The Rise and Fall of the Dictation Tape
By Jim Calloway, Director, OBA Management Assistance Program

“My firm has gone digital! As a result, we have over 100 dictation machines that need a good home.” That was a recent post on OBA-NET, our bar online forum, from Jerrod S. Geiger of the firm Pierce Couch Hendrickson Baysinger & Green LLP.

This month’s column is written with a simple goal in mind. I want to make sure that every lawyer who reads this understands that the dictation equipment that many of you have in your offices, with standard or micro cassettes, is headed for obsolescence. The next dictation device that a lawyer buys should be digital equipment rather than one that relies on cassette tapes. Soon your tape dictation equipment will take its rightful place in history alongside the eight track tape and the Sony Betamax video recorder. (In case you haven’t heard, it will likely be joined fairly soon by your trusty VHS video recorder as well.)

This is actually good news for lawyers. As with so many things, going digital improves performance and capabilities. The one doing the transcribing will appreciate the high sound quality and lack of hiss and distortion. Digital dictation equipment is a lot more versatile. Think back to those abandoned cassette units from Pierce Couch. Law firms do not scrap dozens of perfectly usable cassette recorders without a good reason.

If you’re one of the lawyers who has not replaced your dictation unit in the last several years, you may not be aware of the revolution in this industry.

To get an idea of the history of mechanical dictation devices in the law office and businesses generally, I contacted Ed Rose of AEC Solutions in Oklahoma City. His company was founded in 1956 as Audio Equipment Company. By the mid-1960s, the word audio was more understood by the public to refer to home stereo systems and so the business changed its name to AEC Solutions.

He recalls that the trained shorthand stenographers were his biggest business competitor in the early days. Then, about 20 or 30 years ago, that mode of doing business began to vanish. The legal profession was among the first to retire shorthand stenographers in favor of dictation equipment and transcribers. By the early 1970s, most law offices using dictation were relying on tape dictation systems.

While most people today think of a dictation unit as a handheld portable device, that is a very recent trend. Even as late as the mid-1990s more attorneys had desktop dictation cassette units than portable units, according to Rose.

But the move to digital dictation instead of tape has been fairly rapid.

All but about three of the 10 largest Oklahoma law firms have converted to digital dictation equipment within the last six to eight months, according to Rose.

In fact, if you go shopping for good dictation equipment, you probably won’t see any cassette units on display. You can perhaps still purchase them, but don’t expect a discount. Since they are no longer being built, the few remaining ones will be held for those customers who insist on cassettes instead of going digital.

That should not include any law offices.

How is a digital recorder different?

The primary difference is that the dictation is now recorded on a tiny hard drive within the recorder as opposed to removable cassette tapes. It is exactly the same as having your music collection on an iPod rather than a box full of cassette tapes or CDs.

But for the lawyer-user, this one difference results in many improvements. A lawyer who is in the middle of dictating something and is reminded of something else (e.g. instructions to the assistant) can pause the first dictation job and open a new dictation job to dictate those instructions. When that job is completed, the lawyer can return to the first project. The lawyer in the middle of a trial can dictate trial notes at the close of the day and transfer them back to the office from home or hotel over the Internet for his or her assistant to begin typing the next morning.

This online “delivery” of dictation to the office for transcription is a huge time-saving advantage. With cassette tapes, if one was not going to return to the office physically, the only way to get the dictation tapes to the office for transcription would be by some sort of courier or delivery service. Now one can just locate a computer with Internet access and securely transfer the dictation to the office staff.

For the lawyer returning to the office, the recorder can be dropped into the cradle to both recharge the batteries and transfer to the assistant.

Another advantage of digital dictation is that the original dictation files can be saved. (Hopefully these would be archived to a CD or storage device rather than taking up space on the network.) One lawyer reported at ABA TECHSHOW that a lengthy and critical document became corrupted and the backup failed. Because the firm saved the voice dictation files, the original dictation was still available to be re-transcribed.

Purchasing good dictation equipment can be fairly expensive.

But paradoxically, the total cost of an office digital dictation system may actually be lower than the standard variety. For a traditional dictation tape system to operate, one had to purchase both a dictation unit and a transcription unit. One of the big advances with digital transcription is that the purchase of a USB foot pedal, a headset and appropriate software can make any computer a transcription station. Purchasing these components is much less expensive than a dedicated transcription unit. Take your time when making these purchases, however. A typical computer headset may not have a cord that is lengthy enough for comfortable transcription, for example.

Keeping your finger on the right button

One of the big technology barriers for early handheld dictation devices was that early ones required the use of several buttons to properly operate them. One button would be pushed to record. A different button was used to play; another to rewind. That was the standard for full-size cassette recorders. As most readers know, the professional using dictation equipment prefers the one-button slide model to perform all operations. The busy executive or lawyer doesn’t want to have to push a lot of buttons. They don’t want to take their eyes off of the research or other material they were using to aid their dictation.

When handheld digital dictation devices were first released they did not have the one-button slide either. Rose recalls the release of the Olympus DS-4000 unit with the one-button slide was what really sparked sales.

“I sold about as many in the first four months after that as I had in the preceding two years,” Rose said.

Rose also warns against buying a digital meeting recorder when the lawyer really wants a dictation device. The meeting recorders do not allow one to back up and record over previous dictation. This only makes sense as they are intended to make an audio record of a meeting. These devices have their place, but the busy professional might not appreciate the difference while shopping in a hurry.

Two of the most popular state-of-the art digital dictation devices are the Olympus DS-4000 with a suggested retail price of $449 and the recently released Phillips 9600 with a suggested retail price of $549. Early reports indicate that the Philips unit is a bit more complex to set up on your networks. The transcription companion kit to the Olympus is the AS-4000 with a suggested retail price of $349.

Some dealers offer packages that include hardware, onsite installation and training.

Dictaphone, Sony and other manufacturers produce digital dictation units as well.

The industry standard for file format appears to be the DSS file. Caution is advised for recorders that use a proprietary format and/or cannot import DSS files. This is not to say that you should avoid these units.

Of course, all of the information included above relies on a human being to transcribe the dictation. I have previously covered Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred speech recognition software in this space. See “’Computer, Can You Hear Me Now?’ One Lawyer’s Surprisingly Positive Experience with Speech Recognition Software,” 77 Oklahoma Bar Journal 2485 (Sept. 2, 2006).

Digital recorders have such high quality that they can be used in conjunction with speech recognition software. That did not work well with the traditional cassette recorders, but several lawyers have reported good results using digital recorders. Please note that this only applies to the voice that the speech recognition software is trained to recognize. For others, the human transcriber will still be required.

Some lawyers have tried dictating into their mobile phone with digital recorder capability. It may not have the famed one button slide, but in an emergency this could be utilized. One can easily envision a day when “professional” mobile phone would include advanced voice recorder capability with a one button slide on the phone.

The recording of telephone conversations has also improved with technology. (No opinions about legality or propriety are expressed.) When I needed to record a telephone conversation for an interview, I stopped by the local Radio Shack. They sold me an Olympus TP7 Telephone pickup for just over $20 with tax. There is a soft little plug that fits into your ear that has a microphone on the other side. Just plug it into your recorder and use the phone normally. (Use that ear for the phone, of course.) It records both sides of the conversation very well. Because it plugs into your ear instead of the phone, it can be used with any phone, including mobile phones.

Of course, there are do-it-yourself types who want to buy over the Internet and put together their own package.

Here’s a list of Web sites for some of the products and vendors in this area:

Quikscribe

WinScribe

Express Dictate

Express Scribe

You can locate others as well as all of the products mentioned above through an Internet search.

Happy Dictating!

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal April 14, 2007 - Vol. 78; No.12