First, my apologies for this ugly site. My “regular” blog is moving, and I’ve got about 4 balls up in the air regarding my Internet presence (one of which is a new blog focusing on all things Mac, called www.MacLovinJD.com – I hope to launch it soon). For now, MILOWeekly is the best place to post this review while that other stuff settles down. After that throat-clearing, here be the review:

I have been a fan of dictation software ever since my hands got bad. After years of typing and playing the piano, my hands got so bad that prolonged typing produced cramping in my hands and wrists. After a year or two of dealing with the pain, I turned to dictation software (some version of Dragon Naturally Speaking) in my legal work. Dragon had a version of legal dictation software that went nicely with my job, but it lagged behind the newest engine for reasons unknown to me.

When I switched over to a Mac, I searched for comparable dictation software and found the landscape a little barren. Not only was it barren, but what attempted to grow there was weak and sickly. Enter MacSpeech’s Dictate speech recognition software last year. I was a big fan of what MacSpeech was doing and followed the release of that software very closely. The review I wrote was very widely-read and repeated. I have been waiting for an update to the original release. I played with Dictate 1.5 briefly before seeing the Legal version release last week.

I got my hands on a copy and what follows is my review of MacSpeech Dictate:Legal after just a few minutes of playing with it.

Out of the box, it’s already an improvement over both Dictate 1.3 and 1.5 and if included microphones is any indication of value, you can see that MacSpeech isn’t just juicing the legal market for more money with this software. (The Legal version retails at $595 compared with $199 for the “regular” flavor). The included microphone is a much slicker VXI TalkPro Xpress, as compared with a lower, but serviceable, mic from Platronics with vanilla Dictate 1.5.

Setting up Dictate:Legal was a breeze. It imported my settings from Dictate 1.5 (which I had to upgrade from 1.3) and had all of my old profiles. I created a new profile for use with the VXI mic and noticed some new options in setting accents. You can now choose from 9 “American” accents, such as Southern, Latino and Indian. I wanted to play with speaking in accents, but figured that would just annoy my staff and it would be no scientific test on how effective MacSpeech’s accent profiles are.

I went through the training process where I read the same text I’ve read at least 10 times already (uploading different profiles and changing microphones). Already I can tell that something is different under the hood as everything just has a smoother feel to it.

Unlike the plain vanilla version of Dictate (in which everything is blue), Dictate:Legal version is a soft yellow color. I’m not sure what it says about the legal profession to be colored yellow, but it’s a nice change as a way to distinguish the different versions.

Part of the reason why you spend more money on the Legal version of Dictate is so that you can speak in legal terms without causing the speech recognition software engine to go into convulsions. And so, here comes the requisite test of all the legal terms that come to mind at this moment:

First, the Latin terms, de facto corporation, “restitutional liquid or” (res ipsa loquitur), In re, ad hoc, pendente lite, trial de novo, de jure, “pro hockey chain” (pro hac vice)and ex parte motion.

Next, the plain English legal terms: pretrial motions, Joinder of parties, Miranda rights, malfeasance, insolvency, goods and chattels, decedent, deponent, cognizable, arrogation, and remaindermen.

As you can see, the program did very, very well with the English legal terms. It had a harder time with some of the Latin phrases (but who uses ‘res ispa loquitur’ anyways?).

What is also very good about this version of MacSpeech Dictate is the lengthy user manual that’s included as a PDF with the documentation. Learning to use speech recognition software effectively necessarily means learning a different way of speaking. You absolutely have to get comfortable using your voice to control the entire document window, as well as application commands. As MacSpeech says, “the Golden Rule of speech recognition is: when working with text, do not mix your voice with your hands.” The User Manual is an excellent guide and really helps you understand how this program is thinking about speech recognition and dictation in general.

As you can probably guess, I have dictated nearly this entire review. I can report that I have had to do the very, very little post-editing on account of errors caused by the Dictate software. More often than not, the problem is behind the microphone, as I mumble my speech, slur my words, or otherwise change direction in my sentence mid-dictation.

MacSpeech Dictate Legal is available today for $595 as a new purchase, or $345 for current owners of MacSpeech Dictate 1.5, or $395 for current owners of MacSpeech Dictate 1.3.

Is it worth the upgrade? Well, if you were in early adopter of MacSpeech Dictate, it’s probably well worth the additional $400 to get both the upgrade to Dictate 1.5 as well as the benefits of a specialized legal version of the software. I haven’t been working with the software very long, but already I can see the added benefit of having those 30,000 words included in my speech recognition software. The time that I have saved by not having to spell out, or even more detrimental to productivity, typed out legal-specific words is substantial.

I’m going to give the software a few more months worth of use and report back whether it’s all worth the investment. However, in the meantime, if you have been holding off purchasing speech recognition software for the Mac because it did not include a “legal” version, your wait is over. MacSpeech Dictate Legal is here and it is very, very good.

Posted by Victor J. Medina
www.MacLovinJD.com