Attorneys were one of the earliest professions to adopt speech recognition.

In 1990, attorneys were adopting speech recognition technology with Kolvox Lawtalk.   This system was not very good by today's standards, but it was the best there was at the time. 

It used WordPerfect version 5.1 and was a discrete speech system. It was too slow to be exceptionally productive. However it had a niche market for attorneys who couldn't type but who wanted to produce their own printed work without legal assistants.

Shortly thereafter, Dragon Systems released a law dictionary to be used with their DragonDictate.  IBM also released a legal dictionary to be used with their IBM Voicetype system.

Although there had been many attempts to come up with speech recognition products for the legal industry in the mid 1990's, none was as good as Kolvox Lawtalk until recently.

DragonNaturallySpeaking Legal Suite version 7.0. The current speech recognition programs are a remarkable improvement over the previous versions of this kind of software. You can dictate between 100 and 160 words per minute with current systems. Accuracy rates well above 98% are now common. With macro support, you can link several commands together to create shortcuts to fill in legal documents, briefs or correspondence of any kind.

For example, you could create a macro command in which every time you said the words " legal brief" Dragon NaturallySpeaking would open Microsoft Word, bring up a customized document, insert your law firm's letterhead at the top of the document, and bring you to the first field in this document that needed to be filled out. You could then continue to fill out this legal brief using nothing more than your voice. Over the course of just a few weeks this shortcut capability can save you valuable hours of time.

Additional features currently available include portable dictation machines such as the Sony ICD-ST10 to dictate your memos anytime/anywhere and go back to the office and have the systems transcribe your text. Wireless microphones are also widely available. Many of our attorney and physician clients like the Philips Speechmike Pro USB because it works very well with speech recognition software, and is a handheld device like many physicians and attorneys are already used to. This microphone also features a built-in trackball so that you can navigate the document easily. It also has a speaker built-in so that if you want text read out loud to you, you can hear it through the microphone itself

21st Century Eloquence prides itself in tailoring customized solutions for professionals in various fields across the country. Call us or e-mail us to tell us about your specific needs and find out how our technology can save you time, money and increase efficiency for your office.

Or to find out which would be better for your particular needs, feel free to call one of our speech recognition specialists at 1-800-245-2133.