Nuance Introduces Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 - Advanced Speech Recognition Boosts Productivity, Eliminates Manual Transcription

Business Wire, August 9, 2006

BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Leading Speech Recognition Solution Supplants Traditional Legal Transcription Services to Significantly Reduce Overhead, Increase Productivity; New Release Boasts Dramatic Accuracy Gains and Elimination of Voice Training

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today introduced Dragon(TM) NaturallySpeaking(R) Legal version 9, a new release of the world's most accurate speech recognition solution designed specifically for legal professionals in large firms, small practices, or corporate and government legal departments. Already in use by thousands of legal professionals worldwide, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal converts speech into text at up to 160 words per minute, reducing or eliminating the costs associated with manually creating documents and transcripts and increasing productivity.

The new release of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal boosts accuracy by as much 20 percent, moving accuracy levels up to 99 percent, and also removes one of the most significant issues that has typically created resistance to trying speech recognition - "training" or "enrollment." Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is the first-ever desktop speech recognition product to eliminate this up-front training while still delivering highly accurate results. Also new in this release is enhanced network support which allows users to access Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal from any workstation on an organization's LAN, even thin-client Citrix terminals, making it equally well-suited for small practices and large firms.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 adds speech to virtually all Microsoft Windows applications, including most practice management systems, as well as Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect and Lotus Notes. By using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9, legal professionals can create contracts, briefs, e-mails and letters over three times faster than typing. Legal professionals that use manual transcription services from support staff or third party service agencies can eliminate the time and expense associated with that process. In both cases, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 improves client service through faster document turnaround.

A Breakthrough in Speech Recognition

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 makes speech recognition even better for small practices or large firms with a number of new features and improvements:

Key Benefits

--Most Accurate Ever - Significant improvements to the Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognition system have yielded an accuracy improvement of up to 20 percent over the previous release, and nearly 40 percent over version 7 - resulting in speech recognition accuracy levels as high as 99 percent.

--First to Eliminate Training - Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 is the first desktop speech recognition solution to truly remove the need to "train" the software - and still deliver accurate results.

--Enterprise Features - Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 can be accessed from anywhere on a network, even thin client Citrix terminals. Improved tools allow IT administrators to easily manage network deployments of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9.

--Optimized for Legal Environments - Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 provides seamless speech input and control capabilities with practice management systems and the most popular applications. Simply install Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 and you have added speech input and control to your practice management system and to virtually all of your Microsoft Windows applications. The new release includes specific integration with Microsoft Office, Outlook and Internet Explorer, as well as Corel WordPerfect and Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

--Custom Vocabularies - With a specialized legal vocabulary of more than 25,000 legal terms, and powerful tools to further customize vocabularies, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 ensures the highest levels of accuracy in legal environments. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 also automatically formats legal citations.

--New Mobility, Portability - New support for Nuance-approved Bluetooth headsets gives users the freedom to dictate wirelessly, without being tethered to a PC. In addition, users can capture dictation with mobile devices such as digital recorders and Palm Tungsten for automatic transcription by Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal when synched with the PC. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Legal also supports the Tablet PC.

"For years the Legal industry has relied on speech recognition to drive down manual transcription costs and increase productivity, particularly as the adoption of practice management systems has grown," said John Shagoury, president, Productivity Applications Division, Nuance. "The accuracy improvements, elimination of voice training, and the additional network support that we have achieved with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal 9 make it the obvious choice for legal professionals in large firms, small practices, or corporate and government legal departments to reduce costs, minimize document turnaround time, and improve overall client service."