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The Dis-Associate

Darwin and the Dictaphone

By William Melater

I felt like Indiana Jones. Instead of snakes, there were power cords slinking around my feet. Instead of a whip, I held a ballpoint pen. Instead of a hat, I wore, well, my hair was perfect. I was not looking for treasure. No, I was looking for a different relic. I was looking for the infamous dictaphone!

You heard right, a dictaphone, as requested by my boss. After about 25 minutes of hunting in the back room, I uncovered it, in all its glory: An unnecessarily heavy piece of 1980s gold.

An Anachronism, and Yet …

Apparently, the dictaphone device was widely used at a time when legal secretaries were the only people capable of typing at an acceptable speed. (Question: If the tapes are so small, why is the machine so large?) Things have changed. (I have clocked my personal typing speed at 88 wpm with 97 percent accuracy. Boom!) However, while it may be archaic, the dictaphone is still apparently incredibly useful to a certain generation of attorneys. So it begs the question: Is total adaptation to technology really necessary?

The general Darwinism rule is adapt or die. But, while things around us have changed, most lawyers have not. Let’s face it, lawyers work forever. I deal with opposing counsel who are 88-years-old and up and still sharp as a whip. (Is that the term? A whip? Why?) These fellows never did and never will type 88 wpm. Rather, they use dictaphones. And it works for them.

After much study, I believe the answer to the legal adaptation question is two-fold: You must adapt to both the new technology and the old-school methodologies to succeed.

  1. Do not try to teach an old lawyer new tricks. Just don’t. It’s pretty much futile to try teaching lawyers past 50 to use cloud-based file transferring, for example. Just scan the docs onto a disk and throw it in the mail. The fact is these lawyers have become successful professionals using established methodology over decades. Respect the methods they used to become successful.
  2. Merge the new and old. Merge your own technologically advanced techniques with the old-school techniques. There are some areas that just can’t be updated. Paper dominates, but DropBox is a faster way to share documents. Emails can get you in trouble, but mailing letters takes too long.
  3. If you come across an old dictaphone, do not panic. It will not hurt you. In fact, it may help you! I have, however, heard that “typewriters” can be very aggressive.

I may not know what I’m talking about, but I think you understand.

William Melater is a young associate attorney working at a firm focused on commercial litigation and transactional work. A self-described legal hunter and gatherer, Bill has accumulated a plethora of legal certificates and diplomas—all of which have been appropriately framed and hung behind his desk. Bill has a distaste for emails, suspenders, fake tans, paralegals who cry, sea urchins and attorneys who repeat the phrase “this is my bottom-line offer.” When irked, Bill blogs about his experiences at Attorney at Work.

Categories: Communications Skills, Daily Dispatch, Law Firm Associates, Legal Technology
Originally published July 12, 2012
Last updated July 17, 2018
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William Melater

William Melater is a young associate attorney working at a firm focused on commercial litigation and transactional work. A self-described legal hunter and gatherer, Bill has accumulated a plethora of legal certificates and diplomas—all of which have been appropriately framed and hung behind his desk. Bill has a distaste for emails, suspenders, fake tans, paralegals who cry, sea urchins and attorneys who repeat the phrase “this is my bottom-line offer.” When irked, Bill blogs about his experiences at Attorney at Work.

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