The UK is leaving the EU on 31 December 2020, and 2019 has been a ‘transition period’ during which arrangements for the UK’s departure from both the single market and EU laws are being worked through. The legal sector has already been very busy in its preparations for life fully outside the EU, and that work continues. Once we are into 2021, the sector will doubtless find itself helping clients navigate the new environment. This is all made more challenging by our very sudden move to working from home earlier this year, and by the clear knowledge that working from home is the ‘new normal’.
In the midst of all the challenges the legal sector faces around preparing its clients for Brexit and dealing with the ‘new normal’ of working from home, its ‘bread and butter’ legal work continues. It’s a complicated mix, presenting clear challenges of productivity and efficiency, and a need to maximise the benefits of collaborative working. To avoid being overwhelmed by ongoing pressures, legal firms need to examine every aspect of the businesses to see where they can be more efficient in their use of time and resources.
Our recent survey on the use of Dragon speech recognition within the legal profession provides very useful insights. The survey, of legal professionals and IT decision makers showed how much dictation to text software can help boost efficiency. Here are some of our key findings, and what they mean for legal professionals:
- 70% of IT decision makers in legal firms said productivity tools are a great investment with regards to staying competitive in the future. We think this means technologies like Dragon speech to text has a big part to play because legal professionals spend a lot of their time on document creation. In fact, they told us in the survey that they spent an average of three hours a day typing. This is time they could spend using Dragon dictation to text software, which is up to three times faster than typing.
- 94% said they used external transcription services, but only 5% said they did so on a regular basis. We think there is huge potential to eliminate irregular and unplanned expenditure that’s hard to budget for by using Dragon. By making the move to Dragon firms could also reduce their reliance on potentially slow external services provided by people who don’t know their ways of working, and instead focus on using internal team members who are embedded in the firm.
- 83% told us they felt properly prepared for working from home before Covid-19 because they were using speech recognition. We think this means significant numbers are still missing out.
Here’s something a legal firm told us about how Dragon has transformed its way of working:
“It is a modern tool that’s really relevant for a modern way of billing. Therefore, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Dragon to other legal professionals.”
Joanne Williams, McKeag & Co
There is a lot more detail in our report Speech Recognition: a new way of working for legal professionals Download your free copy here.