Lawyers have searched more than 1,000 hours’ worth of phone call recordings for key words, phrases and conversations, as part of a major financial litigation case.

International law firm Simmons & Simmons used MediaMiner, a speech recognition search tool from VoxGen, to analyse the phone calls and cut the overall legal costs in the case.

The firm’s client, who cannot be named for confidentiality reasons, had been required by a regulator to hand over a year’s worth of phone conversations as part of the investigation.

To co-operate fully with the regulator, the client needed to draw attention to the most relevant conversations.

Simmons & Simmons associate Helen Symonds said the cost of listening to 1,000 hours of conversations could have reached £280,000. To reduce the cost, the law firm decided to use the MediaMiner application.

“We provided VoxGen with a list of key words and CDs of recorded phone conversations,” she said.

By scanning the audio files, MediaMiner was able to identify 50 or so key conversations – about 20 hours’ worth in total – that used the identified phrases. Lawyers then listened only to those conversations, greatly reducing the cost to their client ( Click here for more IWR legal coverage).

Symonds said there was an increasing need for speech recognition technology in compliance cases. “In financial institutions in particular, the conversations of certain types of employee are recorded and retained for regulatory reasons,” she said.