Moores’ increases efficiency, reduces risk behind BigHand Speech Recognition

BigHand digital dictation and speech recognition solutions enabled Moores to leverage internal efficiency and effectiveness whilst keeping its own costs in check.

SYDNEY - Melbourne based law firm Moores is taking a different approach to the business of law. With a team of around 90 people, half of whom are lawyers,

Moores has a stated intent to work with clients to create value at a pre-agreed fixed price; what it terms “MAP” – Moores Agreed Pricing. Moving to BigHand digital dictation and speech recognition solution has enabled Moores to leverage internal efficiency and effectiveness in order to keep its own costs in check.

ICT Manager, Lee Oliphant, explains that while the firm had been using a standalone digital dictation system, it was not centralised and did not offer workflow management. Dictation files were stored on the central file system along with all other files which led to a lack of transparency.

“You could not tell who was doing what and how,” says Oliphant.

There were also occasions when voice files could not be recovered from the system, adding an unhelpful measure of risk to the business as well as unnecessary IT time lost day to day in attempting to resolve these issues.

Oliphant had previously worked in a UK law firm that used BigHand’s digital dictation system some years back so he was already aware of its capability. Working with a team comprising ICT staff, lawyers, PAs and the firm’s Managing Principal, Oliphant assessed the current market and put the various dictation solutions through their paces - selecting BigHand from a shortlist.

Today, everyone in the firm has access to BigHand and those who want to dictate on the run do this easily through the BigHand mobile application from their smartphone or tablet.

“The real benefit comes from the workflow,” says Oliphant. “You get the visibility of your jobs – you can see when the PA has started working on a dictation, that it’s in progress and when it’s done.” Lawyers are able to view dictation status updates from both their desktop or from their smart device anywhere, anytime.

Automatic transcription of text using the BigHand Speech Recognition module is also utilised by the firm. Oliphant says that whilst a number of lawyers have this technology the added power is the ability of the PAs to choose to route dictations to the speech recognition workflow if they are snowed with other work, providing them with their own virtual assistant.