12 January, 2015 - Earlier this year, Manchester-based law firm Berg Legal, extended their long standing relationship with BigHand and decided to upgrade their software to include speech recognition in their solution. While they achieved the expected outcomes using speech recognition such as quicker turnaround on documents and reduced backlogs, they were surprised by the positive impact the software had on its secretarial team.

Lorraine Walker, Secretary at Berg Legal says: “I personally feel that speech recognition has made it much easier to process dictations. For example, recently I did three dictations for one of our solicitors, approximately eight minutes in total, using speech recognition, while one of the other secretaries did an eight minute dictation for another solicitor and she typed hers out from scratch.  Whilst I did not time her I know it took her at least twice as long as me to process the dictation. Using speech recognition software, dictations are processed much more quickly, thus freeing up secretaries to do other tasks within the office.”

Because fee-earners are able to send their documents such as emails/letters, file and attendance notes, meeting minutes etc directly to speech recognition it reduces the time needed for secretaries to manually transcribe these documents. This means work is being processed quicker allowing them to create more time during their working day to enhance their roles by performing more value-add tasks, taking on more responsibilities and better enabling them to support fee earners. This has led to increased motivation and productivity among the team.

Beverly Patchett, Secretary at Berg Legal comments: “I have proof-read speech recognition for a number of fee earners and found it to be of a very high standard which only in some instances require minor changes.  Proofreading Speech Recognition, especially on long dictations, is highly resourceful and work can be turned around quickly – allowing you to get on with admin tasks, e.g. filing, etc.  I’ve welcomed the technology – as technology is an ever evolving part of our lives and we have to move with the times – no matter how old we are!”

In addition to having more time to do other tasks, secretaries are now able to cover work for colleagues who are ill or away on annual leave, without the firm having to spend time and money on recruiting and training cover staff.

Ben Mills, Managing Director of International Legal & Professional, stated: “This type of feedback is becoming more common. Secretaries now see the benefits of speech recognition; they are viewing it as an opportunity to further enhance their careers and focus on the most valuable aspects of their roles. Over the last few months we have had an increasing number of enquiries from IT teams as a result of secretaries hearing about the benefits of speech recognition from secretaries at other firms where it is already in use."