Dictaphone blues

I put in a request the other day for a dictaphone. Now call me old fashioned, but I can only type with 4 fingers and not particularly quickly. I share a secretary with another partner but have found over the past 6 months that it is impossible to turn around any typing in less than 3 days. Not that the, very amenable, secretary is incompetent; she is seemingly burdened in attending to personal matters of the other partner, who on time served is far more important than me. 

The first response I got from the MP was that why can I not type opinions and letters myself? The obvious answer to that is that clients pay for professional time, not for our limited typing skills.

I did a quick straw poll among some of the Senior Managers and it would appear that they all type their own documents, and are indeed expected to do so. No wonder our recovery rates are so low.

A few went so far as to tell me that they do not charge time for typing but have to work longer hours to meet the target of 8 chargeable hours a day. No wonder the poor buggers are in the office until midnight!

Having luckily got away with my response to the MP, I was then told that none of the other partners have a dictaphone. Somewhat cheekily I responded that if they have a lot of typing, they should perhaps consider this as an option as it increases operational efficiency. This was not appreciated! 

I was asked why I had to be different. The answer was again to say that it will increase efficiency (and profit) and that this is fairly common in other practices around the world.

I was given the standard answer: This is Hong Kong.

Yes, this may be Hong Kong but in a practice that is predominantly Compliance in its nature Partners don't necessarily have to produce opinions and other fairly lengthy documents. Also, the working practice is very much Work Harder Not Smarter.

Having given up on arguing this, I have bought a dictaphone and transcriber for HK$15K and paid for my secretary to go on a course to learn to use.