Document Direct

Firmstyle and Practical Law Templates

Jayne Smith — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:12:30 +0000

Did you know that you can have your own corporate style applied to Practical Law templates?

We work with our clients to help them achieve the best professional image for them. It’s professional, easier to use, and presents a great image when your document templates, letters, faxes, memos, set out with a consistent font, font size, paragraph spacing. It’s also possible to have the same formatting applied to legal precedents and templates supplied from Practical Law.

We help you decide how you want your documents to look. Here are some factors to consider:

Underlining never looks good in faxes
Most companies use bold for emphasis
Too many capital letters are hard on the eye
A serif font is easier to read
Single line spacing is great for saving the planet but line and a half spacing is much easier for drafting documents

Your Practical Law Templates can also contain your own company logo on the frontsheet of all of your documents - so you look like you’ve invested a million dollars in keeping your knowledge and know-how up to date.

If you would like more information on how we can help you create your own templates then click here and let us know.

Do you have a book or a blog that needs writing?

Jayne Smith — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:45:00 +0000

Interacting with your clients and customers on the internet is the latest technique employed in internet marketing. There’s many ways to communicate with readers: newsletters, voting polls, and now the most often used, blogs.

There are barriers (for some people) to writing blogs. People can be scared of technology and don’t know how to set one up, don’t have enough time, can’t type and think it will take forever, or just don’t know where to start.

There are a number of resources to help you get started with blogging. First and foremost, just give up on the typing aspect. Let Document Direct transcribe your blog articles using digital dictation. And while we’re at it, if you need help setting up and posting onto your blog site, why not let us do that for you too. Contact us now to ask us to help you.

To find out more about blogging click here to visit Better Business Blogging
If you ever suffer from writer’s block then coaching from Lonely Furrow Company can help you

Is a recession about to bite you on the bum?

Jayne Smith — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:46:59 +0000

There is some debate amongst our local business community that a recession is actually looming ahead of us. Some say that we’re being far too negative and only those who are playing at the top of their game will win the plenty of business that’s out there. Others are more conservative and some have already confirmed that the recession really started in September 2007 and that their predictions are coming true.

Are you worried about the recession that’s looming and costs spiralling out of control? Have you given any thought to how you can keep control of rising costs and possible reduction in income? It’s a sad thing to say, but salary costs are one of the first items to consider cutting and when redundancies are ahead that’s not good for anybody’s business. How can your business survive without its people?

Planning to outsource can give more cost savings than perhaps originally considered. Here’s what can be saved if the typing work of just one secretary was outsourced. You fill in the blanks.

Salary £ [include bonus scheme, pension, holiday and sick pay]
Square footage (rent) £
Insurances £
Desk, chair, computer £
Software licences £
Management Time £ [a difficult one, how much time is spent managing others?]

If you would like a consultation with us to find out how easy outsourcing can be, please click here.

What is the turnaround time for your typing?

Jayne Smith — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:45:20 +0000

Audio dictation to your secretary is now much faster with digital dictation systems. But is your typing being produced faster than normal. We want to know what your average turnaround time is for your work. We’ve been amazed to hear that some people can actually wait up to 3 days to get their typing done. Take our poll and leave any comments below - we’d love to hear from you.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Digital dictation is fast, but has online typing met your deadline?

Jayne Smith — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:15:30 +0000

The speed of delivery of your digital dictation to your secretary has improved the turnaround times of your work. Has this change affected your deadlines? We want to know if your deadlines have become more urgent because work can now be delivered instantantly. We also want to know if we up to the task? Don’t be shy - we need to know - are we meeting your deadlines? We want to hear from you so please leave your comments below.

Word processing and Practical Law Precedents

Jayne Smith — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:59:07 +0000

A good legal secretary will have excellent word processing skills which will help them understand how various documents and templates are set up so they can amend and alter the document without losing any formatting to font, paragraph spacing, numbering and automatic cross referencing. It’s vital that the document is presented clearly and consistently so that the law firm is represented professionally.

An example of how a legal document is formatted is a precedent from Practical Law.

The document is split into sections: for the front sheet, table of contents and the body of the document.
In each section the footer text will differ slightly and page numbering should start after the table of contents.
The table of contents will automatically update to the text created in the body of the document by pressing the F9 key.
Automatic numbering to paragraphs is applied using heading styles.
Cross referencing throughout the document is applied which will automatically update if paragraphs are changed or added to.

Learning how to link and unlink headers and footers, create, amend and apply heading styles and insert and update cross referencing can easily be done with our online training courses.

Access to your own web-based learning course, online books and a mentoring service will give you everything you need to know to learn advanced word processing techniques.

In typical Document Direct style, we’ll arrange for you to have a sample course so you can try before you buy. Click here to learn more and to choose your sample course.

Out of hours typing

Jayne Smith — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:38:59 +0000

There’s often times when that urgent document just can’t be completed during the day. The phone keeps ringing, there’s appointments and meetings to attend and there just isn’t enough hours in the day. So what do you do? You either:

take work home and then pray that your secretary will be in the office in the morning and able to type it up really fast, or
take work home and then spend time trying to type it up yourself.

There’s plenty of people from our own pool of talent who love having flexible working hours and flexible workplaces and they need to have a regular flow of work 24 hours a day. So if you do have an urgent piece of work that needs to be typed up there will always be Document Direct’s online typists to help you.

Having a backlog of typing in your office should now be a thing of the past. Digital dictation allows work to be distributed easier and faster and if there is ever any backlog of typing then it can only be because you have a shortage of typists.

Out of hours typing, working during the evening and night, will ensure that any backlog of typing is cleared by the start of your next working day. And it doesn’t cost any extra. In fact, we encourage it because we like to keep our pool of talent in business by providing them with work during their working hours.

If you have a backlog of typing in your office then call us now or click here and we’ll help you clear it.Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Legal Experience + Microsoft Training = Great Results

Jayne Smith — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:22:19 +0000

Being a great legal secretary isn’t just about typing letters. Experience and specialism in working in the various aspects of law, understanding the needs of fee earners and clients and how to support them come with experience and on the job training. Now that we have Microsoft Office 2007 (yes, another version) it is vital that practical skills are kept up to date so that we can give our best. After all, computers and software are the tools of our trade.

Microsoft Office 2007 (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook) can be learnt in depth, online, in your own time and a qualification awarded for module. You don’t have to be a whizz in Word or an expert in Excel to get yourself Microsoft certified.

Document Direct will work with the best legal secretaries who have proven experience and skills and if you’re one of them, we want to hear from you.

Your office in your pocket with Winscribe for Blackberry

Jayne Smith — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:30:30 +0000

If you’re working on the move all the time and prefer the freedom that PDAs and Blackberrys can give you, then you may be interested to learn that you can now send dictation to your secretary from literally anywhere.

Winscribe have developed their software which can be installed directly onto a Blackberry. You can now use the scrolling mouse on a Blackberry to select commands to record, play, rewind and send. Your dictation is sent direct to your favourite typist over your GPRS connection. Of course once your document is typed up, you can receive it back directly to your Blackberry.

The cost of this is an amazing £65 for an annual subscription to hook up your Blackberry to your own team of online typists, giving you typing support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For more information click here to visit Winscribe.

Do you dictate away from your desk?

Jayne Smith — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:30:30 +0000

If you’re a barrister or a surveyor, chances are you don’t sit at your computer when you’re dictating. Perhaps you prefer the freedom of carrying a pocket device that you can use wherever you are, whether on site surveying, or at court between hearings. A Philips Pocket Memo device is just for you. It’s a similar size to a mobile phone and works in a very similar way to the old tape machines (eg, if you like the slide control to record and play you can still have it).

We recommend this type of device because you can dictate while on the go. Your recordings are stored on a memory card (similar to the way a digital camera works). And even better, no software needs to be installed on your computer. This type of device works with our website so you can plug your pocket memo into any internet computer with the USB cable provided, go to our website and upload directly from the memory card in the device.

If you would like to have a trial account with us to upload dictation via our website, please click here.