down at the partner level.
What is Ajax?
Ajax is an AI-native timekeeping tool built for lawyers. It's a desktop app that reads your screen in real time and drafts time entries automatically: grouped tasks, narratives in your voice, and matter attribution across every application you use. We supplement the screen layer with API connections to email, calendar, Zoom, Teams, and VoIP, including mobile, so the work you do on your phone shows up too.
Your screen content is processed, used to draft entries, and then automatically deleted on a rolling basis. We don't train models on your data. The AI vendors we work with are contractually prohibited from retaining or training on it. Ajax is SOC compliant, each attorney's Ajax is private, and managing partners see aggregate firm metrics rather than raw activity.
We sync deeply with seven practice management systems: Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, SurePoint, Centerbase, Filevine, and Actionstep. We also support most other billing systems.
What is SurePoint?
SurePoint Technologies is the legal practice and financial management platform that serves more than 100,000 legal professionals. It was founded in 1976 in Cincinnati as Rippe & Kingston before being acquired and rebranded.
SurePoint sells two product lines. The flagship is Finance Enterprise, branded for years as LMS and originally built by Rippe & Kingston. The other is Finance Core, formerly Coyote. Most firms still call the flagship by one of the older names, which is why this article uses "SurePoint LMS" interchangeably with Finance Enterprise.
LMS includes native time tracking inside the desktop application and through LMS Mobile. Both work when attorneys remember to use them. The persistent gap, and the reason firms run weekly reports asking attorneys to enter their time, is that most lawyers don't do it consistently.
What the Ajax and SurePoint integration does
We built a deep two-way sync between Ajax and SurePoint LMS:
What flows in from LMS: matters, client names, activity codes, and billing rates. Updates flow continuously.
What flows out to LMS: approved time entries, with the matter assigned, the activity code set, and the billing rate applied. They appear in LMS as native time entries, the way they need to be billed.
Edits stay flexible inside Ajax until release. The right-hand staging area inside Ajax lets you keep editing entries throughout the day. They sync into LMS overnight, or immediately if you force-push them through. Once they land in LMS, LMS is the source of truth.
During setup, we also read your firm's existing LMS entries to customize the narrative output to match each attorney's style. So on day one, the entries we draft already sound like the lawyer who would have written them. To be clear, we don't train models on your data. We customize our output settings based on your firm's patterns and preferences.
Ajax handles capture and drafting. SurePoint stays the system of record for billing and financials.
How the integration works, step by step
There are three stages: setup, drafting, and review. Two of them are fully automated. The only step that needs your attention is the review, which usually takes a few minutes a day.
Step 1: Connect SurePoint LMS to Ajax (one day, behind the scenes)
The connection is set up once, at the org level. You introduce Ajax to your SurePoint LMS account rep. The two teams exchange the information they need to spin up the integration, and the whole thing finishes inside a day, behind the scenes. There's no per-attorney configuration, no CSV imports, no permissions checklist for each timekeeper.
Once the connection is live, we pull your matters, client names, activity codes, and billing rates from LMS. We also read your firm's prior LMS entries to customize each attorney's narrative voice. That work happens during a roughly two-day silent run before kickoff, so attorneys see real drafts waiting for them on day one rather than a blank tool.
Step 2: Ajax drafts entries as you work
This is where the screen-reading does the heavy lifting. As you work through the day, switching between email, documents, research, calls, and meetings, Ajax captures what's on your screen and drafts time entries in real time. Draft latency is about 45 seconds.
Here's what makes this different from a timer. We group related work intelligently. If you spend 30 minutes prepping for a deposition in the morning, another 30 minutes after lunch, and an hour and a half on it that evening, we combine that into a single 2.5-hour entry with a coherent narrative, even though you were in different files and applications. You don't piece it together yourself.
Our matter attribution identifies the names, addresses, and case-specific keywords from your screen content. So even if a judge's name or an opposing counsel's paralegal isn't in your LMS contacts, we pick them up from the documents and emails you're working with and attribute the time to the right matter. The system runs at about 92% matter prediction accuracy. When we can't attribute something confidently, we flag it for you to assign, and the system learns from that correction.
Step 3: Review in the side-by-side view
We surface your drafts in a two-column view: Ajax drafts on the left, and the right-hand side holds the staging area where entries headed to LMS sit before they sync. From here you can edit narratives in place, merge fragments into a single entry, and release with a click.
A worked example: a 1.4-hour entry on Chen v. Park Industries, $450/hour, coded L120 for Analysis/Strategy. You review it, adjust the narrative if needed, and release. It lands in the staging area, where you can keep tweaking it through the rest of the day.
The right-hand side of the screen behaves differently for SurePoint LMS than it does for our other PMS integrations. That's the next section.
How entries flow between Ajax and SurePoint LMS
The right-hand side of the Ajax screen works one way for Clio, MyCase, and PracticePanther, and a slightly different way for SurePoint LMS. Here's why, and how to use it.
LMS doesn't let third-party tools read time entries back out once they're inside LMS. The API allows us to push entries in, but it doesn't let us see the entries that are already there. For Ajax, that means we can't run a live mirror of your LMS time entries the way we do for the other integrations. If we pushed entries into LMS in real time, an edit you made directly inside LMS could drift out of sync with what Ajax remembered. We'd rather not introduce that risk.
The solution is a staging area on the right-hand side of Ajax. Released entries sit there throughout the day. You can keep editing them inside Ajax: the narrative, the matter, the code, the rate. Overnight, around 2am, the staging-area entries auto-sync into LMS as a batch. By the time anyone opens LMS in the morning, the prior day's entries are there as native time entries, ready for the normal release workflow.
If you need an entry in LMS right now (closing out a client bill mid-day, for example), you can force-push the entry from the staging area into LMS immediately. After a force-push:
The entry lands in LMS as an unreleased time entry, ready for your billing team's normal release workflow.
The entry locks in place inside Ajax. No more edits from the Ajax side.
LMS becomes the source of truth from that point.
The short version: the staging area gives you a flexible all-day workspace inside Ajax, and LMS gives you the system-of-record finality.
What this looks like in recovered revenue
The work that goes uncaptured at an LMS firm is rarely the four-hour deposition. It's the email after, the case law search before, the ten-minute call where you opened the case file but never logged the time. On average, firms recover about 12% more billable hours after switching to Ajax.
Jennifer Arledge, an attorney at Hone Law, described the change like this: "For the first time in 30 years, when I shut down on Friday, I knew I had all my time in."
One honest caveat: not every captured minute turns into collected revenue. Some entries are non-billable, and some get written down at the partner-review stage. The point is that the minutes are visible to begin with, which is what makes it possible to bill them or write them down deliberately.
Why SurePoint LMS firms use Ajax
LMS firms tend to care about clean rate-and-code structure, partner-comp accuracy, and revenue allocation. Those are exactly the structures Ajax respects. We pull rates and codes directly from LMS during setup and apply them per entry, so what shows up in LMS already conforms to how your firm bills.
The voice match is the other thing that lands well at LMS firms. Because Ajax reads each attorney's prior LMS narratives during onboarding and customizes the draft output, the entries that show up on day one already read the way each attorney would write them. There's no narrative rewriting phase. Attorneys review, adjust where they want to, and release.
Katherine Silverman, a shareholder and attorney at Berman Fink Van Horn, put it this way:
"I don't want AI to create art for me. I want AI to do my laundry. And Ajax is doing my laundry by making my timekeeping and billing a seamless process."
The pairing is straightforward. LMS holds the financial architecture your firm has built over decades. Ajax fills it with entries you didn't have to write.
How we keep your client data secure
Screen content is processed in real time, used to draft the entry, then deleted on a rolling basis. We do not train models on your data. The AI vendors we work with are contractually prohibited from retaining or training on your data. Ajax is SOC compliant.
Each attorney's Ajax is private. Managing partners see aggregate firm metrics, never raw activity. The pause button stops screen capture whenever you need it.
Data pulled from LMS follows the same rules. Matters, codes, billing rates, and prior entries used to customize narrative output are handled under the same rolling deletion policy and never retained. Released entries travel over encrypted connections. Once an entry is in LMS, SurePoint's own security governs it. The org-level connection can be revoked from either side at any time.
For attorneys evaluating this from an ethics angle, the architecture sits comfortably with ABA Model Rules 1.1 (competence with technology) and 1.6 (safeguarding client information).
Common questions about the integration
What exactly syncs between Ajax and SurePoint?
Matters, client names, activity codes, and billing rates flow from LMS into Ajax. Approved time entries flow out to LMS as native entries with the matter assigned, activity code set, and billing rate applied. Edits inside Ajax flow to LMS via the overnight sync or the force-push override.
Does Ajax replace SurePoint?
No. Ajax drafts the time entries. SurePoint stays the system of record for billing and financials. The goal is to make time entry easier and find the work that wasn't getting captured.
How long does setup take?
Inside a day, behind the scenes. You introduce Ajax to your SurePoint LMS account rep, the two teams exchange the information they need, and the integration is live. No per-attorney configuration.
Can I push entries into LMS in real time instead of waiting for the overnight sync?
Yes. From the staging area, you can force-push any entry into LMS immediately. Force-pushed entries land in LMS as unreleased, ready for your normal billing release workflow, and they lock in place inside Ajax.
Can my managing partner see my Ajax entries before I release them?
No. Each attorney's Ajax is private until release. Managing partners see aggregate firm metrics, never an individual attorney's raw activity. Nobody at the firm sees an entry until you decide it's ready.
Does Ajax see my SurePoint contacts?
Ajax pulls matters, client names, activity codes, and billing rates from LMS. For everyone else, judges, opposing counsel, peripheral parties, Ajax builds its own case-specific dictionary from screen content. That's how we catch the people who aren't in your CRM but show up in your inbox every week.
What doesn't Ajax capture?
Anything that never touches a screen. Handwritten notes, in-person sidebars, phone calls where you didn't open a related document or contact card. The bulk of legal work runs through a screen now, but not all of it.
What does Ajax cost?
Pilots start at a flat $100 fee. Ongoing pricing depends on firm size, and you never pay an ongoing subscription unless the pilot delivers ROI on your real work. About 97% of firms that pilot go on to subscribe.
Final thoughts
The firms that recover the most billable time on SurePoint are the ones that close the gap between the work and the entry.
The staging area exists so that the gap closes inside Ajax, every day, automatically. By the time anyone opens LMS in the morning, yesterday's work is sitting there in your voice, on the right matter, at the right rate, ready for your billing team to review and release. Ajax pays for itself in about 11 days on average. One recovered hour a month per attorney covers the cost.
If you want to see it run against your LMS environment, book a demo and we'll walk you through it. Never write your own entries again.
