Dictation is a fact of life in the consumer bankruptcy law office. Handheld digital recorders abound, and lots of lawyers need to turn that into correspondence and pleadings to maximize efficiency.

In the past, lawyers would give their tapes to secretaries to transcribe. These days, many turn the task over to virtual transcription services. For my money, the best option is speech recognition software.

The best of the bunch is Dragon NaturallySpeaking. And with the current version, it’s all you need.

If you already dictate using a handheld recorder the switch to Dragon NaturallySpeaking is seamless. Use your handheld transcriber, dictate your document including all punctuation and symbols to be included, and plug it into your computer.

You can navigate throughout your document using voice commands such as “New paragraph” to insert a new paragraph; “Go to end of line” to move to the end of the existing line; or “Select paragraph” to select the entire paragraph. You can also use menu items such File, Edit, Insert and the like by stating their name and then the “move up” or “move down” commands.

You can use speech commands to select a line, a specific number of words, a paragraph or an entire document. You can bold, underline, and italicize text; copy, cut, and paste; enter Roman numerals; and otherwise format text. You can also spell out words that you wish to train the system to recognize. Commands are also available within Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Corel WordPerfect, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox.

The application learns your voice through a simple training system, which involves reading a script displayed on your screen. The program will also look to your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express and any documents that you have in your My Documents folder to recognize your writing patterns.

Though Dragon works with many digital voice recorders, my personal favorite is the Sony ICD-MX20. This nifty little device has 32 MB flash memory on board, but also takes Sony’s Memory Stick Duo or Pro Duo media cards for increased capacity. The advanced digital voice operated recording (VOR) feature actually stops recording during silent pauses, saving valuable recording time. Thanks to the digital buffer, this intelligent machine begins recording again without missing a single syllable. The digital recorder also comes equipped with USB connectivity so you can copy it directly to your computer for use by Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

The fact of the matter is that your secretary or paralegal has been things to do with his or her time than to listen to you prattle on. Let your software do the work for you – it’s faster, easier and more efficient than ever before.