Digital dictation - The Fee Earner Interface

How fee earners use and interact with a digital dictation system is critical to the take up and success of your digital dictation system.

Factors To Consider

Device Support

SpeechMike Support	The Philips Speech Mike is a very popular digital dictation device as it resembles very closely a traditional analogue dictation device with which most lawyers are familiar. The device can also be used as a mouse with a small track ball and button to control the screen pointer and thereby means that the fee earner only needs to keep their hand on one device. These devices usually have a cable and plug into the USB port.
Support for mobile dictation units	Wire free handheld devices are the most common form of digital dictation device and virtually all systems will work with devices from all major device manufactures. Some systems with offer additional integration and features with certain devices.
Blackberry Support	Digital dictation is just becoming available on Blackberrys although support for this is somewhat limited especially in the UK and is limited to certain devices. A lot of development and further announcements are expected in this area over the next few months.
Telephone Support	Some systems can accept dictation over the telephone either from landlines or mobiles. This usually requires extra hardware to integrate your telephone switch with your digital dictation server.
PDA Support	Cost vary from a few hundred pounds to hundreds of thousands. There are also different ways in which you can pay for your chosen solution and you need to select wisely based on the anticipated benefits of the technology to your firm.
Headset/Mike Support	Fee earners who do a lot of dictation and/or need to use the keyboard may prefer a headset and microphone for dictation although this is not a popular approach.

Synchronisation

Automatic synchronisation for handheld units

Some handheld units will have a desktop docking station while cheaper units will simply have a connecting cable.

It is generally better if the process of connecting the device to the computer and upload the dictations is as simple, easy and painless as possible.

Simply plugging in or connecting the device and having the dictation files transfer automatically is the ideal.

Wireless Upload

Some systems will now support the upload of dictation files via a wireless connection thereby avoiding the need to dock or connect the device.

Network Docking

Network docking stations can be placed at convenient points in the office so that any fee earner can simply walk up to them and dock their handheld device to have the dictation files transferred to the main server.

Job Management

Change priority level at any time	Once a dictation job has been submitted the fee earner should be able to change the priority of it any time.
See progress of job at any time	The fee earner should be able to see the progress of all the dictation jobs they have submitted at any time.
Save draft jobs and revert later	It is important to be able to save incomplete dictations and to be able to find them easily so that they can be completed at a later stage
Assign which secretary gets the job	It may be necessary for the fee earner to be able to decide which secretary of groups of secretaries undertake a particular dictation. Alternatively you may wish to avoid this and have the system allocate the dictation to the most appropriate secretary at the time. If outsourced transcription is used it may be necessary for the fee earner to be able to stipulate that a particular job should only be transcribed internally.
Insert audio mid sentence	Most systems will allow you to insert more speech into the middle of a recording without loosing any of the recording.
Pause, re-wind, jump to start/end etc	All systems allow the fee earner to move forwards or backwards in the recording so as to review the recording so far and/or to insert further audio.
Bookmarks	Some systems allow bookmarks to be inserted at key stages of the recording so that the fee earner can quickly find a particular portion of the recording or can point the secretary to particular sections of the recording.
Browser based option	Depending on the IT infrastructure of the firm used to support mobile working it may be essential that the digital dictation system offers a browser based interface to support remote working.