The demand for translation, transcription and interpretation services is growing rapidly among law firms, thanks to today's globalised business world. With this increase in demand, comes increased pressure on the suppliers of these services to meet tighter deadlines, reduce prices, maintain word-perfect accuracy and respect client confidentiality. Clients also demand a 24-hour, personalised service.

Law firms are starting to realise the importance of this area of the business and study its performance with greater diligence. A procurement team at one of the UK's leading law firms recently undertook an analysis of its expenditure and current business practices in this field.

An initial study found that annual spend on 'language services' totalled about £250,000 a year and that all translation requirements were being managed through the information services helpdesk which shipped the documents out to local country offices for translation by a local employee. When local employees were not available, they turned to one or two UK-based agencies or a handful of trusted freelancers.

On closer analysis, however, they discovered that there was also a large volume of work that was not going through information services and was being outsourced directly by the individual in the firm (the 'Google it and put it on the company credit card' scenario). By the end of the study, they concluded that annual spend was actually nearer to £450,000 a year and was growing at a rate of 5% to 10% annually.

With all the facts at hand, the procurement department set out to implement a business practice that would achieve four main goals. Firstly, it aimed to reduce the use of local employees for translations. It deemed that using employees for this service was not only a poor use of employee time but was also not achieving high translation quality as none were qualified translators. What's more, the additional workload for these employees meant the work was rushed.

Secondly, it wanted to reduce the number of agencies and freelancers involved to one single supplier, in order to obtain better corporate rates and standardised service levels. Thirdly, one interesting result of the firm's study was that it discovered that without sufficient monthly reporting tools, many jobs were being carried out but the firm was failing to pass this cost on to their final client.

And finally, the firm wanted to look at what technology was available in order to ensure speed, accuracy, service and confidentiality were all maximised.

The study found that technology could play an important role in two areas. The first is workflow – the handling of the entire process from the moment the document is sent for translation right through the translation, proof-reading and amendments stages as well as the invoicing and management information reporting stages.

In order to implement a workflow platform that was readily available at no cost without interfering with existing IT infrastructure within the firm, the company opted for a web-based platform that gives all nominated employees access to a customised extranet available via an internet browser where documents can be uploaded for translation in a secure environment. The obvious advantages were that employees could post documents from anywhere around the clock without having to compromise security by sending documents by email or lose time looking for a translator or waiting for the information services department to allocate the work on their behalf.

Once submitted by the client, one of the team of dedicated translators associated to that firm receives an automated alert to inform them that a job is available for download. Here the client has the advantage that they are not only working with a translator who is already familiar with that client's work and has been vetted for quality and security purposes, but can also be in a time zone that ensures that they start work immediately on that job so that the document is back in the client's inbox by morning.

At the end of the month, the client receives a report outlining exactly who has spent what on translation in that period and can seamlessly identify to which client or project this cost should this transferred. The report also outlines all service level commitments in terms of percentage of deadlines met and time saved as well as overall cost savings through volume discounts.

The second key role that technology can play for law firms in the translations field is in the use of translation memory databases. In simplistic terms, translation memory databases are shared glossaries, compiled and accessed by the firm's team of dedicated translators. The translation memory databases store translated phrases so that any time a statement, disclaimer or clause appears that has already been translated, the system offers this translation to the translator. This saves the translator from re-translating the phrase and therefore allows them to offer the client a discount on that work. It also significantly reduces the time taken for the translation and ensures consistency in the use of terms.

The translations agency implements and maintains the translation memory databases on the client's behalf so that there is no interference with the firm's existing IT infrastructure yet noticeable improvements in speed of turnaround, cost reduction, accuracy and consistency are achieved.

Patrick Eve is managing director of TranslateMedia.