A reliable and simple way of working
The facts
The customer
Travis Schultz & Partners, Queensland, Australia
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Philips partner
PDT Digital, Australia
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Travis Schultz & Partners is a law firm like no other. Putting people before profit, their mission is to serve clients, maximise their claims and ensure that they receive the Lion’s share of their settlements.
Lawyers Travis Schultz and Michael Callow, both Queensland Law Society Accredited Specialists in personal Injury law, and with a combined tally of more than 50 years of experience under their belts, officially launched in 2018 as Travis Schultz Law (now Travis Schultz & Partners). They officiated their journey with only three support staff members. Since then, the firm has expanded with more than 20 employees and has built a stellar reputation in their community for providing cutting edge expertise without the hefty price tag. The team overlooks clients across Queensland with offices on the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
Voice technology from the beginning
Travis Schultz, Managing Partner, has been a Philips SpeechLive user from 2017, predating the founding of his own law firm. He explained that prior to Travis Schultz & Partners, he was associated with a larger law firm. When he decided to leave and start his own law practice, he had to serve a non-complete clause as part of his agreement. He spent doing consultancy work during those time. Travis said, “In 2017 I required secretarial and administrative support, and I also needed to dictate because of the work that I was doing, so I explored a number of options and settled on SpeechLive.”
Over time, as the firm grew, so did the number of SpeechLive subscriptions in parallel with a combination of authors and support staff using the cloud solution. The authors dictate their court documents, advice, file notes and other correspondences using their dictaphones or smartphones and sends them across to their support staff for transcribing those documents. When asked whether Travis actively directs his staffs in using the solution he responded, “Even new lawyers and staff who joined our team who were not familiar with the system and have not used it in the past were able to quickly adapt to it, because it’s simple and user-friendly. We had no difficulty in people picking it up and being efficient at its use within a very short period of time.”
We found it has been really useful to have a reliable system like SpeechLive that can be accessed from anywhere, is convenient and doesn’t break down.
Travis Schultz
Managing Partner, Travis Schultz & Partners
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A reliable and simple way of working
Travis has dictated all though his career and reflected when he first started practicing in 1988. There was no fancy equipment, legal professionals had to work with cassette tapes and clunky devices. He mentioned, “Back in those days, we used old cassette tapes for dictation, and they were unreliable. You could easily erase things and have damaged tapes that didn’t record. It was a disaster. As time went on, we started going digital. Some of the early ones weren’t as reliable. We had glitches and things went missing, so I was looking for something simple. SpeechLive has been really good at simplifying a process that can get messy.” As an author, dictating can be done in an organised manner in SpeechLive. No matter what device is used to dictate with, with SpeechLive authors can add and edit existing dictations, assign according to priority, and index and label the dictations so it’s easier for the typists to navigate.
With multiple work locations spread across Queensland, the practice manages a centralised system to cater to their workload. It is irrelevant where the support staffs are working from as they can access the dictations from anywhere with SpeechLive. They can view the workflow, type their assigned worklist and send it across, as long as they have their transcription equipment with them.
When the pandemic induced lockdown was implemented earlier in the year, Travis Schultz & Partners followed suit to working from home. But unlike a lot of law firms who struggled with the drastic change, they were fortunate to be able to do so without losing too much time and their ways of productivity. Travis explained, “There was a difficulty of course during COVID-19 with other aspects of production, but not from a transcription perspective. It was useful to be able to send everyone home with their equipment, and just log on. They were just as effective at home as they are in the office.”
Travis Schultz & Partners is supported by Queensland based Philips dealer PDT Digital, since 2017. Peter Thomas, Managing Director, has helped the practice with his technical expertise whenever there was a troubleshooting requirement. Travis commented, “Peter’s very knowledgeable. He knows his way around and backwards; he can do it blindfolded. If we ever have a glitch, he is more than happy to get on the phone to sort it out. He’s a lovely fellow but most importantly he is a very good dealer.”
Efficiency of document creation
At Travis Schultz & Partners, they believe in ensuring that their clients get the Lion’s share of the settlement by not using time costing methods and offering a low cap on costs. In fact, Travis Schultz has been the only lawyer to be ranked by independent agency Doyles Guide as “leading” in Public Liability, Workers Compensation and Motor Vehicle Law in their 2019 National rankings. To be able to follow their mantra in maintaining fairness and transparency to their clients, they need to be extremely efficient in their operations. Meeting and representing their clients are half of their work, but the remaining half is operations and the ability to get their documentations done quickly. “If you can put a good dictation system with a very good set of precedent, you can be very efficient in the way that you operate. So, we found it has been really useful to have a reliable system like SpeechLive that can be accessed from anywhere, is convenient and doesn’t break down”, explained Travis.
When it comes to adopting digital technology, the legal industry has been hesitant in general. However, it is one of the most demanding industries that requires spending a lot of time on admin work, which obviously can be time draining. Travis Schultz, who has been using digital solution for quite some time now, would have it no other way. He concluded, “When it comes to reliability and functionality, we don’t require too many bells and whistles from a digital solution. From my experience, I found SpeechLive is easily adopted, reliable, meets our needs and doesn’t come with the glitches and gremlins that have a troubled past. I love it because it doesn’t annoy me!”