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Lovells, the leading international law firm, has chosen BigHand's TotalSpeech 2 digital dictation system after an extensive RFP selection process.

Through the implementation of digital dictation technology, coupled with a speech recognition option where appropriate, Lovells' objectives are to further improve the efficiency of the fee earners and secretaries and enhance service to clients. This will be achieved by decreasing the turnaround time for documents, providing more options for the transfer of dictations between secretarial and WP resources, and providing a dictation capability for the increasing number of fee earners working away from their offices.

Lovells opted for TotalSpeech 2 after assessing all the leading digital dictation workflow technologies on the market. After a rigorous product appraisal procedure TotalSpeech 2 was seen to be the system that best fulfilled all of Lovells' stringent stability, scalability and functionality criteria. The decision also makes Lovells the first of the global Top-10 law firms to implement a workflow digital dictation system.

Nick Cray, Lovells' Chief Operating Officer, commented:

"From our perspective this development will help the busy lawyer and thereby further enhance his ability to provide a responsive client service. When breaking new ground in the IT field we need to have confidence in our supplier and their support system, and influence over the future development of the product. BigHand, who specialise in digital dictation, are willing to work with us on product development and have a dedicated digital dictation team in the UK. It is an attractive combination."

Lovells will initially implement the technology in the London part of the international property practice. The team of nearly 150 users will be able to use TotalSpeech 2 for all dictations currently done using analogue dictation devices, whether fee earners are in or out of the office. It is envisaged that the system will be rolled out worldwide allowing fee earners to make efficient use not only of the secretarial services in their own offices, but also to have 24 hour access to resources available in London and elsewhere.

Lovells Director of IT, Ian McFiggans, commented:

"We hope TotalSpeech 2 will prove to be a valuable part of our IT infrastructure. The technologists appreciate working with 'state of the art' architectures which, in turn, make life easier for the end user. All in all the progressive implementation of TotalSpeech 2 should make life easier for a lot of people at Lovells. This is what the imaginative use of IT is all about."

ENDS