Lawyers -- Dictation

[vegas]

I work in house for a large company. I'm on a team set up to refine our business process and several members of the team are trying to eliminate dictation company wide. We are getting quite a bit of push back from many attorneys in the company, especially the older attorneys. Most of the attorneys who are pro-dictation say they want to dictate Motions and Briefs which seems ridiculous, IMO. I really have no experience dictating since I've never worked in an enviroment where this is promoted/encouraged. Anyone want to help me see the pros and cons? Right now I'm on team "anti dictation" but I can't really articulate why, other than that I find it to be more difficult than just typing out what you need.

[vegas]

My company doesn't really care about personal preferences at this point. Guess that's the difference between being an attorney at a firm and being an attorney for a corporation. If the company doesn't want something done a certain way, it won't get done that way. When I was in private practice it was up to each individual attorney.

So far it seems like team dictate is in the minority. Since I'm one of the only attorneys on the process team I'm supposed to share the pros and cons. I've never dictated so I can't really say why I prefer typing out my own stuff vs. dictating. It's just weird to me that attorneys think dictating an entire Motion is acceptable in this day and age.

[ESF]

Aug 6, 2012 11:34:19 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

Everyone works differently, particularly those of an older generation who haven't quite embraced technology.

Some people just think better when they speak out loud, or they don't type as fast as they speak and lose the thread if they compose in front of a computer.

I'm curious about the no-dictation policy though. How would you even enforce such a thing? And why is it necessary to eliminate? Depending on the document, it takes very little time to transcribe most things. I really can't see a secretary tattling, and frankly, if they did, I'd think twice about that secretary.

I agree with this.

If you've spent 40 years training your brain to "write" a brief orally, you just are not going to be able to do it while sitting in front of a computer at a keyboard. It's not exactly like switching from Lexis to Westlaw.

I'm not seeing what the big deal is, frankly. If these people are producing good work products, why does the way they create them really matter that much?

[midwest07]

I don't get dictating either, but I know of some younger attorneys (my husband included) who dictate. So it's not just the older generation.

I am curious why it has to be an all or nothing. Can you phase dictating out over time? So those who want to dictate and are currently can continue to do so, but no one else can start? Then it will eventually be phased out. If at such time there aren't enough dictating to fully support one or more support staffs, it would be fully phased out. I may be missing the point about the cost of dictation beyond staff to actually do the dictating and why it would really streamline business practices. Maybe you have pricey software you would like to get rid of?

I guess I think it would be tremendously difficult for someone who has dictated his/her entire career to just quit. People who are good at dictating really are quite efficient about it and can get more work done. I think it also makes them think better on their feet, such as in court.

[vegas]

Apparently we are having a problem with office productivity and staffing. There aren't enough legal assistants and paralegals per office but there isn't enough budgeted to hire more. In fact, our company just went through a huge round of lay offs. So the company has decided to streamline our processes and put standards in place that would enable the legal assistants and paralegals to more time to complete the necessary office tasks without feeling overwhelmed. It was determined that dictation takes a huge amount of time for the staff and isn't really necessary in this day and age. The software and cost of dictation machines/tapes is also a consideration. So it's being debated now. It's a crappy set up here with support staff. Staff reports to their own manager, not the attorneys, so the manager would see to it that no dictating is done if that's the corporate directive. That would be how it's enforced.

[otowngirl]

Our billing is primarily a function of how much we dictate, so there's obviously a big push for it here (I'm at a small firm). Our bosses expect us to dictate EVERYTHING, and I'd say I do dictate most of my correspondence. I type more substantive motions and briefs, though.

[vegas]

I'm in house so there's no billing. Lucy: we have one legal assistant to 3 attorneys, but it's not as easy as looking at the ratio since our legal assistants do more company related work than a legal assistant at a typical firm would. Their day isn't devoted to legal work. Most of the attorneys have a case load of about 70% outside supervisory files and 30% in house files.

[Deleted]

I don't know the pros of dictation. The first firm I worked at, the two partners used dictation and encouraged us to, but I never caught onto it and just typed things myself. Really, in this day and age, I can't understand how dictating and having someone else type what you said is more efficient than you just typing it in the first place.

[hbomdiggity]

I don't dictate, but I can't imagine that after 20 some years of doing it that I'd be able to stop. And I would think a good assistant should be able to handle it. My firm doesn't use any special software - its just a matter of the recorder and assistant time.

Fwiw, we have 1 asst to 4+ attys.

[casmgn]

Hopefully Miso pops in - I think her opinion could be really useful here.

[calledout]

I think that you'd run the risk of making your dictating attorneys less productive at the expense of "efficiency."

Generally, folks who dictate do so because, to them, it's the most efficient way to create work-product. An effective dictator can jam out a motion, brief and several letters in a single day. It would take me a lot longer typing that stuff out. I don't dictate and can't envision myself ever being able to "think a loud" but I am in awe of the productivity of those who can.

Also, forming a "team" to assess how people produce their work product is micro-managing to the extreme.

[beachdweller]

I'm in-house at a hospital, so a lot smaller setting than you. The other in-house lawyer (about 40) dictates and I do not. I just see it as a preference thing and would be really annoyed if my employer put some requirement in place that we not dictate. I also don't see how it takes up THAT much time. It probably takes my secretary 30 minutes to transcribe a fairly lenghty memo -- that does not seem that crazy to me. Plus, how is it that much different than when I ask my secretary to prepare a letter that says x,y,z. I do that all the time, even though I don't "dictate."

[sprky79]

Aug 6, 2012 12:41:32 GMT -5 vegas said:

I'm in house so there's no billing. Lucy: we have one legal assistant to 3 attorneys, but it's not as easy as looking at the ratio since our legal assistants do more company related work than a legal assistant at a typical firm would. Their day isn't devoted to legal work. Most of the attorneys have a case load of about 70% outside supervisory files and 30% in house files.

I don't know that you would save the time you think you are saving by eliminating the dictation. You MIGHT save it on the admin side, but if you have a lot of attorneys relying heavily on the dictation, you'll lose it on the attorney side.

Also, what other "company related" work are your legal admins doing? Are they doing things that should be coming out of another department's budget, and consequently reducing the Legal Department's "expenses" accordingly? We have had to do this during budget crunches a few times.

[Deleted]

The one and only time I dictated, it took me 45 minutes to dictate what I could have typed in 10 minutes.

[Deleted]

A lot of legal documents are partially C&P, like the case captions, headings, etc., so really all you are doing is generating the body of the document. I can definitely understand how old school attorneys would have difficulty with this, but any attorney under 40 ought to have somewhat decent typing skills and word processing software to type quickly what would otherwise be dictated. It seems like throwing another person into the mix of creating one document, then returing it back to the attorney to edit and proofread is a waste of the admin's time. It just seems far more efficient to me not to dictate.

[vegas]

Aug 6, 2012 14:44:44 GMT -5 Lucy Honeychurch said:

I'd like to know what other company work they're doing as well. If they truly are doing this excess admin work, that seems like a good area to streamline, not messing with the work product of attorneys by getting strict about dictation.

(FWIW: The firm I work for has a ratio of 1:3 or 1:4, and we do a pretty heavy amount of admin work on the side as well in terms of marketing, billing, conflicts; and there are no filing clerks, so that falls to us as well.)

We aren't a law firm we are a company, so the other work that they are doing is more a function of the corporation and not something a typical legal assistant at a traditional law firm would worry about. For example, we send out a good amount of cases to local attorneys. Any issues they have with the company (i.e. documents needed during discovery, assistance locating witnesses, etc) would be handled through my legal assistant. Paying our outside counsel bills and fees (experts, court costs, etc) would be done through my legal assistant. That's on top of the fees and costs they pay for my in house cases. Legal assistants address billing issues through our electronic system. We don't have centralized bill paying. It's being discussed but at this point it's not available. We also don't have anyone who handles calendaring or mail or filing like other large firms. So my legal assistant is responsible for calendaring, scheduling, scanning mail, and putting it into the appropriate files. And that's for both supervisory files and in house files. Sure we could hire people for that, but the goal is to find ways to increase efficiency and decrease work load based on the current structure since hiring in this economy isn't a realistic solution.

I appreciate all of the feedback and agree that perhaps phasing it out over time or encouraging less dictation could be a good way to go. A lot of the attorneys who are pro-dictation only want to keep it that way because it's all they know. Unfortunately when looking at efficiency that's not a good enough answer, at least for my company. If there are better ways, they need to be implemented.

We went through the same thing when the company went paperless. Many attorneys like to keep hard copy files but we are all electronic now so they no longer have that option.

And it may come off as micromanaging, but as another poster said, in large companies forming teams to handle efficiency issues and reduce expenses is actually quite common.

[vegas]

The question I asked is what the pros and cons are of implenting a policy that discourages or eliminates dictation. I really don't know the answer because I've never dictated. Which is why I'm asking. I figure there are so many people here who would have experience with this that I could get thoughts on both sides.

[Deleted]

I answered on ML. I'll just c&p.

Nobody in our in-house legal department dictates, not even the old people.

Why?

We don't have enough assistants with enough time to transcribe.

This forces even our most grizzled and feeble to type, and everybody is better for it.

Our assistants aren't wasting precious time transcribing. They are helping us with stuff that really needs to get done.

60-year-olds can learn to type. It's not that big a deal. It's a bigger deal to have assistants overloaded with work that they shouldn't have to do in 2012.

[otowngirl]

Aug 6, 2012 12:37:53 GMT -5 v said:

Aug 6, 2012 12:36:40 GMT -5 otowngirl said:

Our billing is primarily a function of how much we dictate, so there's obviously a big push for it here (I'm at a small firm).

I've never heard this (but then, I've never worked in a dictating environment). How does this work?

We have two forms of billing -- straight time (events, research, etc.) and correspondences/other 'paper' that leaves the office. The latter is billed per page. (For example, a brief 2-page letter is a 0.6.) Some might call it unit billing.

[vegas]

Thanks Miso. LC, I lol'd at your C&P on ML (thanks by the way--I appreciate the additional perspectives and I'm not a regular on that board). You do realize that not every in-house office is set up the same country wide, right? I know you are smart, usually I agree with what you say, but here you just seem like you aren't listening. You work for a firm, this isn't a firm. I've worked at a large (by Vegas standards) outside firm and trust me when I say that our legal assistants have far more to do than my legal assistants at my firm ever did. I responded above with just a few of the differences, but some are too company specific to discuss. I will say each attorney has 100+ cases so the legal assistant is responsible for managing work on 400+ cases in addition to all of the corporate bullshit that goes along with it.


Miso, sounds like we work at the same place. This post of yours on ML is 100% true of my company.

Remember, though, we aren't at a firm.

The attorney is not king.

We are tiny cogs in a huge machine.

You adhere, or you're out. They don't give a shit about us. We are not the moneymakers.

[vegas]

I wanted to add one more thing that perhaps I didn't emphasize before. Dictating a letter here or there is one thing, but we have pretty standard forms for most letters. The push is to allow attorneys to continue dictating Motions or Briefs. I can't figure out how that would be efficient, but like I said, I don't dictate.

FWIW, I work in litigation. These aren't standard, copy and paste briefs. Majority of time each brief/motion has a very unique set of facts.

[Deleted]

I am not going to argue for or against the efficiency of dictating an unique motion. People function in different ways.

The only thing I will say is that old people are not incapable of learning new things.

My mom and dad can type. They are just as old as, if not older than, my "old" colleagues.

Give me a break. People speak of senior citizens as if their minds are crippled.

They can type.

[Deleted]

What about something like Dragon software? Would that help bridge the gap, does that have a huge learning curve? I work in a firm and have never dictated or ever worked in an environment where dictation was common.

[WOT?*]

I agree that the old people can "do it" but eliminating a process which they have used for 30+ years and forcing them to learn is an undue burden for a lot of them. I worked (in a corporate legal environment) with a gentleman in his 60s who worked for the firm for almost 30 years. He had no problem doing what was required, but do get it done meant he was in from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and on Sundays. He was miserable but he did it. Another, in his 50s, left the firm and went elsewhere; he did not type and barely hunted-and-pecked and requiring him to learn would require him to spend twice as long, if not more, to do the job he was capable of doing by leaving notes, messages or dictating. Having miserable people with years of experience will eventually negate that experience by causing them to leave or causing them to shut down.

My old firm was technologically illiterate. My old boss was a hunt-and-pecker and dictated everything, as did the majority of attorneys in the office (even the younger ones.) Sure he could learn, but it was just as feasible for him to quickly dictate a letter that i could type up (or even just dictate notes on "letter to client re: this matter" and "letter to opposing counsel re: that which says something about this..." and leave it to me to type up the letters which he would review and then I get them out. He could spend his time, then, reviewing and working the files (contingency so billable hours were not a factor) and getting matters resolved.

Or, in the in-house position, a lot of the motions and letters were pre-generated so that only general information was required. It would pull the addressee information and in many cases they were form letters that only had a few blanks to be filled or information pulled from elsewhere in the system. Alleviates the need for dictation when the letters are already prepared.

Re: C&P motions, not all firms and not all matters function on the C&P model of brief-writing. If there are certain matters that would benefit from the attorney typing, then review on a case-by-case or situational model. This type of letter should be typed, this type of brief should be dictated, and do it, for now, on selectively based on how much an attorney types his/her own stuff vs. how much is dictated.