Outsourcing your Back Office

If you are a criminal defence lawyer, at least in Ontario, Canada, intending to use a transcript during your trial, you aren’t obligated to provide the Crown with a transcript of the police questioning of parties involved, while the Crown definitely has this obligation.

If you’re the defence, then why not take advantage of this to take the other side by surprise?  A verbatim transcript definitely goes much further than your notes from videos of the police investigation.

I’m sure your client would appreciate this upper hand especially considering it costs around $100.00 for a transcript for an hour long interrogation.  At $2.50/ page for a Court ready transcript, considering the return, this expense is definitely worth it. 

eDecree provides transcripts of police recordings and other legal proceedings .  At $2.50/ page for a standard Court formatted transcript that you can use for trial prep as well as during the trial during your questioning, it’ll give you the edge and the element of surprise that goes a long way.

Every time I speak to a lawyer, including my husband, about the possibility of outsourcing the Legal back office, the first reaction I get is that they can’t live without their assistants.  Who would do the filing?  Who would call the client to arrange appointments?

We’re not talking about replacing the Legal Assistant.  We’re talking about complimenting him/ her.  Pushing the different tasks down the office totem pole is the best way to maximize returns.  Depending on the size of the practice, there’s different ways to do so:

·  Sole Practitioner looking to get the job done?
Having seen my brother-in-law and several of my husband’s friends set up their solo legal practices in various area of law, one thing is for certain.  They start up just like any other start up out there.  They are short of cash and cannot afford an assistant, but will admit that the first thing would do once they could afford one is to hire one.  Which means that they do require someone to do what an assistant would otherwise do.  Type up their dictation, update edits in their documents, file their papers, set up appointments with clients, etc.  require all and having set up a business myself.  Do not have the need for a full-time legal secretary, but still have correspondence that needs to be typed?
Outsource the simple and time consuming task of dictation to the experts @ eDecree. ·  Small to Mid-Sized Firm looking to improve efficiency?
Assuming 1 assistant per lawyer, output is limited by the bandwidth of your assistant

• Limiting the number of files you can handle
• Resulting in multiple day waits for your letters to be transcribed causing delays

Why hire an additional assistant? Reduce costs by dividing the type of tasks that need to be done. The assistant performs tasks which require onsite support, while outsourcing repetitive tasks such as transcription to the experts @ eDecreeBy outsourcing your dictation, you free up considerable time for your legal assistant to take care of higher priority tasks such as scheduling and file management.According to 2007 Salary Guide from Robert Half Legal, the average salary of:·  Junior Legal Secretary: $36,000/yr + benefits ·  Midlevel Legal Secretary: $41,000/yr + benefits which results in a conservative average cost of $51000 on the low end.Why would you utilize an employee costing you ~ $25/ hour to do a task that can be done at ~ $8/ hour? Free up your assistant to perform tasks that are higher up the value chain and result in higher efficiency. As well, outsourcing your dictation can result in significant cost savings for your firm. For instance, using eDecree for your dictation is much cheaper than hiring a temp if your assistant is sick or on vacation. Also, if you have a surplus of dictation, then using eDecree is similarly much cheaper than hiring additional staff.