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24 June 2005
Your editorial “When outsourcing outstrips itself” makes a number of interesting points about outsourcing support services, and the relative merits of using UK versus offshore providers.
The assertion that this is “Potentially bad news for the traditional legal secretary” does, however, require a response. Nothing in this world ever stands still, and nor has a legal secretary’s role. I In an increasing number of enlightened firms, they are no longer primarily typists: many command higher salaries than newly qualified solicitors, perform billable paralegal work and are working towards gaining fee earner status in their own right.
With the legal world becoming more competitive and cost and efficiency conscious it makes little sense for firms to waste experienced and skilled resource by making it concentrate on transcription. Here, outsourcing low-level support work allows firms, fee earners and their secretaries to play to their strengths, thereby enhancing their internal workflows and making far more efficient use of their existing personnel. All this contributes to enhanced client care and top and bottom line improvements.
At Voicepath, we see our role as liberating rather than replacing the secretary. Set free from the burden of coping with typing backlogs, the secretary’s role can be redefined so that they have time to deal with client facing, more profitable tasks. Certainly a great many of our clients have remarked that using outsourced transcription has reduced stress levels and increased productivity among support staff. Furthermore, better efficiency has allowed them to get more work from their existing fee earning workforce.
I would argue strongly that, far from equating outsourcing with redundancy, many secretaries would welcome the opportunity to change the structure of their working day; and their employers could therefore see it as a chance to become more productive and profitable without increasing their fixed costs.
Richard Bate General manager Voicepath
