London lawyers make ‘ethical’ choice to keep work in the UK

01 May 2007

London general practice, Vizards Tweedie (Vizards), is bucking the trend for firms outsourcing support work overseas to save money, as it finds keeping work in the UK through outsourced transcription specialist, Voicepath, results in happier fee earners, a better quality of work and comparable reductions in fixed costs. 

The firm, which is the result of a recent merger between Vizard Oldham and Tweedie & Prideaux, first began considering where efficiencies could be made as it upgraded its IT systems ahead of a moving into a single office.  

Senior partner, Ron Perry, comments: "We quickly realised that, with digital dictation organising and distributing work, it didn't really matter if the typist sat at the next desk or hundreds of miles away.  And with each square foot of a London office commanding a high price, it made strong commercial sense for us to engineer a situation in which we could house more fee earners and outsource a greater proportion of support work." 

Initially, the firm selected an offshore outsourced transcription company as its principal supplier, but soon found the service had limitations.  Ron continues: "While there was a minimal time difference, we found that cultural factors still had an impact on the quality of transcriptions we received.  Little things like typists not being able to spell 'Piccadilly' proved annoying, especially when we had paid the supplier a premium to give each document a second proofreading.

"More significantly, we also encountered a certain amount of internal resistance from fee earners, who had ethical reservations about sending work abroad.  They felt that such work should be retained in the UK." 

With these factors in mind, Vizards turned to UK-based legal transcription specialist, Voicepath, for an alternative service.  Voicepath uses a countrywide network of home-based teleworkers to provide law firms with a high quality, cost-effective service in which transcriptions are completed and returned in around one or 24 hours, depending on their urgency.

Voicepath was also able to offer Vizards a solution which integrated seamlessly with its own internal processes - particularly the iManage document management system which it uses to keep track of all firm documents.  A high level of integration means Voicepath's typists - all of whom are experienced legal secretaries - can type directly into Vizards' systems and append documents with profile information for audit trail purposes.  This means that even outsourced documents completed hundreds of miles away never leave Vizards' internal systems.

With the Voicepath service in place and bedded in, Vizards is already feeling significant benefits.  Ron adds: "We're happy to report that not only does Voicepath provide a fast, quality service but it's also one our fee earners are much happier about using.  While they accept that outsourcing may result in fewer secretarial jobs in London, the fact the work remains in the UK means someone in this country will still be employed to do it. 

"Essentially, we are finding that outsourcing allows us to bill more per workstation.  These are precisely the kind of efficiencies which we need to make while merging what were two firms into one. Furthermore, it gives us a better chance of keeping our overheads under control and profitable in an increasingly competitive legal market."

Voicepath general manager, Richard Bate, concludes: "We are delighted to have been able to form such a successful partnership with Vizards.  In a business climate which is increasingly focused on balancing the cost savings of outsourcing with the perceived dips in service quality it brings, we pride ourselves on being able to offer customers the best of both worlds.  We look forward to helping Vizards become more efficient and profitable in the years to come."