didds wrote:On the basis for time of
"Miss Secretary - standard letter #6 to Mr Bloggs, signed PP."
versus
solicitor phones Mr Bloggs, has conversation, seeks confirmation of understanding
Both charged at the same cost/price.
When I was at Uni a million years ago my vacation job was in a local accountants. The partner would often at 1030 coffee break say he had already billed his day out ie had charged enough client letters.
didds
What you're describing sounds like a million years ago. Whereas we always used to have at least one secretary and/or access to a typing pool those days are long since gone. I don't know any solicitors that have a personal secretary these days, though I'm sure there will be a few that still do. Nearly all the solicitors that I know type their own correspondence now.
Initially it was probably not that efficient. Just because someone
can type their own correspondence doesn't mean it's the best use of their time to actually do so, and if someone is charging £300 an hour it doesn't make sense for them to spend 10 minutes typing correspondence when it could have been dictated in 2 minutes and typed by a secretary on £20 an hour.
However, there are two factors that have gradually made it worthwhile. The first is the replacement of posted letters with email, so there'e no longer any of the faff involved in actually printing the letter, preparing and printing an envelope, getting the letter signed, checking any enclosures, putting the letter in an envelope, applying postage and then arranging for it to be posted, all of which was undertaken by a secretary or her underlings.
But the second factor, which has certainly made a huge difference to me, is the advent of reliable and free voice recognition. I now dictate any document of more than a couple of lines into my iPhone and I would say that it's 90% accurate - as good as most competent secretaries and far better than many temps I've been landed with over the years.
So to get back to the point, in the absence of someone to type your letters for you a phone call is almost always a more efficient use of time than sending a letter, though the difference is probably marginal compared to sending an email, particularly as you generally have to make a file note of a phone conversation whereas an email is its own record.
But I must admit that although the contemporary way of doing things may be more cost-efficient it's nothing like as pleasant. A good secretary was so much more than someone who just typed one's letters or took calls. We would work together as a genuine team, and as they gained more experience and understood the nature of the job we would discuss cases I was handling and I often gained very useful insights and suggestions that would never have occurred to me.
I suspect the net outcome is that we are all now doing more work than we were then - the days of skiving off to the golf course at 10:30 are just a distant memory - but for the same reward and without the human element, which is really quite sad and makes me wonder whether we are actually better off at all. (Incidentally, apologies for the thread drift!)