Today, Midlands law firm Wright Hassall Solicitors, announce the details of their decision to roll out BigHand Speech Recognition and workflow automation tool, BigHand SmartNote, to support their drive into the UK Legal Top 100.

The firm, which has already achieved a 40% growth over the last two years as a result of "making their processes sharper," were on the lookout for a solution to replace their legacy Digital Dictation provider. Martyn Wells, IT Director, adds, "we wanted a partner who understood the intricacies of the legal market, BigHand were the obvious choice."

Their objective, which will resonate with many firms, was clear; They wanted to help their Fee Earners become more productive by lifting the burden of tasks which, with automation, could be completed in a more time and cost effective way. In the early stages of the project, time consuming processes such as the production of attendance notes were identified as being essential yet added very little value. The solution chosen was BigHand SmartNote, which uses BigHand Speech Recognition and advanced workflow tools to automate the production of non-chargeable documentation such as file, attendance and telephone notes.

Martyn explains: "BigHand SmartNote has had a dramatic effect. Not only are Fee Earners saving time, but we have been able to refocus the efforts of our secretaries to more compliance-based tasks, such as file closure, better money laundering checks, and scanning more work. This in itself has a monetary benefit as we’re saving on the amount of paper archiving we have to do. In the case of our conveyancing team, we have been able to convert the secretarial resource into helping with Fee Earning work, so we’ve increased fee income."

Looking ahead, Wright Hassall intends to focus on case management and is looking into tools that will further improve and automate workflows to make for smarter business management across the firm. Martyn concludes, "BigHand is underpinning how we work smarter as a firm to assist with our organic growth ambitions."

The full case study is available here and outlines the project in detail including the firms objectives, the technology implemented and the key successes and benefits realised.