The Gazette 1982

GAZETTE

APRIL 1982

Myths and Myth-conceptions about Word Processing by Bernard Sternin

T RYING to picture and prepare for the office of the future is serious business for those of us who will have to live there. Particularly in the area of word pro- cessing and the utilization of automatic typing equip- ment, changes are rapid, costs substantial, and the risks and consequences of going off in wrong directions far reaching. In those areas of practice in which paperwork costs are, or are becoming, a substantial part of total costs, the consequences of inaction or inappropriate ac- tion could be monumental. Along with the growing interest in automatic typing equipment has come a plethora of pens racing to tell us what it's all about. People have come from faraway places to offer as insights propositions that have little foundation in reality. We have sometimes had visited upon us a deluge of folklore and fairy tales embraced and disseminated as fact and understanding. Some of these contentions are simply misleading; others are downright untrue. Here are 10 that qualify for the scrap heap. Myth: Automatic typewriters are best used by the larger law firms. Reality: Quite the contrary, it's the small firms that are making the most effective use of the equip- ment. Some of its leading advocates among bar association speakers are solo practitioners or those in firms of under five lawyers. Smaller firms tend to use the equipment heavily for prerecorded applications, larger firms more for text-editing applications. Productivity is much greater in the former type of use because keyboarding, the slowest part of word process- ing, is substantially reduced and sometimes almost entirely eliminated. Myth: Automatic typewriters are basically symbol- manipulating devices. What you do with them is up to you. Editing text during the drafting of documents is one important use. The use of libraries of prerecorded systems materials is another. There are many other uses for these machines. Myth: Preprints and automatic typing equipment offer alternative approaches. Reality: Preprints and automatic typing equipment are supplementary tools in systems applications. Preprints can make a valuable contribution in speeding paperwork output if you are working with well-developed prerecorded materials. With planning, automatic typing equipment can be used to give preprints the flexibility they

need. For example, you can use a group of pre- recorded paragraphs to play out alternate language into a blank area on the form. Also, the equipment can be used to produce the referencing materials, court caption boxes, and the names and addresses of addressees, onto the form. Myth: One of the reasons for getting automatic typing equipment is to reduce the number of secretaries you need in the office. Reality: That's looking in exactly the wrong direction. You should be trying to maximize the number of secretaries supporting each attorney, and to maximize the number of machines supporting each secretary. The goal is to increase the capaci- ty of each secretary and productivity of our pro- fessional people. That's what's behind the use of paralegals; that's what should be behind your use of equipment. In some of the most efficient offices each attorney is supported by several secretarial people and by a significant investment in equipment. Myth: Getting your typing back in the fastest time possible is one of the reasons for using automatic typing equipment. Reality: First-in-first-out is not the hallmark of a quality support staff. A really good staff examines in- coming work and zeros in on what should be done first and what can wait, rather than doing it in the sequence in which it happens to arrive. The fetish of rapid turnaround time works to discourage thinking secretaries who are trying to balance highs and lows. Also, we should be try- ing to lay a foundation for the printing of as many materials as possible by equipment that feeds paper automatically. That requires a degree of planning that's undercut by placing a premium on fast turnaround time. What it all boils down to is this: Either a word processing facility is given the authority to run its own shop effectively, and in that way turn out everyone's work in ways that are best for the entire organization, or you resign yourself to its responding on a fire department basis to a group of disorganized lawyers who will be served in a sequence determined by politics, favoritism or ability to yell.

Myth: Automatic typewriters are expensive and have to be kept going continuously to justify their cost. 37