J. A. Powell, Jr.
In the past, I have written about how to use your computer in your law office. This column will show you a few new products that are available now or in the next few months that will have an impact on your practice.
You may have heard that the United States Post Office will stop adding postage to mechanical postage meters within the next 2 years. You will have to get your postage meter filled electronically either by phone or computer.
We have a large meter machine. It is loud, large and unreliable. It makes the most pious of our staff swear like two sailors and a parrot. More importantly, it is EXPENSIVE. It costs us hundreds of dollars a month in rent, maintenance, taxes and other nebulous expenses.
A new system is now being developed that will completely replace the mechanical postage meter with a new software system for your computer. By the first of next year, the Postal Service should have approved a new type of metered stamp that will look like this:
This stamp's bar code will contain the amount of the postage, the destination of the letter, the return address and other information. The Postal Service will be able to sort the letter without any human intervention.
The best part of this system is that it uses your computer and laser printer to print the stamp. You will receive a security device that attaches to your computer to verify the postage. The software will download postage over the Internet and store it in the security device.
When you are ready to mail a letter, you will print the envelope with your laser printer and the stamp will be printed on the envelope. A small scale will be attached to the computer to weigh and automatically calculate the postage. If you want more information, point your web browser to www.e-stamp.com.
Recently, I called in one of our pious staff members fresh from using the postage machine to throw a few spare oaths toward my dictation machine. It decided that it would disregard entire sections of my dictation. I have had it repaired several times and it would work perfectly for about a week. Then, it would take a notion to stop recording.
Recently, I replaced it with a new dictation system from Dictaphone called Boomerang. The dictation end of the system attaches directly to my computer. The transcription end attaches to my secretary's computer. I dictate as I would with my old tape system but at the end of my dictation, I press the send button and the dictation is sent to my secretary using e-mail. Any number of people can dictate to any number of typists. Because it uses e-mail, I can dictate to my laptop anywhere in the world and the dictation is stored until such time that I either connect to the Internet or to our local network at the office. It is then automatically delivered to my secretary for typing. When she is finished typing my dictation she can send it back to me by e-mail for my review.
Jason Priebe with our firm recently showed us how e-mail will save us time and money. He was trying to settle a worker's compensation case with an attorney at Drew Eckl in Atlanta. Drew Eckl's e-mail system is set up like ours. Everyone at the firm has an e-mail address and the e-mail is delivered automatically to their desk.
Jason and this attorney played telephone tag for nearly a week with no success. Finally, Jason e-mailed his proposal to the other attorney. He had a reply in less than an hour. After 2 or 3 exchanges that same day, they settled the claim. Except for the time Jason spent composing the e-mail and the flat monthly fee for Internet access, this did not cost us anything even though the other attorney is located in Atlanta.
I am asked 2 or 3 times a month when will we be able to dictate documents directly to our computers and have it type the document for us. Until now, your computer could be used for dictation with some limitations. The software available required you to speak very clearly and distinctly. This required you to pronounce ... each ... word ... with ... a ... pause ... between ... each ... word. Even then the accuracy left a lot to be desired.
IBM and Dragon System have released competing "natural language" dictation systems. These systems will let you talk normally to your computer and have the words appear on the screen. They will be able to distinguish between words like `to,' `too' and `two' by the context of the surrounding words. I have not seen either of these programs in action and I would want to wait for the bugs to be worked out before buying either one, but it appears to be some interesting technology.
Coming out next year will be add ons for your computer that will use your network for your phone system. These add ons, called Telephony, will eliminate the separate and expensive phone systems and will have many more features than your present phone systems.
I saw a demonstration of one of the possibilities for this system. Imagine that you have been waiting for an important call and your are on your phone when that call comes in. With Telephony, you can see on your computer screen who is calling and have the computer tell the caller to hold while you get off the phone.
Another possibility is for the computer to identify the caller, call up the database file of the client, and display it on your screen.
Shazamm! Just when I thought computer prices have reached rock bottom, the price drops even lower. In past columns I have recommended that you spend about $2000 for a computer. This would buy a machine that is not quite state of the art but is still advanced enough to last for many years.
In the past couple of weeks, many of the name brand computer companies have come out with computers that are under $1000. These machines are fairly advanced for the money and may be more than adequate for your office. Check out Compaq, Gateway, NEC, IBM for these latest machines.