In recent years, we’ve seen how much has changed in the way legal professionals work—and we wanted our Dragon Speech Recognition solutions to reflect this. That’s why we’re transitioning all our Dragon solutions to the cloud, to help legal professionals access their powerful speech recognition and dictation tools wherever their work takes them, and on whichever device they use. Here’s how cloud hosting will benefit your firm.
This year, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our speech recognition software, Dragon. When we debuted Dragon at the World Trade Center in NYC, speech recognition was just starting to take off, and people in every industry were beginning to realize its potential.
Now, a quarter of a century later, speech recognition and dictation solutions are part of our everyday lives. Tools like Dragon are used in many legal professionals’ daily workflows—whether to capture crucial meeting notes, speed up the time it takes to complete documentation, or correspond with clients.
Throughout the past 25 years, we’ve worked closely with professionals in the legal sector to better understand exactly how they use Dragon, how it fits into their workstations, and how the solution could help them even more. And naturally, it’s brought us to the cloud.
A need to work wherever, whenever
We recognize that the working lives of legal professionals are increasingly taking them away from their desks. Whether they’re visiting clients, working remotely or from home, or switching between offices, few roles are still confined to a single space. And as the way of working changes, the tools legal professionals use need to adapt too.
That’s why we are transitioning our Winscribe Digital Dictation customers to our cloud-based Dragon solution, Dragon Legal Anywhere. We will continue to offer contract renewals until mid-next year, as well as maintenance and support until 2024, but to gain the benefits of modern documentation, we are recommending our customers look to Dragon hosted in the cloud for ongoing front-end speech recognition. With Dragon Legal Anywhere, legal professionals can access all the benefits of Dragon they use at their desks, on-the-go—all using a single-voice profile. And that has the potential to revolutionize how many legal professionals work.
The flexibility of the cloud
Dragon Legal Anywhere is the ideal solution for firms working in—or transitioning to—new, hybrid office environments. The cloud-hosted solution allows legal professionals to work on their own terms, without losing the benefits that come with having a regular office workstation.
One of our key reasons for moving Dragon to the cloud is that we know every legal professional’s Dragon looks slightly different, and we want users to be able to take those unique elements with them wherever they go. Every professional has their own custom boilerplates, legal vocabulary specific to their firms and clients, customized templates, and personal desktop shortcuts—after all, these personalized features are what makes Dragon such a valuable workstation tool.
Previously, personalized elements like these would be limited to your office, where your Dragon solution is hosted. But now, with Dragon hosted in the cloud, these personalized elements travel with you across every device you use. For example, if you’re traveling to a meeting and need to update a client’s contract before you arrive, you can access the file you need, insert the new information into your template, and send it to the client—all using your personalized Dragon profile on your mobile device.
Greater convenience, less admin hassle
If your firm hasn’t switched its operating model and you’re still working in the office, there’s still a lot to gain from your Dragon solution being hosted in the cloud. You’ll get all the same benefits that came with our on-premises solutions, but with the added flexibility of remote working, and reduced IT maintenance and admin hassle.
One simple way Dragon Legal Anywhere reduces admin hassle? Automatic updates. We’re always tweaking Dragon’s capabilities, whether it’s to add new vocabulary, optimize the speech recognition engine, or build new accessibility features. With Dragon Legal Anywhere hosted in the cloud, we can push out these updates to every firm whenever they’re released, avoiding the need for manual updates and ensuring every legal professional is working on the most up-to-date version of Dragon available.
It’s also even easier to get started with Dragon Legal Anywhere compared to our on-premises solutions. IT teams can manage their existing users, wherever they’re located, within a single system, and deploy Dragon for new users rapidly. And with Dragon Legal Anywhere hosted on Microsoft Azure’s highly reliable servers, firms and corporate legal departments can fully encrypt their data and feel confident their information is secure.
Have a question about the move to cloud? We’re here to help.
We’re excited to see how cloud-hosting changes the way legal professionals use Dragon in the future, but we’re aware you might have questions about what it means for your firm. Whether you’re already using one of our on-premises solutions, or you’re considering Dragon Speech Recognition for the first time, don’t hesitate to contact one of our experts today with any queries.