By Jim Calloway

Dragon Naturallyspeaking® allowed me to co-author three books for the American Bar Association. Given my typing speed, I would not have written those books without speech recognition. But I’ve long since left that tool. After Microsoft embedded Dictate in Word and Outlook which did speech recognition almost as accurately as Dragon at no extra charge, I saw no need to pay for Dragon. I enjoyed telling many lawyers at that time that they could click on that Microphone icon in Word for free speech recognition and transcription services.

Lawyers have long recognized most of us speak far faster than we can type. Before lawyers had computers on their desks, many law firms had a significant infrastructure around transcribing lawyers’ dictation. There was a transcription typing pool who used products like Wang for their work. Portable microcassette recorders from Olympus, Sony and Dictaphone freed lawyers from only dictating only at their desk and soon microcassette tapes were ubiquitous in law firms.

Today speech recognition tools have replaced the transcription typing pools. But we still need to appreciate that we can still talk faster than we can type and, if one speaks slowly and clearly using today’s products, proofreading and editing should be quick and painless. Used efficiently, speech recognition tools should allow the lawyer to accomplish more each day, while less time spent should also save clients money. And, the next time you have a sound recording you would like a transcript of, try the built-in transcription in Word.

Take Your Foot Off the Pedal: Dictation and Transcription Options for Lawyers covers both dictation and transcription options for law firms and was written by Catherine Reach, Director of North Carolina Bar Association Center for Practice Management.