Many fee-earners at law firms are taught by their seniors on the value of dictation, be they Managing Associates or Partners and non fee-earners such as senior Personal Assistants. It is unarguably an incredibly valuable skill.
Most of us love to talk, and yet without buying-into proprietary systems many firms who would love to have e.g. more conversational (but still thorough) witness statements are not able to.
As ever with any technology, Open Source works towards opening access to dictation software through building the under-lying libraries of voice-data (anonymised of course) to help further work in this field.
Enter Mozilla Voice which allows you submit your voice or review submissions to improve research into your voice, as well as to help technologists design new and interesting additions to dictation software.
With a great voice, comes great responsibility
We love Dragon Dictation at Hayachi Services, it has opened many workplace-opportunities for thousands in the legal sector who would otherwise not be able to engage with technology – and therein have fulfilling work in the sector.
Most technologies we use in the office are still not ergonomic. But this will change, with due effort, as we engage in Open Source projects such as Mozilla Voice to enable new entries into the market – more competitive, more effective, and more fun to use (one would hope)!
If you are curious about other projects by Mozilla do check out their main-site here.