Why did you choose BigHand Workflow Management?

My involvement came when we had the Workflow implementation. So I've been in IT around about four years. It was to do with the workflow, and that's really helped us to have an overall site of what's basically going on in terms of our secretaries and where the workflows are going and how busy each department is.

That's really why we picked the solution in terms of BigHand. That was a very long time ago that we've been working with them since, everything's all good.

What additional tasks can be done more efficiently with the support of the technology?

They [support staff] are definitely helping out with more sort of legal work. So, legal assistant work and being more conducive and helpful to the actual fee earners in department, because we've got a centralized team that take care of things like attendance notes and stuff like that.

BigHand Workflow Management has really allowed us to make sure that we've got a proper spread of the work with more experienced secretaries helping out with the more legal stuff. 

How does the solution benefit client service?

A quicker turnaround of things, definitely a quicker turnaround. I guess that's what everybody says. But it's definitely a quicker turnaround and more informed updates, because it's not just the fee earner having to spend time updating the client. We're now getting secretaries that are well versed in the actual files, being able to do that.

How have you found using the technology?

Super easy. You don't have to be a developer or a coder in terms of using BigHand. I've been able to do the forms myself and I come from a secretarial fee earner background, so I've got no development experience at all, but I do all the forms myself. Super, super easy. If I can do it, anybody can do it.

What advice would you give to other firms that only use dictation?

The advice I'd give is you need to have evidence of where your work is going. If you don't have the evidence of where your work is going, then you can't really work on sort of recruitment, where you're going to be placing secretaries, when the business is more busy, without that oversight, with BigHand Now.

In the forms, you just don't have that and dictation is dying out very, very quickly. We're seeing forms are overtaking dictation, and that's definitely a trend that we've seen over the last 12 months. That's only getting more and more stronger.

How would your support staff feel if the technology was removed?

I think they'd shout at me if we took it away, to be fair. We wouldn't have the oversight that we've got at the moment of how busy certain departments are, where to place, float secretaries, that kind of thing. Without it, and without that Reporting Suite, I think we'd be working blind really.