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Did you know by switching from typing your own documents to digital dictation, means law practices of all shapes and sizes, can achieve an immediate 40% efficiency saving? Thereby, enabling fee earners to do what they do best – practice law and generate income. At OutSec Legal we will help guide you and your practice through the process to ensure you get the best from our outsourced digital dictation service.

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.”

What is Digital Dictation?

Digital dictation is a method of recording speech digitally. Its main purpose is to enable it to go from speech to text by a transcriptionist, thereby enabling it to become text or manipulated into digital documents.

Why Switch to Digital Dictation?

Macintyre Hudson stated in their Legal Benchmarking Report for 2022, that income generation for law firms and legal practices could be improved by removing administrative tasks from fee earners, to enable them to generate more income. One way to do this is to encourage your staff to dictate emails and documents to enable them with more time to generate income.

Did you know that a Grade A Solicitor (at £409 per hour) who spends two hours typing their own documents or emails could lose their legal practice up to £570.30 in chargeable time (as opposed to dictating and using OutSec Legal? A Grade D lawyer (at £138 per hour) could lose their firm up to £163.80.

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?

If you have a fee earner who spends two hours a day typing their own emails/documents (as opposed to using digital dictation) your practice are losing out effectively on 1.5 hours chargeable time. This time could be put to be better used elsewhere: either to increase income generation or allow fee earners to release valuable WIP and lock up.

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.