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Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams : SpeechLive Review
Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams sets standards for balancing the workload between two offices and location-independent working
The law firm Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams, located in Melbourne, have provided high quality legal services to their clients since 1983. The company has two offices, one in the well-known Central Business District of Melbourne and one outside the city in Mount Waverley. The firm has 4 principals and 23 staff members and specializes on commercial litigation, commercial law, wills and estates, family law and property. “With our very experienced staff we can offer highly professional advice to our clients. We are very proud to have eight lawyers who are accredited specialists in their area of law”, states Tony Oakley, one of the Principals of the company.
The solution
Having employees spread in two offices, the firm was seeking to find a solution that supports location independent working and distribution of the workload between the offices to make the most use of the existing capacity and deliver fast results to their clients. Ease of use and implementation was also one focus point when looking for a solution. Philips SpeechLive covered all those requirements and makes location-independent dictating and transcribing possible, minimizing the throughput time, maximizing the work efficiency, and satisfying clients as a result.
"For me, it is very convenient that I can work the same way from any location, I don’t have to think about taking something with me."
Nicole Honan
Office Manager of Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams
“Last week I was working in the CDB office and yesterday I worked from Mount Waverley. For me, it is very convenient that I can work the same way from any location, I don’t have to think about taking something with me. I can log in from any computer”, says Nicole Honan, Office Manager of Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams.
The users are logged in under www.speechlive.com in their account. After a lawyer finishes a dictation he uploads the file with just one click and the support staff can straight away start working on the file work no matter where they are located.
“We have used SpeechLive since August 2015 and have 11 users in our company, being six lawyers on the dictation side and 5 people supporting them and doing the transcription and document creation for our clients. Every lawyer has an assigned support for creating the documents after dictation and also each support staff has fields of specialization. If the lawyer does not specify anything after the dictations, they will be sent to his or her predefined support in SpeechLive, but there is also the possibility to choose a different person for different topics. For example, I am responsible for doing the confidential file work”, explains Nicole Honan.
Philips SpeechLive also gives lawyers the option to send their dictation file to a transcription service, which is a great option if internal resources are exceeded. The author receives the document within 24 hours per email. Another option is the SpeechLive speech recognition service, which is already used by one of the lawyers at Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams. This is ideal for short recordings, which returns you the text document almost immediately.
“Coming from an analog solution, we were very happy how easy and intuitive our new solution is."
Tony Oakley
Principal of Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams
Easy transition
“Coming from an analog solution, we were very happy at how easy and intuitive our new solution is. It was a reasonably easy transition, because the handling of the dictation device and SpeechLive is very intuitive and on the Philips voice recorder you have the traditional slide switch, which is very convenient of course”, says Tony Oakley.
Working with SpeechLive there is no additional installation of software on your computer necessary. Everything you need is your input device and you can get going. For convenience reasons you can also buy a browser based transcription kit for your support staff, consisting of a foot pedal and headphones. These only have to be plugged into the computer and you can control the dictation file within the browser.
Consultancy and support
“We are very proud that Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams is a pioneer using the SpeechLive cloud dictation solution which was actually pretty new on the Australian market when we implemented it. It makes me very happy that they like working with it for nearly a year now and that shows me that we have made the right choice for them”, tells Dionne Morrison, Managing Director at VoiceX Communications.
VoiceX Communication is a certified distributor for Philips dictation solutions with offices in Melbourne, Sidney and Perth, operating throughout Australia and New Zealand. “We are very satisfied with the solution and the excellent support from Dionne Morrison and her team at VoiceX Communications. They gave us professional advice and give great support when it is needed. We would absolutely recommend SpeechLive to lawyer offices that face similar challenges like we do”, Nicole Honan rounds up the interview.
The hard facts
The lawyers at Hicks Oakley Chessell Williams use the Philips Pocket Memo 8000 voice recorder as their main input device, some use the Philips dictation recorder app on their smartphone in addition. The company bought the Philips SpeechLive Advanced Business Package. This package is the right fit for companies that have up to 50 users. It gives you 20 GB/100.000 min online storage. Each user gets a credit of 10 free speech recognition minutes per month, this is summed up for the whole account and can be pooled among the users.
Test SpeechLive for yourself
Contact VoiceX and we will have you set up in minutes to trial SpeechLive for 30 days or order your subscription from our website at www.voicex.com.au/speechlive-cloud-dictation
1300 551 778 (Australia Wide)
9887 0396 (New Zealand