Who's buying what

The trend towards digital dictation is gathering pace, with City firm Nabarro Nathanson rolling out BigHand's TotalSpeech software firm-wide.

With more than 650 users, it will be one of the largest digital dictation workflow projects in Europe.

Nick Taylor-Delahoy, the firm's chief information officer, said a pilot in June 'led immediately to greater secretarial efficiency, a marked increase in work sharing, and a tangible improvement in the turnaround time of documents'.

He added that TotalSpeech 'has shown itself to be one of the most stable legal technologies our team has worked with to date'.

A similar story at Manchester-based Halliwell Landau, which is spending in excess of 100,000 to roll out WinScribe firm-wide after a successful pilot in its litigation department and London office.

Managing partner Paul Thomas said: 'The productivity improvements possible from digital dictation make it the ideal technology in the current economic climate.'

Bristol firm TLT has selected Interface Software's customer relationship management system InterAction following exhaustive research.

It will be deployed firm-wide in a project to be managed jointly by TLT and software consultancy Kramer Lee & Associates.

City firm DLA's Bradford-based business services group - which provides volume debt and property services - has selected Linetime's Liberate integrated software system to replace an in-house system that has been operating since 1987.

There will be 120 users of the Debtime SQL module, 20 users of the conveyancing option, and up to 20 users of the accounts package.

Having decided to seek an external replacement, the group went through an exhaustive selection procedure involving demonstrations, reference site visits to users of a similar size, and intensive meetings with suppliers.

The four short-listed suppliers were then given a questionnaire to fill in which took the field down to two.

AIM Professional Systems has maintained its position as supplier to Essex firm Attwater & Liell after beating off competition from Axxia and Sanderson.

The firm, which has more than 80 users in its two offices in Harlow and Loughton, will implement a practice and case management system.

The central appeals unit at the Child Support Agency has chosen Capsoft UK's HotDocs system to create a submission writing tool.

The Faster Appeals Submissions to TAS (The Appeals Service) - or FAST - allows more than 240 users at the CSA offices at Lytham St Anne's to produce documents far quicker than before.