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I can only echo the sentiments of others who have already commented.

It's a mistake in my view, and one that I have personally experienced and have come to regret.

I lost my secretary when I was overruled two years ago by my other partners who were striving for the paperless and secretary less office, and had decided that they and most of the support staff were no longer necessary. We even outsourced our telephone reception.

I now waste countless hours on tasks that were carried out far more efficiently by the secretaries and others previously in post, to the detriment of my other work. My letters, emails, and other documents, are now predominantly dictated directly through DragonDictate, as my experience with external providers of typing services has not been particularly good. DragonDictate while generally good, is prone to certain howlers, and needs everything checking very carefully. For example, for any of you familiar with the system, try dictating "SDLT" - every time I do so it types "bestiality".

My billing is demonstrably running at less than 50% of its former level, but as the overheads are substantially reduced, nobody seems to care that higher profitability has actually gone out of the window.

Another casualty has been client satisfaction, as secretaries were inevitably a very important point of contact indeed for the majority of clients, and client satisfaction questionnaires at the time invariably contained complimentary comments about them. The relationship that they built up with clients I suspect was in no small part responsible for much of the repeat business.