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Corporate and commercial law firm SJ Berwin is rolling out BigHand's TotalSpeech Digital Dictation System to 560 staff firm wide. The roll out follows a 120-user pilot in the Property Group that proved extremely popular with users and showed the potential for cost savings. The project will become one of the largest digital dictation sites in Europe, and should be completed by the end of July this year.

Following the large-scale pilot in the Property Group, SJ Berwin conducted an opinion survey among users that showed:· 98% of fee-earners thought TotalSpeech should be rolled out firm wide (2% did not answer)· 97% of secretarial staff thought TotalSpeech was better than analogue tapes (3% found it the same).

The survey showed fee-earners in the pilot group discovered a number of significant productivity benefits. A majority of fee-earners believed TotalSpeech made it easier for secretaries to share work; felt that TotalSpeech improved workflow across the department; reported that TotalSpeech improved document turnaround time; and thought that TotalSpeech had helped increase secretarial capacity.

SJ Berwin Chief Executive Keith Wood commented:

"We originally piloted TotalSpeech with the intention of reducing the cost of producing written material for clients, and to provide secretarial staff with better tools to support fee earners. There is no doubt these objectives have been achieved and the system is popular with the users themselves. This is an all-round beneficial investment for the firm, one that will assist staff and also deliver savings for years to come."

Additionally TotalSpeech has enabled mobile working for solicitors in the group and led to an increased use of nightshift secretaries. Lawyers can dictate a letter while travelling to or from the office, or while at home, and then have the completed document awaiting them on their return. The technical team at SJ Berwin have also found TotalSpeech to be highly scalable, easy to use and painless to support.

SJ Berwin IT Director Simon Kosminsky said:

"It is likely all firms will be using digital dictation in the next few years and our choice, TotalSpeech, has now proved itself capable of providing excellent returns for the practice. Importantly it has also provided reassurance for my IT team, who have found that TotalSpeech works under both current and future operating requirements. In addition we continue to work closely with BigHand in some pioneering development work that should add further to the TotalSpeech solution going forward. No other supplier could have delivered such a complete offering."

ENDS

SJ Berwin

Established in 1982, SJ Berwin is one of Europe's biggest law firms with over 400 fee-earners across offices in London, Brussels, Frankfurt, Madrid, Munich, Berlin and Paris.SJ Berwin was named Law Firm of the Year: Western Europe, Private Equity at the Chambers Global Awards 2003 and Mid-Market Law Firm of the Year by Acquisitions Monthly 2003. Further information is available at www.sjberwin.com.

Contacts:Simon Kosminsky, IT Director