Speech Blog

For the last few months we’ve focused on helping our readers increase productivity and tap into the power of their voice. This week, let’s talk about a company that has already reaped the benefits of dictation. Universal Shannon & Wheeler, LLP, is a Philips customer whose adoption of new SpeechLive and digital voice recorders allows their attorneys to get more done while outside the office and easily streamline the transcription workflow while on the go.

Who:  Law firm Universal Shannon & Wheeler, LLP, is a five-attorney litigation defense law firm with two offices in California.

What: Universal’s attorneys adopted Philips Pocket Memo 8000 digital recorders, which eliminated the need to buy, store and organize tapes. Most recently, the firm has added Philips SpeechLive to their workflows to help streamline the document creation process.

Philips SpeechLive is a cloud-based dictation management platform that allows users to easily send voice recordings directly to a transcriptionist, assistant or speech recognition services. Users can then track their transcription and receive the text file directly. Since the solution lives in the cloud, Universal’s employees can now access their files and upload new documents to be created from anywhere.

“SpeechLive has been a game-changer for us,” said Karen Universal, the firm’s accounting manager. “Our attorneys travel a lot, and now they can literally work from anywhere with an internet connection. It’s really allowed a lot more flexibility.”

How: At the time of implementation with SpeechLive, Universal & Shannon had been using digital recorders for several years. The firm had seen much success with the new recorders, and loved the increased voice quality and the fact that they didn’t have to buy and store tapes. But now, the firm had a new workflow struggle. The firm’s founder and managing partner, John Universal, travels often, and would regularly call into the office via phone to dictate to an assistant if he had to create a document while out of the office or on the go.

Universal’s voice technology consultant, Executive Communications Systems, told Karen about the SpeechLive system, which fits into their existing dictation workflow and allows the attorneys to upload the files from anywhere, as long as they are connected to the internet. With SpeechLive, the attorneys can now record, upload, assign and prioritize dictations from anywhere – whether it’s in another country or in the comfort of their own homes.

“Attorneys work long hours, so having the ability to work in the evenings and on the weekends without having to come into the office is a big benefit,” said Karen.

Final takeaways: New digital recorders and cloud-based dictation management helps Universal’s employees create and access documents easier than ever, even when not in the office.

“We’re very happy with our transition to Philips digital dictation and SpeechLive,” said Karen. “It may have taken us a little longer to adopt this 21st century technology, but it’s really made a positive difference for our firm.”