Digital dictation in its simplest form is merely the recording of your voice using a handheld or other device without the use of tapes. The recording is stored digitally in much the same way that information is stored on a CD.

The recording is electronically transferred to your PC or that of a secretary for transcription, usually over your computer network.

Digital dictation is not speech recognition, despite the fact that many of the current digital dictation vendors started off as suppliers of speech recognition technology.

Speech recognition involves the computer trying to understand and automatically transcribe what you have recorded. Digital dictation is merely the process of taking a digital recording and transferring it to the most appropriate person for transcription.

While there is some very good speech recognition software on the market and it can have a role to play in the modern law firm, it is a different technology and currently has less tangible benefits than straightforward digital dictation.

There are essentially 2 components to a digital dictation solution:

1) The hardware

This consists of either a portable handheld digital dictation unit, a handset tethered to the PC or a headset and microphone solution. In addition it is often possible to dictate using a telephone.

2) The software

The software records your dictation, allows it to be routed to an appropriate person for transcription, and facilitates the actual transcription by allowing the recording to be started, stopped and wound back and forth etc.

In addition some solutions have powerful reporting and workflow capabilities for managing large or distributed teams of transcriptionists.

Note: Some of the software solutions require servers and specialist software in order to function.

3) Services

Using digital dictation makes it easy to use outsourced transcription services. Such facilities provide you with on-demand secretarial resource often at a fraction of what it would cost to maintain secretarial resource in house.

Some firms are starting to use outsourced transcription as a means to provide cover for staff on holiday or to provide evening and weekend/extra hours cover without having to employ more staff or use expensive agency PAs.

Other firms are simply not replacing secretaries with they leave the firm and are instead opting to use an outsourced transcription service thereby reducing secretarial resource over time.

Sole practitioners and new start-ups are ideal candidates for outsourced transcription as it can eliminate the overhead of employee PAs or using agency resources or at least delay the moment that this overhead needs to be taken onboard.

Outsourced transcription services can be supported by most of the digital dictation systems on the market.

The simpler systems work be emailing the transcription file off and then the finished document is also returned by email. The more sophisticated and expensive systems have more seamless integration often with an tick box or similar on the fee earners screen which lets them determine if a particular dictation is suitable for outsourced transcription. The system will then automatically route the dictation to the transcription agency and manage the tracking of it.

When evaluating digital dictation technology or implementing it within your firm you should be aware of what these services offer and how they can play a part in reducing your costs or enhancing your service offering.

Having no tapes and therefore no mechanical parts, digital dictation solutions are inherently more robust. There are no tapes to get broken, lost or worn-out.

Being digital, the sound quality is inherently better and there will be less issues with secretaries being unable to hear or miss-hearing key passages etc.

Traditionally fee earners have sent completed tapes to a secretary which means that one tape may have a significant amount of work/dictation on it. Secretaries have often been reluctant to start tapes at the end of the day or before natural breaks in the working day etc. and this can lead to inefficiency.

With digital dictation, each job is sent to the secretary individually so should only be a maximum of a few minutes long. These smaller jobs are much easier to organise, schedule and fit around the interruptions of the working day.

The more sophisticated solutions have complex workflow solutions which let dictation jobs be routed around an organisation, between teams, offices and departments etc. according to when and where work needs to be done.

Digital dictation throws up a whole heap of opportunities for making your business processes more efficient. As a result time savings and productivity efficiencies can be achieved.

Simply implementing digital dictation out-of-the-box will not necessarily give you these benefits.

In conjunction with the process opportunities outlined above, opportunities are also presented for reviewing how you make best use of your people in terms of roles, responsibilities, workloads and how they are managed.

Digital dictation should integrate seamlessly with applications such as case management and document management. You may have to develop some of the integration yourself or persuade your supplier to do it, but the benefits will pay off.