The rise in the use of digital dictation systems has seen a corresponding rise in the number of firms offering to transcribe your digital dictation recordings.

The main benefits of using an outsourced transcription service are:

• Reduce overheads by reducing the number of secretaries/PAs that you need to employ and house in expensive office space
• Cope with sudden increases in workload or general busy periods by passing some of your transcription work to the external company
• Provide evening, weekend and other out-of-hours secretarial cover to your fee earners
• Reduce reliance on temporary staff

Of course there are risks associated with using another company to undertake your digital transcription with the main ones being:

• Confidentiality
• Maintaining quality standards

How do outsourced digital transcription services work?

Typically the fee earner will dictate into their digital dictation machine as normal and a file in an industry standard format will be produced from this. This file will then be sent to the transcription company using email or directly from your digital dictation system if it supports this feature.

When the transcription company receive this file they will allocate it ether manually or automatically to one of their pool of typists who will transcribe the file and send it back to you. You will generally receive the transcribed file as a Word document in your email although more sophisticated systems may receive it back into a digital dictation workflow system.

Some companies will also let you phone in dictations using your mobile phone or a normal office phone.

What to look for when selecting an outsourced digital transcription service

There are a number of things to investigate and be aware of when selecting an outsourced digital transcription agency. Some of the key ones are listed below:

Experience

There is a proliferation of companies offering outsourced digital dictation. Many of them are new and fairly inexperienced. Many may not also have the necessary technical, managerial and financial infrastructure to provide the level of service that you require.

Other have been in the market for a number of years, have considerable experience and have invested significant sums in their infrastructure.

UK or Overseas Typists

Some companies employ only UK staff (generally ex-legal secretaries) to provide transcription services while others employ overseas staff, generally in India or the Philippines. This may or may not affect the quality of the returned transcription but is something that you should be aware of when choosing a provider. There can also be data protection issues with sending information abroad which you may need to make your clients aware of.

Technology

It is important to ensure that not only does the transcription company have the systems and technology necessary to receive, transcribe and return your dictations, but also they have appropriate systems in place to monitor quality, return deadlines and other such factors.

Turnaround times

Most transcription companies offer a rapid return service (usually a few hours) which costs slightly more than their standard service. Standard service is typically around 24 hours although some firms will aim to return all work to you the same day that it is sent to them.

Quality Control

You should expect your transcription company to have appropriate quality control checks in place to ensure the accuracy and quality of work prior to it being returned to you. Some firms do this entirely manually while others use a combination of manual and automatic measures.

Security & Confidentiality

Appropriate security measures should be in place at the transcription provider to protect your confidential documents. These measures should also include confidentiality agreements between yourself and the provider along with similar agreements between the provider and their typists. This is especially critical if the company uses freelance, self employed or overseas typists.

Templates & House Style

Your transcription provider should be able to return transcriptions to you using your standard Word templates and house style for the documents they are transcribing. If you have to re-format documents when you receive them then you are not getting the full benefits of outsourced transcription.

Pricing

Price varies according to vendor. Some charge by the number of words transcribed and others by the number of lines or other similar measures. Price will also depend on whether you use the standard or priority service and whether you use them only on an ad-hoc basis or whether you commit to send a more substantial volume of work on a regular basis.

How to firms start using outsourced transcription?

The answer to this is basically "slowly".

Most lawyers will have an initial fear of using such services and there are also the political issues raised within the firm as the secretaries start to fear for their jobs.

Therefore most firms start off very slowly, just outsourcing a few bits of work on an ad-hoc basis to see how the process works. If successful they will then perhaps pass on more work when they have secretaries absent or during otherwise busy periods. When a secretary leaves they may then decide not to replace the member of staff but to start outsourcing more transcription work to the external company.

Look for companies that will offer you a free trial of their transcription service so that you can try it out before making a commitment.