What is Dictation?

Television transcriptions include TV broadcastings, movies, programs, shows, etc. It converts audio information into an accurate text file. Text documents can be re-read, analyzed, quoted or used for publishing reasons.

What is Digital Dictation?

Journalists appreciate having a transcript of political debates for accurate quotations. Sometimes only a small part of a TV broadcasting is needed, for example, the recipe in a cooking show. They can also assist foreign language lessons – the transcripts let students highlight the most important things, and read everything many times over.

Anybody who has ever tried to transcribe an audio or video file knows that it is harder than it seems. This is because proper transcription requires a specific skill set as well as unique hardware and software. Professional transcribers have highly tuned listening skills and extremely fast typing speeds. Don’t try to do it on your own and discover you are in over your head. Instead, let us help you. We promise our professional team will delight you with our service. Upload your videos here, choose a turn-around time and get your transcript sent directly to your inbox.

Why Switch to Digital Dictation?

Why is Dictation More Efficient?

“The average person types between 38 and 40 words per minute”.

A “good rate of speech ranges between 140 -160 words per minute.”

This means that digital dictation is four times faster than we can type. Therefore, simply dictating a document is more cost-efficient, giving fee earners more time to increase those all-important chargeable hours.

David Lee, IT Director at Womble Bond Dickinson said:

“If you have a lawyer typing their own documents, taking longer than necessary, due to an insufficient understanding of the Word environment, it will naturally take longer to produce and therefore delay the time it takes to respond to the client. This can be unhelpful and isn’t the best use of the lawyer’s time.”

So, can I improve income generation time by using dictating?

Calculation

So let’s take an example of a grade A solicitor (using London rates). We would work this out as:

(a) Grade A solicitor’s lost time: £409 per hour x 1.5 hours = £613.50

(b) Less OutSec Legal’s cost for transcribing 30 minutes of dictation: £1.20 x 30 = £36 plus VAT (£7.20) = £43.20

If you take (a) from (b) this gives you the cost of the lost chargeable time.

Answer

Therefore, the amount of money lost by a Grade A solicitor in London by typing his own documents is £570.30.

Using the same calculations for grades B, C and D solicitors in London:

• A grade B solicitor would lose £400.80;

• A grade C solicitor would lose £295.80; and

• A grade D solicitor would lose £163.80.

In an age where law firms need to be more efficient and cost-effective, this is a big deal. Even more so, if this is occurring daily. Over the course of a year, this can represent a huge loss for law firms coming from a single fee earner.

The more fee earners you have typing their own documents and emails, and not using digital dictation to dictate them, the more money your practice is losing.

Why Use OutSec Legal For Your Digital Dictation?

OutSec Legal offer Free Consultancy

We know that the prospect of changing your practice’s way of working can be daunting. At OutSec Legal we specialise in making the transition to outsourced digital dictation easy. Therefore, at the start of every partnership, we offer a period of free consultancy that enables us to help your practice streamline processes and get the most out of digital dictation.

What Equipment/Hardware Do I Need?

Our digital dictation app is free for customers to use. All you need is a smartphone or tablet (running iOS, iPadOS or Android) and you can use your device as a digital dictation recorder.

You can also use the app on macOS providing it has Apple Silicon (a new M1, M2 chip etc) and has an in-built microphone or external microphone.

Our free app enables files to be sent to us securely from your device.

Alternatively, you can use a Digital Dictaphone and upload the files via your PC, Mac or Chromebook to our secure FileManager, website.

No Digital Dictation Software Needed!

With OutSec Legal you do not need to purchase any specialist digital dictation software as you can use the OutSec Legal digital dictation app which is available for iOS and Android. However, if you use a platform, we can probably integrate with it.

OutSec Legal can Integrate with leading Digital Dictation Software

We can integrate with leading digital dictation software platforms such as BigHand, Dictamen, ODMS and Speechwrite. For further details see: Systems and Compatibility.

Want to Change from Analogue to Digital?

The switch to digital does not need to be expensive. It can be as easy as using your existing smartphone or tablet and using our free dictation app, meaning there is no expensive outlay for transcription software, and dictaphones.