Canadian Lawyer

TECH SUPPORT BY JASON LEUNG The limits of speech- recognition technology W settes at Sam the Record Man and listen to them on my Walkman going to and from school. By the time I started uni- versity, I switched over to compact discs. Today, like almost everyone else, I use iTunes and an MP3 player. When I started as a first-year associ- hen I was in high school, I used to listen to music on cassette tapes. I would buy cas- ate, I was surprised to see cassettes come back into my life. I would use a dicta- tion machine to dictate a letter onto a tape and after finishing would put the tape on top of the paper file and leave it in a pile of other tapes and files on my assistant's shelf. My assistant would then transcribe it. Over the years, I experienced numer- they have since stopped using them. When I moved to my current firm, I found that there were three types of law- yers here: 1) lawyers who do not use dictation and type out their letters or amendments to letters; 2) lawyers who use digital dictation; and 3) lawyers who use speech-recognition technology. To dictate or not to dictate The lawyers in my firm who do not use dictation tend to be younger and have well-developed computer skills. They will often have their assistants prepare a first draft of a letter and then type in their amendments, or they may simply type their own letters from scratch. ous problems with using tapes for dicta- tion. Because I used the same one over and over again, the magnetic tape would wear thin and occasionally break. Of course, it usually broke when I was in the middle of an unusually long dictation and I would have to start all over again. I was constantly making trips to the dollar store to buy new one. When I got tired of that, I started bringing in my old tapes from high school and would record my dictations over the music. Occasionally, I would hear my assistant break out into laughter when he or she reached the point where one of my dictations ended and the tape started to play an old hit by U2 or George Michael. There were also times when recorded tapes went missing or somehow ended up being matched to the wrong paper file. I continued using cassettes until 2010 when I left my previous firm. I believe In most cases, these people are able to type faster than they are able to speak and are experts at reformatting their letters in Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, I am not a fast typist and my reformatting skills are lacking, so this was not the best option for me. Digital dictation I chose to join the lawyers who use digital dictation. Unlike cassette-tape dictation, digital dictation records and edits spoken work in real time into a digital audio format. Our digital-dictation system has a very useful workflow element where the recorded digital audio file can be easily transferred to a staff member for transcribing. I found digital dictation offered several my assistant or to other staff. I no longer need to worry about tapes getting broken, matched up to the wrong file, or lost. • The digital audio file provides a higher quality of sound. This helps to improve transcription accuracy and speed, and reduce my assistant's level of frustration. • I can instantly rewind or fast forward to any point in the file for review or editing. It is much less cumbersome than tapes. Speech-recognition technology Speech-recognition technology analyzes the data on a digital audio file using speech algorithms and translates advantages over tapes: • It produces a digital audio file that can be securely and efficiently transferred electronically. As soon as I complete a dic- tation, I can send the digital audio file to 18 A U GUST 2012 www.CANADIAN Lawyermag.com spoken words into text. A small group of digital dictation users in my firm, includ- ing myself, recently participated in a test pilot for a new speech-recognition sys- tem. I was asked to read several passages of text into the speech-recognition system the

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