From traditional practice to digital hero
The facts
The customer
Matthias Kucera, Hard, Austria
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Philips partner
apricon GmbH
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The solution
PocketMemo Voice Recorder
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SpeechMike Premium Touch Dictation Microphone
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How an Austrian lawyer learned to love Philips SpeechLive
He started out with traditional dictation, working with stacks of files and cassettes – classic „old school“. Since implementing SpeechLive, the browser-based speech recognition solution from Philips at the beginning of 2022, however, attorney Matthias Kucera and his six-person law firm staff have become passionate about digital solutions; for good reasons.
The initial impetus for attorney Kucera to install SpeechLive as a digital dictation and transcription solution in his law firm came from the desire to eliminate all hardware in his office. „Keeping my IT systems constantly up to date and reinvesting every three months was simply time-consuming,“ recalls Kucera, looking back. „I wanted a cloud solution that was maintenance-free and easy to use.“ As he laughingly recounts, Kucera was considered a „dinosaur“ by his colleagues, since he enjoyed working with cassettes and stacks of files.
Since 2001, Kucera and his wife Ruth Kucera-Dörler have been running a law firm in Hard in Austria, specializing in insolvency and contract law. Innovation has been in Kucera‘s DNA ever since the firm was founded, „We were one of the first law firms in Vorarlberg without a court location,“ he says. „We were the first law firm in Hard, in the countryside, so to speak. Today, Hard has a population of nearly 14,000 as well as seven law firms.“ Vienna-born Kucera and his wife have a total of six employees and are proud of their extensive and loyal client base.
Cassette – a thing of the past
It was not only the desire to simplify his law firm‘s data processing that motivated Attorney Kucera to invest in a digital dictation and transcription solution from Philips, human resources played an equally important role, „We lawyers also suffer from a shortage of skilled workers, which is why we need solutions that allow us to “get rid of” some of the work ourselves. The speech recognition solution is of enormous help here,“ says Kucera.
Keeping my IT systems constantly up to date and reinvesting every three months was simply time-consuming. I wanted a cloud solution that was maintenance-free and easy to use.
Matthias Kucera
Lawyer
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„I work much faster when I use speech recognition to convert shorter dictations into text.“ Bulky documents are usually handled by the office staff in person. However, for Kucera, the same applies here: „The instant overview SpeechLive gives me regarding the status of my dictations and briefs makes it much easier for me to plan my workday.”
Covid has made working from home a reality for lawyers, too. If the team need to take their work home due to personal reasons (sick children, trips to the authorities, tradesmen, etc.) SpeechLive makes this possible. Given the current shortage of skilled workers, this is a major advantage when it comes to employer branding, “It also turns us into an interesting employer for candidates seeking flexible and mobile workplaces.”
Implement and get started
Kucera uses the cloud-based SpeechLive solution, the SpeechMike Premium Touch Dictation Microphone and the PocketMemo Voice Recorder for his speech-to-text tasks. The transition to the digital solution was completely intuitive and required no training, even for less IT-savvy colleagues. The law firm was supported by apricon, a certified Philips partner from Euratsfeld. The installation was not easy, reports Thomas Preßlmeyr from apricon, „ The law firm required a special setup to transmit the signals from the input devices via a terminal server to the cloud. Thanks to our many years of know-how and excellent cooperation with the law firm‘s IT manager, however, we managed to do it without any problems.“
„Our customers appreciate how comprehensively we advise them, always taking individual requirements and circumstances into account. We are glad that with SpeechLive we were able to implement the perfect solution for the Kucera law firm,“ says Josef Baumgartner, Managing Director of apricon. SpeechLive offers the Kucera law firm a win-win situation on every level, both in terms of internal organization and flexible, mobile working, when it comes to work from homey, for example. „I am completely thrilled and can recommend this solution 100%,“ concludes Kucera.