Sit back, close your eyes, and dream. Imagine you are sitting in your chair, your feet are up on your desk, you are wearing a headset with a microphone, and looking at your computer keyboard and monitor. Traditionally, you would have hunched over the keyboard and begun slowly or perhaps depending upon your speed, quickly to work away. You dream of the day when technology offers the opportunity for you to simply speak into your microphone and, seamlessly, the words appear on your computer. No longer would you be required to spend hours slaving over the keyboard, or challenged to use your Dictaphone to dictate letters, briefs of memorandum to have them transcribed or corrected by your secretary or assistant. You fantasize that some day you can speak and navigate all of your computer commands simply by asking your computer to perform the action for you. Perhaps this is somewhat akin to early musicians who wished to have beautiful grand pianos but did not have the time, inclination, or ability to learn how to play the piano discovering the “player piano,” truly a wondrous discovery. Simply turning on a button and the piano will play all by itself.

That day has finally arrived! Two years ago I purchased a product sold by IBM called Via Voice, a voice recognition software program. I anxiously installed this product on my Toshiba laptop computer and spent the requisite 30 minutes preparing the software to recognize my voice and with enormous anticipation began to speak into the headset provided by IBM. To describe my experience as one of disappointment would be an understatement. Not only was the software difficult to use, the recognizability of the words was dismal. The IBM product required you to speak one word at a time, speaking as though you were talking to a three-year-old child, never putting words next to each other or having any rhythm to the letter your were dictating. I was profoundly disappointed. I had such high expectations. I thought that day had finally come when I could truly “throw away the keyboard and fire the Secretary.” (Needless to say my secretary didn’t share my disappointment) Far from it! My expectations were totally shattered by the reality of the IBM product, it SUCKED!

Having once been burned, I was very skeptical that a product could actually do what I had dreamed voice recognition software was capable of-true speech recognition where there is simultaneous translation of the actual word spoken, with no waiting for the computer to catch up with your brain, thus being able to dictate at a normal pace without having to allow for math coprocessor to catch up with you!

Believe it or not, that time has finally arrived, (or, at least, it’s very close). The fantasy has become a reality. I am in fact sitting back in my desk chair, feet up on the desk, headset on my heard, dictation into a little microphone which is, with about 90 percent accuracy, actually transcribing the words I am speaking. The difficult thing, actually, is to speak at a moral pace. When I look at the computer monitor, I tend to want to speak in a slower, more clipped manner than the program actually requires.

For months, one of my partners, William Larson, kept hounding me to actually purchase and attempt to use one of the commercially available voice recognition software programs. Having had such a dismal experience with the IBM product I was, to say the least, reluctant. Bill kept talking about the advances in productivity we would be able to experience at the firm if we were able to install a voice recognition software program on all the attorney’s paralegals computers. I discussed with him the disappointment I had had with other similar products and asked him to be realistic and forget about, for at least the next several years. The idea that such a product could actually work. Nevertheless, in an attempt more to shut him up then anything else, as we upgraded all of the computer in our office, I purchased the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software, a commercially available product which had received some very good reviews in both the legal publications and the computer magazines.

I first scouted the local newspapers to find the best advertised price to find the best price for the Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred product. The best advertised price I found was $149.00 through a New York mail-order facility. We contacted Staples and were informed Staples would match the advertised price and sell us the product for $149.00. I anxiously (an eternal optimist) ventured down to the local Staples and purchased the Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred software. Here’s how simple it is:

The product comes with a CD that quickly installs the software onto your hard drive as well as a simple headset for your use. After the software has been downloaded to your hard drive the Dragon Naturally Speaking program takes you through the initial setup of the system. It is important that your computer’s sound card is compatible with the Dragon product and there are, without any doubt, certain minimum specifications your system must have. My view on these minimum specifications is more then the software’s manufacturers recommendations. Realistically, for the program to work effectively, I believe your working minimum specifications should be as follows: clock speed Pentium 233 MHZ, 64 MB of RAM, 512 cache memory, Sound Blaster or compatible sound card, and a high-quality headset. The manufacturer’s posted minimum specifications are Pentium 133 MHZ, 32 MB of RAM, and the headset supplied by the software. You must have installed Windows 95 or Windows NT for the product to work on your computer.

Once you have installed the software, the program takes you through a 30 minute exercise to have the Dragon product begin to recognize your particular mode of speech. Being originally for New Jersey, my speech pattern and accent are significantly different from someone having grown up in Southern California or Manhattan. My wife, a former resident of Manhattan, insists she speaks without any accent whatsoever and, I suppose, when compared to my unique speech, she actually has no accent!

The Dragon product is a software program which continually learns and updates its speech files with your unique speech idiosyncrasies. For example, I tend to say the “ALL” like the word “OWL,” so each time I would save the ALL, the computer would recognize this word as the word OWL. To remedy this problem, the program has a function which allows you to highlight the word OWL and train the computer to recognize that word as actually being the word ALL. You simply repeat your own particular way of the saying the word ALL and your way of saying OWL until the computer understands the difference. It only takes a couple of tries and from that point forward the computer has no further problems. It goes without saying that significant time and effort must be committed to customizing the speech recognition files with your unique brand of speech, but let me assure you that the benefit so far and away outweigh the detriments, that taking the time and effort to customize will pay off 1000 percent!

Imagine how difficult it was too actually confront my partner and acknowledge that the months of resistance on my part to actually try the new generation of voice recognition software was foolish, my ideas outdated, and Larson wholly accurate in his assessment of how this product would transform our office. It is truly spectacular! We have now upgraded our partners’ computer to Intel Pentium III 450 MHz machine. Intel has a agreement with Dragon such that the Pentium III chip is actually DESIGNED to work in conjunction with Dragon to increase speed and recognition. Bottom line is this, if you haven’t tried a voice recognition program TRY IT, YOU”LL LIKE IT.

So here’s my new dream. I’m sitting on a beach, my wife is next to me, I slip on a pair of sunglasses, listen to the sound of the waves and relax! Will vice recognition make this dream a reality? To live and Hope.