How could reduced time typing help your firm grow?

This is a joint blog-post with Joanna Gaudoin from ClientWise.

Joanna is a trainer, speaker and consultant who helps professional services firms and their people take a structured, skilled and people-centred approach to business development. Through her company ClientWise, she supports individuals and teams to develop the confidence, strategy and skills needed to grow client relationships. Joanna’s work spans consulting, facilitation, training and coaching, underpinned by her proven framework, The 5 Ps of Proactive Business Development^©. She is also an experienced speaker and published author, with over 14 years’ experience working with firms across law, finance, accountancy, and consulting.

In a world where time is money, how much of your working day is spent on tasks that non lawyers in your firm could do and which don’t directly generate revenue?

For many professionals – especially in the legal sector – document production, transcription, and formatting eat into hours that could be better spent on business development, client relationships, or strategic growth.

It’s time to shift the balance.

The hidden cost of doing it all

Typing up client notes, formatting reports, or editing long-form documents may feel like necessary tasks. And they are – but that doesn’t mean you or your fee earners should be the ones doing them. When skilled professionals spend time typing instead of building client relationships or developing new business, opportunities are lost. These are important activities that can’t be done by non-fee earners.

Here’s a helpful way to think about it. Can your lawyers earn more per hour doing a different task to what they are spending their time on? Could anyone else do the work? If the answer is yes to both of these questions, then the lawyer probably shouldn’t be doing it!

Let’s do the maths:

Just 1 hour a day spent on admin or typing equals 5 hours a week – or over 250 hours a year.
That’s more than 6 full working weeks lost to non-billable work.

Imagine reinvesting that time into strategic planning or business development activity such as developing existing client relationships, meeting new introducers and working on how you can support similar clients or attending events to meet prospective clients directly. How could that contribute to increased and more sustainable revenue and profit?

Smart outsourcing = smart growth

Outsourcing document production to a specialist provider like Document Direct gives you:

Highly accurate, secure transcription and formatting
Rapid turnaround times to keep projects moving
The freedom to focus on high-value tasks like client engagement, pitch preparation, or attending industry events

Plus, with a dedicated, skilled team behind you, you can maintain consistency, accuracy, and quality – without compromising your time.

Results that speak for themselves

Firms we work with often report:

Increased efficiency across teams
Faster turnaround times for client-ready documents
Fee earners with more time for chargeable work and business development

Some even comment that our team “thinks” and doesn’t just “type” – meaning we’re not just a service, but a supportive extension of your business.

Reclaim your time

Whether you’re a solo consultant or part of a busy legal practice, freeing up your time from document-heavy tasks could be the change that accelerates your growth.

Let us help you work smarter, not harder – and give you back the time you need to build your business.