Sara Buda PNCG for Dragon Systems Tel: 617.450.4300 Email:sara.buda@pncg.com Renee L. Blodgett Dragon Systems Tel: 617.796.0348 Email: reneeb@dragonsys.com

NEWTON, Mass. - January 24, 2000 - Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite Version 4.0 is now shipping, worldwide speech recognition leader Dragon Systems, Inc. of Newton, Mass. announced today. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite is an enhanced version of the widely acclaimed Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition software.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite includes an extensive legal vocabulary and other features designed to increase productivity for legal professionals. Lawyers, judges, paralegals, legal secretaries and others in the legal profession can create briefs, time and billing records, correspondence, e-mail, and other documents. Users can dictate directly into most applications, including Microsoft® Word and Corel® WordPerfect® Legal Suite, as well as custom legal applications. People who need to dictate on the move can use the Dragon NaturallyMobile™ pocket-sized digital recorder to create documents almost anywhere.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite Version 4.0 incorporates significant advancements, including a dramatically increased active vocabulary size, significantly reduced training time, speech commands for the Internet, and the ability to take advantage of new instructions for enhanced performance on both the Intel® Pentium® III and the new AMD® Athlon™ processors.

"Time is money. Legal professionals can save hours a day and reduce their transcription costs by using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite to transcribe their speech into a PC," said Roger Matus, Vice President of North American Marketing for Dragon Systems. "Version 4.0's increased vocabulary size and reduced training time make the software even more accurate and easier for legal professionals to use."

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite's extensive legal vocabulary was compiled from an extensive collection of legal reports, journal articles and other legal text. Thousands of carefully chosen legal terms, abbreviations and more were added to the Dragon NaturallySpeaking standard vocabulary with spelling, pronunciation and language usage information. Language usage information provides information on how each word is used in context in order to increase the accuracy of the system.

Users can create multiple, customized vocabularies, using Vocabulary Builder™. Vocabulary Builder automatically analyzes electronic documents chosen by the user to find new terms. Such terms may be related to a legal specialty, geographic location, client names, personal interests, and more. Vocabulary Builder then adds the spelling, pronunciation, and language usage information.

Legal professionals can also customize the system using the extensive macro capability. Simple macros allow users to easily create boilerplate text that can be inserted when the user issues a command phrase, such as "enter client billing history." More sophisticated macros allow users to enter text, retrieve information from other applications, and place text into other applications. These sophisticated macros can be created using a basic-like programming language.

Other features in Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite include direct dictation into most Windows® applications, with hands-free editing and formatting within Corel WordPerfect Version 8 or 9 and Microsoft Word 97 or 2000.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite Version 4.0 Benefits and Features:

• Extensive Legal Vocabulary - Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite features a 250,000-word vocabulary containing not only an extensive collection of legal terms, phrases and abbreviations, but also the context of those terms as used within 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 highly specialized legal applications.
• Breakthrough in Vocabulary Size - The active vocabulary (vocabulary stored in memory) has been doubled to over 160,000 words in Version 4 for U.S. English without significantly increasing memory requirements. This is more than double the largest active vocabulary available in the industry to date. This breakthrough means that users are much more likely to get the correct word when they dictate. The total vocabulary size is 250,000, the largest in the industry, and is completely customizable.
• Incremental Vocabulary Builder - Vocabulary Builder allows for personalization of an existing vocabulary. Users can personalize their vocabulary, which will help improve their speech efficiency and accuracy rates. Vocabulary Builder not only automatically adds the words that a user normally uses to the active vocabulary, it also teaches the system about his or her writing style.
• Improved BestMatch™ III for Even Higher Accuracy - Improved BestMatch III technology takes full advantage of today's high-end processors such as the Intel Pentium III and the AMD Athlon to achieve the highest level of accuracy Dragon Systems has ever offered. Best Match III requires a computer with a processor speed of 450 MHz or higher.
• Accurate Continuous Speech Recognition - Users dictate text naturally and continuously at rates of up to 160 words per minute and more, without the need to pause between words. As users speak into the microphone, words appear immediately on the screen and in their documents with every word spelled correctly. Easy-to-use, intuitive commands allow users to edit and format their text quickly and efficiently by voice. Independent studies report Dragon NaturallySpeaking accuracy to be between 95% and 99%.
• Multiple User Support - More than one user may create voice files and store them on the same computer.
• Speech Commands -The New Command Wizard™ uses the built-in macro scripting language to make it easy for end-users or Dragon Certified Resellers to create simple, intuitive speech commands to insert boilerplate text, automate common tasks, or integrate speech into existing applications, templates or legal records systems.
• Speech Playback - Recorded speech playback allows users to hear their words repeated for easier proofreading and editing. Users can have the words that appear on the screen read aloud to them using high quality Text-to-Speech from ELAN Informatique™.
• Works in Virtually Any Windows Environment - Users can just point their mouse and click in an application. Their text automatically appears in the text window where the cursor is. The product works well with Microsoft Word 97/2000, Corel WordPerfect Version 8 or 9, Lotus® Notes®, Microsoft Wordpad, Microsoft Chat 2.1 and 2.5, and many more.
• Command & Control Windows Applications by Voice - Users can quickly and easily control the Windows desktop by voice. Users can now execute commands, such as "Start AOL Instant Messenger," and "Switch to WordPerfect," by voice.
• Web-browsing by Voice - Speech-enabled Internet capability allows users to navigate the Internet, using Microsoft Internet Explorer, by voice. This feature provides a faster and more effective way for users to open links and participate in chat rooms on the Web.
• Reduced Training Time - Dragon NaturallySpeaking learns to recognize users' voices in about five minutes, so users can get up and running quickly and easily. (Requires a computer with a processor of 300 MHz or higher and at least 64 MB of system memory (RAM).)
• High-quality Noise-Canceling Microphone - A high-quality noise-canceling microphone, which has been optimized for speech recognition, is included.

System Requirements and Pricing

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite 4.0 supports Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT® 4.0. It requires a processor with performance equivalent to an Intel Pentium with MMX, 300 MHz, with 200 MB free hard disk space and 128 MB RAM. Requirements may vary depending on the features being used.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal Suite supports a broad range of built-in audio and industry standard sound cards, including Creative Labs® Soundblaster® 16 and compatibles, as well as notebooks with built-in 16-bit audio. Proprietary speech cards are not required for either desktops or portables. Dragon Systems recommends using only Dragon-certified hardware, as listed in the Technical Support section of its Web site (http://www.dragonsys.com). DragonNaturallySpeaking Legal Suite is available through Dragon's VAR channel at a suggested list price of $995. The Dragon NaturallyMobile Recorder Option Kit is available for an additional $199