Legal Technology Journal

How do automation and outsourcing square with solicitors’ time-honoured duty of confidentiality, and is there a model of best practice that balances data security with cost-efficiency?

For solicitors, protecting a client’s interests through complete confidentiality is holy writ. Whether one is dealing with due diligence ahead of a company takeover or preparing documents for a sensitive divorce case, professional standards demand that we take steps to prevent this information being inappropriately disclosed.

It is in both the firm’s and its clients’ interests to ensure that as few eyes as possible see sensitive documents. Yet clients expect a high standard of service and communication that law firms have traditionally struggled to achieve during unexpected busy periods. How many times, for example, has an important letter been issued to a client after a delay caused by a glut of work?

For Mogers, it was clear that the balance between ensuring client confidentiality and embracing a fast-moving client service culture was a delicate one. It also required an in-depth look at the way we administered our business. While the fundamental ‘unit’ of legal business remains largely unchanged – firms trade in the expertise of their lawyers – the way this is physically delivered to clients has changed markedly. The world of ‘instant’ communication means that it is no longer sufficient to say ‘the letter is in the post’ or ‘it will be with you next week’. To a great many end users, the law is seen as a high-value service and should be delivered as such. This means letters of instruction the next working day, and no excuses.

The practicalities of running a firm with finite resources dictate, however, that there will be occasions where even the most efficient operations find themselves stretched. The installation of a BigHand digital dictation system in Mogers’ offices, for example, allowed the firm to share typing work among support staff more equitably and prioritise jobs in terms of urgency. This had a streamlining effect during periods of normal activity, but the fact remained that when the firm was very busy or short-staffed it was still reliant on expensive and unpredictable temporary cover. The next challenge, therefore, was to find some way of bringing in extra resources as and when they were needed, which led to outsourcing transcription through specialist company Voicepath.

Never offshore

The chief reason Mogers did not begin outsourcing transcription before 2007 was a dissatisfaction with the majority of services available on the market. A great many of these are based overseas in countries such as South Africa and India and concentrate on providing low-cost transcription to costconscious law firms. On closer examination, however, these prices masked a higher potential cost.

Law Society guidance dictates  that if:

‘… you [the law firm] outsource services such as word processing, telephone call handling or photocopying, you must be satisfied that the provider of those services is able to ensure the confidentiality of any information concerning your clients. These would normally require confidentiality undertaking and checks to ensure that the terms of the arrangements regarding confidentiality are being complied with.’

(Law Society Confidentiality and Disclosure Guidance, Nov 2007.)

In addition, UK data protection legislation places restrictions on the personal data that can be sent outside the European Economic Area. And, ultimately, we do not want to export jobs.

The onshore alternative

Our interest in using outsourcing as a way to improve service levels without compromising client information led us to take the alternative course of outsourcing within the UK.

The firm selected a remote service supplied by UK-based specialist Voicepath. It works by fee-earners electing to send work to Voicepath rather than an internal secretary via the firm’s digital dictation system. The dictation is sent to Voicepath’s server via a secure internet connection. From here, the files are securely relayed to a pool of home-based typists for transcription and quality control and returned to the firm. Typically, this results in lawyers receiving a completed transcription in around two or 24 hours (depending on the choice of service) and to UK time.

System integration

A further challenge for Mogers was to ensure that this service could interface with its existing systems. This provided the opportunity of acting as a test site for the ‘outsourcing module’ that the firm’s digital dictation supplier, BigHand, was currently developing.

The module essentially allows feeearners to send audio files to an external agency via an additional send option that appears within the recording screen each time they begin a dictation. This can then be configured with priority options selecting – for example, whether a dictation should be completed using the two-hour or 24-hour service, and containing details of what type of document is to be produced.

Once the fee-earner has completed a dictation and selected the option to outsource, the audio file is exported to a local folder on the network with an XML file containing associated data. This is then ‘picked up’ by the outsourcing module, which scans the folder for new files and exports them to Voicepath via a secure connection to an HTTPS server.

From here, Voicepath’s systems can download the audio files and read the XML files for further instruction before putting them into its own workflow management for timely completion. Transcribed documents are returned to the author directly by e-mail. At the same time, Voicepath also sends an XML file back to the BigHand system, which instructs it to ‘close’ the job associated with the relevant audio file. All this means that not only is outsourcing work simple to accomplish, but it also requires no additional work or intervention from fee-earners or support staff to keep systems fully up to date.

Benefits

While the primary aim of this was to smooth out and speed up the flow of work through the firm, a more streamlined system has brought other, unexpected benefits. The ability to receive completed transcriptions back within an agreed timescale is the most immediately tangible advantage, but it has also changed the way the firm works in a more fundamental way.

It is a cliché to say that the secret to success is not working harder but ‘smarter’. However, with a pool of external expertise to call on for the typing work that used to take up a lot of the firm’s support staff ’s time, it has been possible to use its internal resources far more effectively. It is clear that by utilising the outsourcing modules, the firm’s secretaries are able to use their experience and time to address real value-added issues. This not only makes the process more efficient, but it also makes the secretaries’ day-to-day work more rewarding and interesting. Outsourcing allowed Mogers to put into practice the idea that support staff in a legal firm are far more than a typing pool whose contribution to the business is quantified by how much work they clear from the digital dictation system task list each day. Support staff can prove invaluable in preparing documents for court or in addressing aspects of due diligence. Here, with reduced pressure to get everything done including typing, we have been able to speed up our own administrative processes without losing any accuracy or volume. Moreover, as the service operates within the same specified timescales, we can rely on the timely delivery of documents – which is exactly what we and our clients require.

Taking the decision to improve quality of service to clients has had the added advantage of bringing cost benefits to the firm. Prior to outsourcing, covering staff holidays and sickness meant employing a succession of temporary staff, which proved a costly and at times unreliable way of plugging gaps in the firm’s resources. To counteract this, the firm decided to employ an ‘extra’ secretary for cover purposes.

With Voicepath’s assistance, it has been possible to manage workloads during busy periods without having to call on further help within the office. This has allowed us to redeploy the firm’s cover secretary elsewhere and carry on as normal. Rolling out the service also permitted a reorganisation of office support so that when one secretary left the firm recently, her workload was absorbed among the remaining support staff and additional work outsourced when the need arose.

Effectively, this means that, while outsourcing was always intended to be a case of using internal resources more intelligently rather than reducing the workforce, Mogers has still succeeded in reducing its costs. Over the six months the service has been in place, the firm has saved the equivalent of the cost of replacing two secretaries. Furthermore, when the time comes for other support staff to move on, this can be used as an opportunity to reorganise rather than replace, getting even better value from internal staff and outsourced services.

Conclusion

As the profession comes under increasing pressure to keep step with a client-focused business culture, it is vital that we learn to use all the tools in our possession to keep clients highly satisfied and business steady. Even where clients expect a very personal service, there is usually room for improvement. What’s more, it is important to remember that in the majority of cases, new systems and IT innovations are best used as a tool for helping people in law firms to do their jobs better.

Enabling and empowering lawyers and support staff alike to work more intelligently and make best use of their skills, rather than struggle with inefficient business practices, can be hugely beneficial. Not only does it save time and money, it can also reap the rewards of increases in productivity and job satisfaction. Everyone likes to feel that they are performing to the best of their abilities, and taking an integrated approach to the way documents are produced within Mogers has allowed the firm to strike the right balance between systems and those who use them – to the ultimate benefit of its clients.

Derwent Campbell is the senior partner at Mogers.