Law firms often juggle multiple goals at the same time. So, while chasing new business, you are also trying to boost efficiency and reduce employee burnout. At the same time, there are a lot of back-office tasks that take up too much of your time.
And then there are functions like legal transcription—essential, but with no contribution to the bottom line. Therefore, many smart law firms simply outsource this to companies offering legal transcription services. Before we talk more about this, let’s first understand the legal transcription market.
1. Growth of Legal Transcription
The legal transcription market, which is currently valued at USD 2.55 billion, is expected to grow at 6.90% CAGR to reach a valuation of USD 4.66 billion by 2034.
The above figure gives an overview of the legal transcription market over the years 2018 to 2034. As can be seen, the demand for legal transcription has been growing steadily over the years. There are several factors fueling this growth, including technological advancements, compliance requirements, and an acute shortage of courtroom reporters.
2. Outsourcing Legal Transcription
A major factor fueling the growth of legal transcription is technological advancement. Almost every court in the US now has high-end audio-visual recording capabilities. This means case proceedings can be heard later without a court reporter being present. Moreover, courts and law firms now face growing pressure to maintain compliant and accurate records of every legal proceeding.
These two factors have contributed to the growing demand for accurate and verbatim legal transcription with minimal errors. However, while the demand for accurate legal transcription has increased, the number of certified stenographers who function as court reporters has decreased by 21% over the past decade. Furthermore, 81% of the current stenographers are over or around 45 years of age.
As such, a bulk of legal transcriptions are falling on the shoulders of paralegals or legal secretaries. However, as we mentioned before, legal professionals are mostly overburdened and on the verge of burnout. Therefore, making paralegals or legal secretaries do the job of transcription would be a waste of their talents. A better alternative is to outsource that job to companies specializing in legal transcription services.
Moreover, by outsourcing legal transcription to a company specializing in legal support services, you can also cut costs, access skilled talent, scale with ease, and increase core-competency focus.
3. Leveraging Virtual Employee Services
There are numerous advantages to outsourcing transcription work to companies offering legal transcription services. However, one challenge with outsourcing that can act as a deterrent is lack of control. When you outsource any task to a different company, you lose control or visibility over how the task is being performed.
So, while you might want the legal transcription work to be performed by the best talent in the vendor company, the vendor might cut corners and get the work done by a junior employee. Moreover, you also do not have visibility into the stage your task is at or whether it is running on schedule—until it is delivered.
Given these challenges, it seems better to partner with companies offering virtual employee services and hire remote staff to handle legal transcription work. You can hire such remote staff at a fraction of your local hiring costs. Furthermore, the company offering virtual employee services will take care of compliance, hiring, admin, IT, and other operational expenses.
You just have to pay an hourly rate (inclusive of every expense) that is a fraction of the hourly rate you would have to pay for a similar resource locally. In this method, you get the best talent to work with without searching for the same. This is because remote staffing providers like Remote Resource® offer you an assorted collection of pre-vetted talent chosen carefully from the top 10% of India’s talent pool.
Moreover, the virtual employees you hire through Remote Resource® are communication-savvy, culturally compatible, loyal, and shift-flexible. They work as part of your team and offer regular updates on project progress. Additionally, a state-of-the-art office with all modern amenities and super-fast internet ensures that they perform at the most optimal levels.
4. Legal Transcription Process
When you outsource the transcription work to a company offering legal transcription services or hire remote staff for the job, here are the steps that follow:
4.1 The Transcription Work
You will first send the audio or video file that you want to be transcribed. You should also specify the turnaround time and the transcription type you want. If you have ordered a verbatim transcript, the transcriber will listen to the file and type out whatever they hear, including any “ums” and “ahh” sounds. However, if you want the end product to act as a legal document, then the transcriber will address grammatical, syntactical, wording, and other issues while transcribing and create the final document in a professional format.
4.2 Proofreading
After the file has been entirely transcribed, another person will proofread the document and ensure its accuracy. We at Remote Resource® ensure that the transcribed document is nearly 100% accurate.
4.3 Delivery
After proofreading and ensuring document correctness, we deliver the completed transcribed work to you in the format you want. If requested, we can offer the work in multiple formats.
Final Words
Law firms often have multiple tasks to handle, which can lead to burnout among employees. Therefore, it makes sense to outsource time-consuming tasks like legal transcription. Outsourcing this task to a company offering legal support services also offers several advantages like cost savings, scalability, increased core-competency focus, etc.
Other than outsourcing, you can also choose to partner with a company offering virtual employee services like Remote Resource® and hire a remote employee to work on transcription tasks. In the above pages, we have talked in detail about the advantages of such a move and the process you must follow to get your files transcribed. Connect with us to know more and get started now with a one-week risk-free trial.
