M4 fliers select sound system

M4 firm Morgan Cole is bucking the trend of recent weeks by installing speech recognition systems in preference to digital recording across its six-office UK practice.Morgan Cole is rolling out a Speech Recognition Company (SRC) Workflow system in London, Cardiff, Swansea, Oxford, Reading and Croydon, enabling fee-earners to dictate e-mails and letters direct to their computers.The sound recognition system costs roughly 1,200 per fee-earner.A spokesman for SRC said the system had been programmed with a vocabulary specially tailored for Morgan Cole, containing more than 12,500 words and phrases, which would make dictation of letters easier as the firm's clients and lawyers would be easily recognised by the system.The decision - which comes after a long pilot and training period - puts faith in voice recognition at a time when many firms are installing digital recording systems.Last week, City firm Ashurst Morris Crisp rolled out digital voice system TotalSpeech to its 800 fee-earners, while the previous month the London office of international firm Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn HRK installed digital dictation software.

Both said they were holding off on speech recognition.Morgan Cole is also installing a digital recording programme across its offices - at a cost of 1,000 per fee earner - but only as a failsafe to enable less technologically able lawyers to keep up to speed.The SRC spokesman said a voice recognition system had also been rolled out at Manchester firm Cobbetts.He said that 10% of the top 100 firms in the UK were currently piloting voice recognition systems.Morgan Cole's director of property, Phil Jardine, said: 'The increased efficiency frees up valuable time for secretarial staff, allowing them to take on more legal executive skills, thereby enhancing their career development and deriving greater satisfaction from the role.'Jeremy Fleming