Kingsley Napley adopts BigHand Speech Recognition technology to achieve greater efficiencies and better deploy a highly skilled workforce.

Overview

The need to respond to increasing client demands is the primary driver for change within the legal profession. In recent years, the competitive legal landscape has given clients more choice and more access to legal counsel. In the face of this increased competition, many law firms are adopting new practices to cement client relationships. This includes new business processes and technologies to achieve greater efficiencies and better deploy a highly skilled workforce. One such firm now seeing the benefits of Digital Dictation and Speech Recognition software is London- based Kingsley Napley.

Dictation with ease

Kingsley Napley, a progressive top 100 firm first acquired BigHand’s Digital Dictation software as early as 2004, recognising changing client expectations and the need for more agile ways of working. Over the years, it has become embedded in the Firm as one of its most widely used and generally adopted technologies.

However, the implementation of Digital Dictation was just the beginning of Kingsley Napley’s journey with BigHand. In early 2012, with growing demand for remote working from Fee Earners and increasing client expectation of a more mobile legal counsel, the firm rolled out BigHand’s mobile app, BigHand Go to a number of its Fee Earners. The app has further increased efficiency and allows Fee Earners to be as productive as possible when out of the office.

Thereza Snyman, Head of IT, Kingsley Napley, comments:

Increasingly, Fee Earners have to become more mobile. Being proactive in meeting higher client expectations can translate into stronger relationships. Clients increasingly expect a round the clock, anytime/ anywhere service, so mobility is now a must-have. With BigHand, they can Dictate from anywhere freely, over their mobile device and are not constrained by being in the office nine-to-five.

The power of speech

In late 2014/ early 2015 – as part of the latest upgrade of BigHand – Kingsley Napley took their technology adoption a step further and introduced a proof of concept of BigHand Speech Recognition.

Using ten Fee Earners over a six week period, the firm measured that Dictations were being turned around by an average of 68% faster and with a 97.56% accuracy rate.

Most secretaries working with the Fee Earners on the proof of concept welcomed the changes as they were able to spend their time on more value-added tasks. Kingsley Napley has now adopted a phased roll-out of Speech Recognition across the organisation, with 35 Fee Earners now using the technology regularly and another 35 in training. A few of these Fee Earners are now sending between 94 - 96% of their Dictations through BigHand Speech Recognition, whilst the overall average of Dictations performed through Speech Recognition is of the order of 30 – 35%.

Snyman comments:

We’re seeing a real cultural change within the firm. The demand for mobility has increased exponentially in the last 12 – 18 months and there’s a desire to be able to do anything from anywhere in order to be more agile in responding to clients’ expectations.

"The other driver from within the business is to deploy our Secretarial team more effectively; using a highly skilled Secretary to type out routine attendance notes is not an effective use of time. Speech Recognition ticks both these boxes."