Digital dictation technology has been with us for nearly 15 years. We have seen the steady progression to cassette based recorders at a time when CD's, DVD 's and MP3 recordings have for so long been commonly used. What is a surprise, however, is that the uptake of the technology was so slow in the early years. Indeed, even now, dictation equipment suppliers say that there is a significant proportion of the legal profession that still choose the old mini and micro cassette recorders when it comes to placing new orders.

However, the impleentation of digital dictation can be reasonably cheap and straightforward and most importantly, tends to reduce organisational overheads very soon after implementation.

The Basics

Digital Dictaphones provide all the basic functionality of the traditional mini cassette or micro cassette based recorders. In fact, the configuration of many Digital Dictaphones is such that changing from the old to the new is very easy with similar control positions, slider switches and so on.

In addition to the normal stop, play, record and erase functions, Digital Dictaphones provide a real innovation as to the way in which dictations can be handled. It is possible to edit recordings, insert dictation in the middle of recordings, carry out partial erase functions, email recordings or transfer them over networks. Dictations can be compressed and a conventional handheld recorder will hold up to 11 hours dictation on a memory card.

The Olympus Digital Dictaphone (www.olympus.co.uk/consumer
/2581.htm) that I am using to dictate this article enables me to dictate in any one of five folders and each folder can hold well over 100 recordings. This means that I can separate out recordings as I wish. I store my urgent dictations in one folder, the less urgent in another. Similarly, it is possible to separate out dictations for internal typing or outsourcing and perhaps to keep a separate folder for personal items.

A digital dictaphone endorses each recording with various pertinent items of information, such as:-
• The recording length;
• The priority that the user associates with each recording;
• Date dictation was created; and
• Other data which a user can enter, such as client name and file number

Digital dictation technology and systems can be implemented within a legal environment in a variety of different ways. The two scenarios which follow demonstrate the very simple and the most extreme utilisation of the technology. In practice, firms tend to adopt an infrastructure somewhere in between these two.

Scenario 1 – Standalone
Digital Dictaphones are used on a standalone basis. The user creates dictations, connects the Dictaphone to a PC and transfers the recording from the Dictaphone to the PC. The dictation can then be processed by the fee earner’s secretary or outsourced to a transcription agency which may be onshore or offshore. This level of infrastructure is very easy and cheap to set up. Handheld Dictaphones cost on average £200 including all the necessary software. The installation time is usually no more than 10 minutes including personalisation of the dictaphone settings.

Scenario 2 – Workflow System
Lawyers use a digital dictation device in conjunction with a sophisticated workflow management system operating across a firm’s network. Alternatively they dial into the system from a telephone and record a dictation. They create short distinct dictations, each recording comprising a single item such as a note, memo, fax or letter. The moment the dictation of that item is completed, the workflow system routes the dictation to the designated secretary.

The aim is to improve turnaround times and to ensure the best use of office resources. Workflow management systems will determine how much dictation the secretary has in her pending work queue. If there are other secretaries within the office who have greater capacity then the work will be redirected to them. If the system does not find an individual who is able to create the transcript, then it will look for a secretary in one of the firm’s other offices! Workflow systems have been shown to save businesses many thousands of pounds a year.

There are currently numerous companies offering workflow systems in the marketplace. Key suppliers in this field are nflow (www.nflow.com), BigHand (www.bighand.com) and WinScribe (www.winscribe.com).

nFlow were happy to respond to my enquiries as follows:
"Fee-earners, secretaries and workflow managers are all able to access the solution irrespective of where they are physically located at any point in time. They can use a wide range of mobile devices including Blackberry and Windows Mobile.
The reduced turnaround time for documents, the geographical flexibility for fee-earners and secretaries, and the better management and control all enable the firm to respond faster to clients.
Workflow managers can see the status of each assignment and can undertake workload balancing so that client commitments are always met. They can also view historical reporting data on work throughput.
The scope and extent of functionality nFlow Version 5.0 delivers is exceptional. The solution does not require client side configuration as all user settings, devices settings and hardware driver configuration are served centrally from the server. Users are able to access the system and maintain their user experience, irrespective of the particular machine they are using within the network."

A Lawyer’s Perspective

I have used digital dictation both as a practising solicitor and more recently in business. The technology works very well. There is no physical tape to handle and generally Dictaphones have very few moving parts so that they tend not to go wrong. It is easy to track recordings if needed and dictations can be played back to verify what was in fact dictated from the user’s desktop computer. One downside, however, is that digital dictations when they move to a secretary do not carry with them the relevant matter files. It is therefore necessary for relevant details such as addresses and references for letters to be dictated. Where firms use a case management system, however, the secretary will have access to the relevant details on screen.

Lawyers are now able to outsource their typing needs. Numerous businesses such as my own provide economical, accurate and efficient typing services to the profession. They operate on a 24 hours a day basis dealing with urgent and routine dictations. Such services can bring considerable cost savings to business and provide a flexible scalable service with no ongoing commitment.

A Legal Secretary’s Perspective

From the moment a secretary receives a dictation she will know how long it is. She will have information which will enable her to prioritise her work. The problems of damaged tapes or lost tapes are a thing of the past.
Secretaries working from home no longer need to arrange collection or courier of tapes. Dictations are received online and can be processed within minutes from the dictation having been completed.
nFlow say, "Secretaries are able to better organise their workload as dictations can be broken into individual jobs and then sorted into job lists. These job lists can then be screened so that only the target secretary is able to view the job, ensuring complete client confidentiality. Microsoft Outlook style alerts warn secretaries, both audibly and visually, when new jobs are added to the job lists and when jobs are overdue – even when the user interface is not open. Also, secretaries are able to view department and workgroup job lists, allowing them to cover for their colleagues without having to leave their desks."

Conclusion
It is clear that the days of the cassette based recorder are numbered. Digital dictation technology offers a cost effective solution which can reduce business overheads and improved efficiency.

Sunil K Radia
UKTyping

Sunil Radia has since the mid 1990's run UKTyping
(www.uktyping.com) - a transcription service for Lawyers, Accountants and Doctors which services over 600 clients every day. Prior to this he practised as a solicitor for 13 years first at S J Berwin & Co and then on his own account at The Radia Partnership. UKTyping provides free Dictaphones for Professional Users. The business has clients throughout the United Kingdom and also a sizeable client base in Ireland.

Digital dictation has been one of the few legal technology success stories of recent years, primarily because its use involves virtually no retraining in the way fee-earners dictate and secretaries transcribe – but just what sort of benefits does it really deliver?

This is often problematic because all too often law firms justify their IT investments in terms of ‘soft' benefits, such as ‘it will enable us to provide a better service to clients', without quantifying the details. However, one firm that has recently gone public on the benefits of digital dictation is 26-partner London commercial practice Campbell Hooper. Back in early 2002, the firm was one of the first in the UK to implement a full digital dictation workflow management system, that not only handled dictation but also the movement and management of the electronic files containing the dictation across its computer network between fee-earner and secretary.
Now, after three years of using digital dictation (the firm selected what went on to become the TotalSpeech system from BigHand) it estimates that it has saved more than £400,000 on temporary secretarial cover alone.

In addition, while there may have been no savings in terms of the firm's full-time secretarial staff being made redundant, Campbell Hooper has been able to increase its number of fee-earners from 40 to 48 during this same period without having to make a corresponding increase in its secretarial headcount.

So, expenditure on temps down, fee- earner-to-secretary staff ratios improved and, according to the firm's IT director Chris Simmons, there has also been a considerable improvement in document turnaround times, as well as an end to all the little aggravations that always used to surround analogue dictation systems, such as lost or faulty tapes.

But what about smaller firms which cannot afford, nor need, full-blown workflow management systems? Even here there are potential savings and benefits to be obtained by moving from analogue to digital systems, particularly as most of the stand-alone digital dictation recorders now available (from suppliers such as Olympus, Philips, Grundig and Sanyo) also include some form of PC integration software that allows files to be moved across a network or even sent as a file attachment with an e-mail message.

For example, instead of having to physically deliver tapes for transcription, sole practitioners, who frequently use outside typing agencies, can now transfer dictation files via e-mail and so also benefit from improved document turnaround times.
Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society's Software Solutions guide

Outsourcing and Off-shoring for Lawyers using the Internet by Sunil Radia

Outsourcing is the practice by which work is sent outside of one's own business to businesses which provide the service as a specialism. In doing this the business outsourcing the work can free itself to deal with its core activities. Outsourcing, in most cases, will produce reductions in business overheads and therefore improve the bottom line.

Off-shoring involves outsourcing work to lower cost environments overseas. This is still a fairly new concept having been introduced to the legal sector some 7 years ago and having expanded considerably in the last 24 months. We regularly hear of call centres and customer care centres being operated from India. Off-shoring is now fully available to legal professionals.

What can be outsourced?

The simplest business processes that can be outsourced are data entry, typing, transcription, database management, discovery and disclosure for litigators, type setting and other routine, repetitive functions. The provision of legal services and some IT functions (including web site development and management) can also be outsourced economically but require a substantial commitment in training and to the establishment of systems and operating protocols between the parties involved.
Hemel Hempstead based Underwood Solicitors recently announced their intention to provide legal support for personal injury cases from South Africa. This is one of the most significant developments in recent months in the context of off-shoring for lawyers. The majority of firms that have taken advantage of outsourcing and off-shoring have used it for back office processes such as administration, data base management and accounting. A large number of firms and indeed many hundreds of lawyers are now off-shoring their typing requirements.

A bit about the Radia Parnership and UKTyping

I am a solicitor practising as a partner in the style of The Radia Partnership http://www.radialaw.com . My partner is my brother who is a dual graduate (Computational Science and Law). We have set up a business called UKTyping www.uktyping.com which has facilitated off-shoring for UK professionals since 1997. UKTyping provides typing, transcription, data base management, document management and discovery and disclosure processes for lawyers.

The fact that we are solicitors helps in that we understand the professional constraints and fears that fellow professionals may have in outsourcing. We are able to deal with issues such as confidentiality, Law Society Requirements and Data Protection to clients' satisfaction.

The Indian end of the venture is mainly in Delhi although some specialist medico legal and dental legal typing is carried out in Bangalore. We also type in South Africa and provide some data entry services such as time sheet posting from Sri Lanka.

In terms of technical infrastructure, it was the launch of the Olympus digital dictation suite around 7 years ago which provided the economical and reliable means of transmitting recordings over the internet which we needed. I believe that Olympus still make the best digital dictation equipment although Philips have made substantial advances recently.
Benefits of Outsourcing - Case Study

The benefits of outsourcing and particularly off-shoring can be best illustrated with a case study using typing and transcription services as an example. A two partner seven lawyer solicitors practice in the Cambridge area employs 4 legal secretaries (3 full time and 1 part time/evenings). The average remuneration for a full time legal secretary in the area is £15,000 per annum. The actual cost of a secretary to the business after other overheads is £21,000 excluding bonuses and perks. The firm has a mixture of privately funded private client, commercial and property work as well as an element of family law work which is both privately funded and funded by the Community Legal Service. The practice generates approximately 15% of its revenues from criminal law work. The challenges the practice faces are:

(i) The need to remain competitive and also to reduce its overheads with a view to making criminal work and funded family law profitable.

(ii) To make more efficient and economical the firm's typing and transcription processes and to reduce typing backlog without increasing overheads.

(iii) To tackle the very high cost of temp secretaries when employed secretaries are away from the office.

(iv) To tackle a situation where at times one or more secretaries may be inundated with work whilst other departments may have staff who are not busy at all.
The partners decide to outsource typing and transcription work to an off-shore agency and make enquiries of various providers including UKTyping. They decide initially to carry out a trial with one of the senior assistant solicitors sending out non-urgent dictation such as attendance notes and statements. They manage to take advantage of a free trial for a few days before deciding to proceed on a paid basis. Within a month five lawyers within the practice are using the outsourced typing service for their routine correspondence taking advantage of a guaranteed 24 hour turnaround. The immediate effect was that all backlog was cleared and that employed staff within the office were able to deal with daily urgent typing requirements, assist with administration, client care and such matters. The need for an evening secretary to clear backlog was eliminated and temp secretaries were no longer needed. The annual cost of typing per off-shore secretary was less than £9,000. With natural staff wastage the firm's fee earner to secretary ratio was reduced from one:two to one:four. In fact the only secretaries employed within the practice were two secretaries who performed all the office administrative functions, dealt with urgent typing requirements and assisted with data entry such as time sheet posting and the like.

The savings to the practice were immediate and considerable. The only notable disadvantage to fee earners was that they were unable to pass the files with the dictation to the secretaries and therefore needed to dictate names, addresses and references which would otherwise have been available to the secretary from the file.

India as an Outsourcing Centre

The main outsourcing centres currently in use by western countries are China, India, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The case study referred to above related to the submission of work to India for typing and transcription. All the major multinational IT companies now have a substantial work force in India. India has an anticipated revenue estimation this year purely from typing and transcription services of $900 million.
India has several advantages as an off-shoring centre:

i) India has a very high level of literacy. Most graduates will take second degrees and often professional qualifications. Staff employed by UKTyping are either graduates or double graduates and some of them have MBAs. Several of the individuals are retired lawyers who prefer to provide transcription and quality control / audit services to typists.

ii) India is a lower cost environment and whilst transcriptionists, in view of their experience, education and expertise demand far higher salaries than many other skilled individuals, the charges are far lower than charges that would be payable to a secretary in the United Kingdom.

iii) English is the main commercial language in India and the English legal system forms the basis of the Indian one.

Potential Pitfalls and Problems

Outsourcing and off-shoring arrangements must be appropriately structured from the outset. If the UK organisation is to employ its own staff and to set up a base then it will need team leaders who are willing to deal with the difficulties in dealing with Indian bureaucracy and set up problems with infrastructure such as the arrangement of phone lines, broadband connections and so on. The set up process can take up to two years. Staff turnover can be high particularly within fields where work is laborious or mundane. It is necessary to provide motivational support to staff, days out together, and team building weekends. It is often easier to arrange a joint venture with an established Indian organisation with a view to enhancing the speed with which the venture can be established.

Issues such as confidentiality, data protection and other local and EU legislation need to be accounted for. British Standards now deal with the provision of services and outsourcing. Lawyers and accountants can have particular difficulty in ensuring that they comply not only with the Data Protection Act requirements but also that their Clients are correctly and appropriately notified of the relevant arrangements in their client care or engagement letters.
Whilst the time difference between the United Kingdom and India is of advantage in enhancing turnaround rates it can cause difficulty in the management of work carried out in India from the UK. This will require team leaders in the UK to be in contact with the Indian workforce from 2.30am UK time. A lot of these issues can be alleviated by an appropriate web interface allowing workflow management and monitoring from the UK both by team leaders with relevant access being provided to Clients so that they can monitor their own work. The UKTyping website allows users to log on, to submit work, to receive work, to monitor progress and to raise any relevant questions or concerns.

One of the greatest difficulties in outsourcing services where there is either direct or indirect contact between clients or customers in the UK and providers in India is the difference in cultural background, the lack of local knowledge on the part of operators in India and often the difficulty in understanding accents. This is also relevant in the field of typing and transcription. As a result it is often necessary for work to be quality checked and audited by experienced staff in the UK. All services provided by UKTyping are quality checked by experienced legal and medical secretaries in the UK prior to the submission of work to client firms.

Summary

Undoubtably the outsourcing and off-shoring of relevant business processes to lower cost environments will become the norm. This will be a matter of necessity rather than choice. In setting up such operations, however, one needs to be diligent in choosing the most appropriate off-shoring centre identifying the facilities and skills that are available at that centre. Management from the UK of the production centre is critically important if standards and quality are to be maintained.

The considerable benefits of off-shoring and outsourcing outweigh the initial difficulties in setting up such an operation and the time and money invested in the establishment of such an operation is recouped within a matter of months.
Sunil Radia is a partner in The Radia Partnership, www.radialaw.com and also represents UKTyping, www.uktyping.com. Email skr@radialaw.com.

Legal secretaries are currently in such short supply that many law firms across the UK have been forced to consider candidates with no experience of legal document drafting or other law firm-specific secretarial work.

The claim has been published in a salary survey of support staff commissioned by Angela Mortimer, a recruitment consultant, which in addition suggests that in job interviews, secretaries are increasingly demanding the opportunity to progress from a purely support role to a fee-earning position within the firm. The survey also found that most legal secretaries are already studying for ILEX or for some other, similar professional qualification.

Substantial salary gaps between law firms in different regions of the country were also revealed by the survey, with London-based secretaries earning nearly twice as much as their counterparts in Birmingham. In London, a typical salary for an associate-level secretary is £28,000, while in Birmingham a similar role pays only £16,000 per annum — equivalent to the most junior-level salaries in the capital.

Salaries for temporary secretaries varied less between the two cities, with those in London commanding £14,400, compared with just under £10,000 in Birmingham. At the most senior level, partnership secretaries could expect about £30,000 in London but typically no more than £19,000 in Birmingham, the survey found.

Angela Mortimer, chair of the eponymous recruitment agency, said: "This survey is the most extensive listing we have ever compiled and really serves to demonstrate the disparity in incomes across certain sectors and within the industry as a whole."
She added: "If managers know what is motivating their candidates, whether it be salary, opportunity, challenge or feeling comfortable in the culture of the agency, it will go a long way towards improving staff motivation and ultimately output."

The economic dip has forced firms to reassess their costs.

One way to cut them is to outsource work - an idea embraced by Allen & Overy.

Philip Hoult examines the pros and cons of sending back-office work to a country such as India The news that City firm Allen & Overy (A&O) is set to outsource part of its document production department to a company based in India will have made senior management at law firms across the City and beyond sit up and take notice - not least because the firm estimated that it could make an annual seven-figure saving.

Even the role of the professional support lawyer is now seen as a potential area to outsource. 'There is a pressure to re-engineer costs to make sure that the businesses are being run in the best and most profitable way,' explains management consultant David Temporal of London-based Temporal Consulting.

'That law firms are doing this is no surprise because international organisations in competitive environments have got to look at how efficiencies can be achieved.' This pressure on costs - and running a law firm is certainly a high-overhead business - has been accentuated by the slowing down in transactional work following the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early part of this decade. Since this shortfall in work has not been completely compensated for by any upturn in counter-cyclical areas such as litigation, corporate recovery and employment, managers at law firms have had to examine their cost bases closely in a bid to halt or at least slow any decline in profitability. They are driven by the fear that any fall in profits relative to rivals will make their firms vulnerable to partner defections. However, until now there have been several obstacles that have made law firm managers hesitant to introduce wide-scale outsourcing in the way that many of their clients have.

The most important of these has been the issue of security and confidentiality, both vital to a firm.
But technological advancements, including the use of 'virtual private networks', mean these concerns have largely been addressed to the satisfaction of firms' IT departments. The likely quality of the outsourced service has also been a concern.

Speaking at the Law Society annual conference last month, John Heller, chief executive of bulk conveyancer Hammonds Direct, which has outsourced to India, said the firm was 'just taking it very slowly' because of this. India has proved popular because graduate-level staff can be employed and the time difference allows for work to be turned around overnight.

North London solicitor Sunil Radia, who also runs outsourcing service UK Typing in India, says he handles the dictation of hundreds of fee-earners, including the claims unit of London firm KSB Law.

Word files containing digital dictation are e-mailed overnight to India, where they are transcribed by qualified legal secretaries……….. and he has set up a training scheme for secretaries there. To counter any concerns about quality, the service has been modified so that now all documents are quality checked by legal secretaries in the UK before being returned to the fee-earner by 9am.

One of the significant aspects of the A&O pilot was that it involved 'blind testing' of fee-earners and other users of the document production department - basically this means fee-earners had no idea whether their work was being done in London or India. Allen & Overy's head of operational services, Steven Chernikeeff, says he also spent much time with various parts of the business to ensure they were happy with what was being proposed. 'It took a lot of influencing skills - we had to explain very carefully what we were trying to do,' he says.
'The senior partner, the managing partner and the finance director were all very supportive.' Law firm managers have often shied away from outsourcing because of worries over the potential effect on staff morale, particularly among support services.

That staff might be worried about their future is not surprising, but outsourcing is not necessarily all about a firm cutting a swathe through its headcount.

Instead, it can be used as an opportunity to re-skill employees or to allow them to concentrate on more rewarding work. Mr Gould says the firm's outsourcing of its IT infrastructure means the members of his IT department no longer have to do as much drudge work as in the past, such as all the backing-up that was required. Instead, they can concentrate on the development work that can provide much greater benefit to the firm.

The arrangements at Charles Russell did not involve any job losses but have delivered significant cost savings. Another reason why firms have gradually become more comfortable with outsourcing is that they have advised many of their clients on such projects.

They are now aware of many of the potential pitfalls and how best to avoid them, and are able to prepare service-level agreements that will deliver the predicted benefits. 'The problem in the past was that people did not know what they were letting themselves in for,' says Tony Williams, founder of management consultancy Jomati and former managing partner at both Clifford Chance and Andersen Legal.
'Firms know what they want and can put that into a service-level agreement.

The outsourcing industry started off with very big projects but is now coming down in scale and can operate in a way which is credible with law firms.' As these barriers to outsourcing are gradually removed, more and more firms are likely to make the switch at least in some parts of their operations - Mr Radia says he is in talks to move beyond just secretarial work in India and into being a call centre for a personal injury firm and even handle insurance claims.



Philip Hoult is a freelance journalist - Article from The Law Society's Gazette.

The traditional British Secretary is under threat from a cut price rival who's based in India and is a man! Scotland's law firms are being offered the chance to cash in on the long distance secretaries who cost as little as £10,000 a year. London based UK Typing says on top of their low wages the staff save bosses a fortune by cutting out national insurance, holiday and sick pay, pension contributions and accommodation costs. UKTyping already does work for hundreds of [professionals] in England and last week launched a drive for clients among Scotland's solicitors. Lawyer Sunil Radia who runs the agency said "we have had a good response with about 80 firms asking for more information and a dozen signing up for a free trial." "A legal secretary in London can command a salary of £35,000 but we can provide a year's typing for [less than] £10,000. Obviously our staff can't do the entire job of a trained secretary but we can take on the mundane work so a firm with 10 secretaries could get by with 6."
One London law firm, which has just signed up with another agency to use Indian staff to process documents, expects to save a seven figure sum but could be forced to lay off 50 staff. UK Typing says its secretaries work in Delhi while their British bosses sleep due to the time difference. Businessmen dictate letters and notes digitally and email them to India, where secretaries transcribe them. Mr Radia said, "they're all graduates and most are men. We have secretaries … who are trained to understand legal language. Our typists may face a steep learning curve to master the Scottish accent and legal system but when the finished work is sent back it will be checked by legal secretaries in the UK who are experienced in law. " Mr Radia said, "our staff are employed on fair terms at market rates. They are employed in competitive market conditions and the question of unacceptable working conditions, standards and remuneration does not arise. We offer clients the chance to go to Delhi to see the working conditions first hand and to meet their secretary". Once Scots lawyer who signed up for the free trial said, "it would certainly be a way to save money. I have to pay £12,000 for a typist or £16,000 for a legal secretary."

The traditional British Secretary is under threat from a cut price rival who's based in India and is a man! Scotland's law firms are being offered the chance to cash in on the long distance secretaries who cost as little as £10,000 a year. London based UK Typing says on top of their low wages the staff save bosses a fortune by cutting out national insurance, holiday and sick pay, pension contributions and accommodation costs. UKTyping already does work for hundreds of [professionals] in England and last week launched a drive for clients among Scotland's solicitors. Lawyer Sunil Radia who runs the agency said "we have had a good response with about 80 firms asking for more information and a dozen signing up for a free trial." "A legal secretary in London can command a salary of £35,000 but we can provide a year's typing for [less than] £10,000. Obviously our staff can't do the entire job of a trained secretary but we can take on the mundane work so a firm with 10 secretaries could get by with 6."
One London law firm, which has just signed up with another agency to use Indian staff to process documents, expects to save a seven figure sum but could be forced to lay off 50 staff. UK Typing says its secretaries work in Delhi while their British bosses sleep due to the time difference. Businessmen dictate letters and notes digitally and email them to India, where secretaries transcribe them. Mr Radia said, "they're all graduates and most are men. We have secretaries … who are trained to understand legal language. Our typists may face a steep learning curve to master the Scottish accent and legal system but when the finished work is sent back it will be checked by legal secretaries in the UK who are experienced in law. " Mr Radia said, "our staff are employed on fair terms at market rates. They are employed in competitive market conditions and the question of unacceptable working conditions, standards and remuneration does not arise. We offer clients the chance to go to Delhi to see the working conditions first hand and to meet their secretary". Once Scots lawyer who signed up for the free trial said, "it would certainly be a way to save money. I have to pay £12,000 for a typist or £16,000 for a legal secretary."

Legal secretaries are the next to face the chop in the City after Allen & Overy revealed plans to redefine their roles in a move that could see some lose their jobs, but survivors taking on wider-ranging functions. It comes in the same week that a north London solicitor is targeting other law firms with a typing company in India that could make secretaries redundant by transcribing digitally dictated notes overnight.
A&O is making its move in response to a survey undertaken by PA Consulting, which highlighted concerns with the consistency and quality of administrative support within the firm. The survey revealed that at times, lines of communication between secretaries and document production staff, and fee-earners were blurred, and secretaries sometimes felt under-utilised. The secretarial role is to be redefined to include more client-related work, including marketing support, transaction administration and billing. New grades will be given to secretaries who will be assessed on a more consistent basis. Some 150 secretaries in the corporate, banking, and pensions, employment and incentives departments will be assessed in the next two months by PA Consulting. It is expected that other departments will follow later.

The results of the assessment will be considered by the firm in deciding whether secretaries are suitable for the new role. A spokesman said the firm was expecting redundancies, adding: 'This is not just a candyfloss exercise. It will be a rigorous process.' Voluntary redundancies will also be considered, but he stressed that there is no preordained number of job losses. He added: 'Secretaries are the one unreconstructed area in the firm, and most welcome the new role.' Meanwhile, Sunil Radia, a partner in Harrow firm The Radia Partnership, is marketing his outsourcing service UK Typing to law firms that have embraced digital dictation.

His firm currently sends Word files containing dictation via e-mail to offices in Delhi, where they are typed up by qualified legal secretaries and returned to the UK by nine o'clock the next morning. Mr Radia, who is of Indian extraction, began work on the project some years ago and said India was perfect because it was daytime there during the UK night and had an English-style legal system. 'We took on two staff in India and started to use ourselves as guinea pigs,' he said. 'When we started the venture, our firm had two full-time and two part-time secretaries, as well as an administrator. Now, due to outsourcing, we just have one part-time secretary - the cost savings are massive.' It also offered overnight delivery and more office space owing to the absence of superfluous staff and machinery, he said.

Typing pool to equity pool FIRMS ARE recognising the value of giving training to NON-LEGAL STAFF.
LINDA TSANG REPORTS Non-legal staff are no longer just the people who type the letters and collect the post.

With the general shortage of young lawyers and ever-present competitive pressures on firms, the importance of non-legal staff is growing rapidly. And training is no longer just what a firm's lawyers receive.

Training is now a priority for non-legal staff too, both with the aim of improving what non-legal staff already do and opening up career horizons for them.

Chichester-based Thomas Eggar Church Adams is an example of the former.

One of the leading practices for financial services work, it has hived off that part of its practice into a separate company, Thesis Asset Management. John Stapleton, managing partner of the law firm and chairman of the financial services business, says: 'The firm facilitates training and there is a clear divide between the lawyers and the financial staff.

We facilitate training across the firm, and the advisers in the financial planning department of Thesis all have financial planning certificates under IMRO [Investment Management Regulatory Organisation] so that they can give that advice, with a per capita allocation for that training'. As an example of the latter, top Sheffield practice Irwin Mitchell recently became the first major law firm to offer in-house legal executive training to secretarial and paralegal staff. To achieve this, the firm approached John Westwood, managing director of ILEX Paralegal Training.

He says that recent changes in the legal profession and practice have already led to law firms having to rethink the training of all employees.
'Firms are becoming more conscious that training is an important aspect across the board, from the senior partner down.

Until recently, the emphasis in most firms was on CPD for the lawyers and how they could complete the compulsory number of hours needed. 'In contrast, the training of support staff was not usually high on the list of priorities.

Generally, it was for the support staff to organise their own evening classes if they wanted training, but it was certainly not formalised or provided professionally.

But recently, with the introduction of the Legal Services Commission and the requirements in relation to legal aid franchising and contracting, firms have realised that training is an important element of the firm's practice.' The Irwin Mitchell programme is essentially a modern legal apprenticeship, with the option to move on to the Institute of Legal Executives qualifications, and staff can gain an NVQ (National Vocational Qualification), a legal secretarial diploma, or a paralegal certificate.

The programmes provided by Mr Westwood's company are based on NVQs, and so can attract funding from TECs (Training Enterprise Councils, which become Learning and Skills Councils in April 2001). David Body, the partner in charge of training in the personal injury department at Irwin Mitchell, says: 'The idea was to bring all aspects of that training in-house and to make it more attractive to both secretaries and paralegals. 'The training is now available in all our offices, and we are working on bringing in, next term, those who are already doing part 2 of the ILEX programme under their own steam.

We are pleased with the take-up since September, and the general feedback has also been favourable.
Of course, it doesn't make getting the ILEX qualification easier, but bringing all the stages in-house does ease up on the practicalities.' The training can be provided by an educational institution (at Irwin Mitchell, it is from lecturers from Sutton Coldfield College ), or by an independent training provider.

There is scope for flexibility, depending on what is negotiated between the firm and the training provider and assessors.

Mr Westwood says: 'You can have the training providers go into the firm once a month to give the staff an underpinning knowledge and that can also cover assessment so the staff do not lose out by having to take time to go somewhere else to be trained.

The advantages are obvious: the trainers go to the firm, the firm gets trained staff in-house, financial support is available, and the training providers have customers.' One former secretary at Irwin Mitchell is now a paralegal at the firm and is doing the ILEX programme.

Kathryn Clarkson was a secretary for more than 12 years, and says: 'It is a culture shock switching to being a paralegal and doing the course, but it is a chance to get more client contact and use the skills I learned as a secretary.' In the Sheffield office, 20 employees, including paralegals, current and former secretaries attend the practice-and-law sessions every Monday and Friday mornings.

She adds: 'For the secretaries, it also gives them another option if they want to switch to practice.' Mr Westwood comments that in relation to the secretarial qualification side, this is a sensible move because of the current shortage of legal secretaries.
He says: 'Legal secretaries are increasingly seen as an essential cog in the working of any law firm.' And staff development at Milton Keynes firm Fennemores is so advanced that a partner was appointed recently who had begun at the firm as a secretary.

Training manager Patricia Watson says: 'With continued support and encouragement from the firm and her own dedication to study, sheer hard work, and perseverance, she has achieved a first-class degree in law followed by distinctions and prizes at law school and rapid progression to partnership.' She adds: 'The firm is conscious of the benefits of training and is therefore very supportive in encouraging all its employees to enhance their performance in the workplace by developing their skills and knowledge.' Non-legal staff at the firm such as junior secretaries have combined studying for the Modern Apprenticeship and the ILEX Legal Secretaries Diploma.

Last year, five secretaries at Fennemores were the first in the country to complete the new Modern Apprenticeship in Business Administration, together with merits and distinctions in the ILEX components of legal practice, audio-text, and information processing.

They have then been able to progress further to take ILEX Paralegal Vocational qualifications or ILEX professional examinations.

Work-based training is becoming an increasingly regular feature in all businesses, where employees are assessed on their abilities and competence in the workplace instead of only on passing exams, and that is increasingly attractive to businesses such as law firms. Mr Westwood says the rationale for firm-wide training is obvious.
He says: 'Whether it is meeting the criteria for getting a quality mark or the requisite for legal aid practice or just improving the firm, training tends to have a domino effect - it encompasses everyone in the firm, and firms are realising that the training will pay dividends in terms of staff retention and client care, and that is the most effective argument for it.' Both internally and externally, firms are having to meet other criteria, with quality marks such as the Law Society's Lexcel, ISO or Investors in People.

The larger firms normally have resources to provide training in-house, and have been doing that for years.

Nick Jarrett-Kerr, management board chairman at south-west firm Bevan Ashford, says: 'We have had an ongoing programme to build on the technical training that we have always given across the firm, since we got Investors in People four years ago, and that covers everything from file management, to developing other skills such as mentoring and management. 'It is not particularly rocket science but you should try to be methodical about it.

Essentially, it is about enhancing and developing an individual, and the training is focused on the needs of that individual.' And Irwin Mitchell's Mr Body is also looking at going further with in-house training: 'Once the full ILEX programme is set, the next project is to get the in-house training schemes accredited so that the qualified staff can do an in-house LLM [Masters in Law].

As for why, why not? Everyone from the most junior to the most senior should have the opportunity to do something new to develop their career.' Linda Tsang is a freelance journalist