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Dragon Systems® Introduces New Version of Mobile Legal Suite

Hand-Held Legal Solution Bundles Recorder, Award-Winning Speech Recognition Software, Comprehensive Vocabulary and Extensive Customization Features To Boost Mobile Legal Professionals' Productivity

Press Contact:

Renee L. Blodgett
Dragon Systems
617.796.0348
reneeb@dragonsys.com

Julie Lydon
Copithorne & Bellows
617.450.4300
julie.lydon@cbpr.com

NEW YORK - Jan. 25, 1999 - Dragon NaturallySpeaking™ Mobile Legal Suite, a continuous speech recognition solution designed specifically for legal professionals, was introduced here today at the LegalTech tradeshow by worldwide speech recognition leader Dragon Systems, Inc. of Newton, Mass.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite includes the award-winning Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software, the Dragon NaturallyMobile™ pocket-sized recorder, a comprehensive legal vocabulary, and support for Corel® WordPerfect® and Microsoft® Word. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite also adds Select-and-Say™ functionality to third party applications, hands free features for navigating in Windows®, robust formatting features, and support for Microsoft's SAPI 4.0.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite enables lawyers, judges, paralegals, legal secretaries, and others in the legal profession to easily and quickly create, edit and format documents, such as briefs, notes and correspondence by speaking into a hand-held device.

When the user is ready, the recordings can be downloaded to a PC using a high-speed serial link and the linking software provided with the product. Dragon NaturallySpeaking software will transcribe the text and can execute commands for formatting and editing the text. In addition, the included headset allows users to dictate directly into their PC.

"Now legal professionals can minimize their downtime by completing tasks - in one easy step - while on the road, in remote offices or in transit. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite is the ultimate productivity enhancer for legal 'road warriors' on-the-go or lawyers who simply want to dictate in their office," said Roger Matus, Vice President of North American Marketing at Dragon Systems.

"Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite continues Dragon Systems' strategy to deliver the most accurate continuous speech solutions for legal professionals. It combines Dragon Systems' award-winning Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, incorporates customer feedback and leverages the company's proven core competencies in the mobile and legal markets."

DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING MOBILE LEGAL SUITE COMPONENTS

The new Dragon NaturallyMobile recorder was specially designed for optimal speech recognition quality. It incorporates a high quality built-in microphone that can be used in most settings. The recording is stored digitally in a special compressed format that, unlike some other compression formats, contains all of the information needed for accurate transcription. The recorder weighs under four ounces (excluding batteries), is slim and compact enough to fit easily in a shirt pocket and can be held comfortably in the palm of a hand. The Dragon NaturallyMobile recorder has the flexibility of a professional dictation device, including a built-in speaker, multiple customizable folders, easy scrolling between recordings, time/date stamping, and a back lit LCD display.

The recorder can hold up to 40 minutes of dictation with its built-in memory. An additional 20, 40 or 80 minutes can be added with removable memory cards of 2MB, 4MB, or 8MB respectively. The memory cards, which are the same type used in many digital camera devices, are conveniently and widely available at camera and consumer electronic stores for as low as $39.95 US.

AVAILABILITY, SYSTEMS REQUIREMENTS AND PRICING

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite supports Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0. It requires a minimum of a Pentium® 133 with 32 MB RAM and 48 MB RAM for Windows NT. 120-MB hard disk space is required for installation. For best results, a Pentium 200 is recommended with 64 MB of RAM; this allows users to take advantage of BestMatch technology for improved accuracy and performance. Requirements may vary depending on the features being used.

The product is expected to ship worldwide in mid-February with a suggested list price of $1,095 US, and will be available through Dragon's VAR channel. Existing Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite users can upgrade to the new legal mobile solution for $199. For information on upgrades, Dragon Systems' customers should contact 21st Century Eloquence at 1-800- 245 2133.

DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING MOBILE LEGAL SUITE DESKTOP FEATURES

LEGAL VOCABULARY — Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Legal Suite includes more than a 230,000 word legal dictionary containing an extensive collection of legal terms, phrases and abbreviations, as well as the context of those terms as used within of typical legal documents. This specialized vocabulary helps legal professionals achieve higher accuracy more quickly, reducing the effort required to adapt the software for use in specialized legal practice areas.

ENHANCED SELECT-AND-SAY FUNCTIONALITY — The latest version expands the availability of Select-and-Say from Microsoft Word® 97, Corel® WordPerfect® 8, and Dragon NaturallySpeaking to include a variety of third party applications, such as GoldMine, Microsoft WordPad, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Chat 2.0 and 2.5. Select-and-Say enables users to select words or phrases that they wish to edit simply by saying "Select" <the word or phrase> and then saying the new word or phrase.

Corel WordPerfect and Microsoft Word Support — The Dragon NaturalWord™ feature allows users to work within Corel WordPerfect 8 or Microsoft Word 97 completely by voice. Users can dictate text directly into their documents, then use the "Select and Say" feature to make fast, easy edits and corrections. Intuitive, built-in voice commands such as "Bold That" improves productivity by automating common tasks.

CONTROL WINDOWS DESKTOP BY VOICE — Users can open Windows applications from the start menu, navigate menu items in Microsoft Office 97, and switch between Windows applications by voice.

SAPI 4.0 SUPPORT — Support for industry standard API ensures that Dragon NaturallySpeaking will seamlessly integrate with future speech-enabled Windows applications that employ this standard.

NATURAL LANGUAGE COMMANDS — Easy to use and easy to remember commands can be issued in a natural way to edit and format text within Microsoft Word 97. For example, a user can say "Make a five by two table," or many other variations.

WORKS IN VIRTUALLY ANY WINDOWS APPLICATION — Users just point their mouse and click in any application. Their text automatically appears in the text window where the cursor is. It works well with Microsoft Word®, Corel WordPerfect®, Lotus Notes®, WordPro®, e-mail packages, Internet chat packages and more.

COMMAND WIZARD — The New Command Wizard utilizing the built-in macro scripting language makes it easy for end-users or Dragon Certified Resellers to create simple, intuitive voice commands to insert boilerplate text, automate common tasks, or integrate speech into existing applications or templates.

MULTIPLE TOPIC SUPPORT — Allows users to store custom words and language usage information on several topics to increase the accuracy of dictation within each topic.

MULTIPLE USER SUPPORT — More than one user may create their own voice files and store them on the computer.

HIGHLY ACCURATE — Industry leading BestMatch™ technology reduces errors for most users by an additional 25% over previous versions. The accuracy in previous versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking was already reported to be from 95% to 98%.

LARGE ACTIVE VOCABULARY — The active vocabulary comes with more than 72,000 words that are ready to use. Over 230,000 words are on disk and can be automatically retrieved by the system. Each word contains spelling, pronunciation, and language usage information for high accuracy. Users can customize the vocabulary with up to 54,000 new words, proper names, and specialized terms.

IMPROVED FORMATTING — Users can dictate numbers, e-mail addresses, and more using natural language. A user could say "Sixty-seven dollars and twenty-six cents," and see $67.26 appear on the screen.

SPEECH PLAYBACK — Recorded speech playback allows users to listen to what they said for easier proofreading and editing. The text-to-speech feature allows users to have words that appear on the screen read aloud to them using high quality text-to-speech from ELAN Informatique™.

TRUE CONTINUOUS SPEECH — Users speak naturally and at a normal pace without the need to pause between words. Dragon NaturallySpeaking was the first product on the market that recognized large vocabulary general-purpose continuous speech.

Dragon Systems, Inc., is a worldwide leader in PC speech recognition. Dragon Systems develops and markets high-performance, cost-effective speech and language technology that, in multiple world languages (including American English, British English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish), enable users to create text, issue commands, enter and access data simply by speaking. The company also licenses technology worldwide through developers, distributors, resellers, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and ISVs (Integrated Software Vendors). Dragon Systems ports its technology across multiple operating systems and hardware platforms — from hand-held devices and PCs to workstations, and is pursuing leading-edge research and development projects for computer and telecommunications applications. Since introducing Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the first large vocabulary continuous speech recognition system able to create general purpose text, in 1997, the Company has received over 70 major industry awards worldwide.

Founded in 1982, Dragon Systems is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts; its Dragon Systems UK Ltd. subsidiary, which is focused on speech recognition for telephony and high-noise environments, is based in Cheltenham, England; Dragon Systems GmbH is located in Munich, Germany, Dragon Systems also has offices in France. Dragon Systems can be found on the world wide web at: www.dragonsys.com or www.naturalspeech.com.

Dragon Systems, and the Dragon Systems logo are registered trademarks, NaturallySpeaking and The Natural Speech Company are trademarks of Dragon Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are of their respective holders.

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