The Gazette 1982

GAZETTE

APRIL 1982

Reality: How much time a machine must go to justify its cost depends on how much the machine costs, how much your labor costs and how much the machine is saving. If an automatic typewriter costs 25 percent of an operator's salary and in- creases output by a third, you're ahead of the game. You can pick up some excellent recondi- tioned equipment for a few thousand dollars and, if you use it right, you can significantly in- crease the productivity of a secretary whose salary and fringe costs are likely to be well into five figures. See my article"How Much Will an Automatic Typewriter Save?" Myth: You should get ready for "word processing" by examining the documents that are coming into your typing facility to determine what kind of automatic typing equipment will best produce them. Reality: Later. First let's examine the documents to see if they could be designed in some better way. Could this dictated text have been in part pre- recorded? Could this name and address have been captured as a byproduct of a prior typing? Could this printed form have been tied into a tab grid? Could the format of this multi-indented, tri-columnar, single-double spaced intermix have been simplified? Could the document have been structured in a way that groups variables in one section and text without variables in another? Could it have been designed so that part of it could have been generated by selecting from among stored paragraphs? Unless documents are examined for better ways of structuring them initially, your work will continue to come into your word processing facility in the same old way. Don't be like the pilot who announces that his plane is making excellent time, but that he's been going in the wrong direction. Myth: If you can afford the extra cost it's better to have a television screen display on your automatic typewriter so you can see the text being worked on. Reality: There is more involved here than meets the eye. When you have a TV screen on your typewriter instead of a roller or platen, the typing or "prin- ting" part of the machine has to be designed as a separate unit. Some kinds of work become hard to do if the keyboard is separated from the printer. Think how you'd prepare a manuscript cover, a printed form, an affidavit of service, an envelope, a return receipt post card or a typed check on a television screen. Typewriters using TV displays are excellent tools for text-editing applications because you are working with only one kind of paper stock in your printing unit. But when you are working with an intermix of different kinds of paper stock, a stand-alone automatic typewriter that prints directly onto its roller may be more versatile. Myth: By measuring the quantity of output (lines pro- duced, etc.) you can judge the effectiveness of your word processing staff.

Reality: You can measure only the quantitative aspects of your staff's productivity. The qualitative aspects can only be judged. Word processing jobs are an intermix of both quantitative and qualitative factors, and many of the qualitative ones are in no way reflected by measuring output. These in- clude such abilities as the capacity to resolve am- biguous, illegible or unclear dictation; to make intelligent format decisions; to determine the correct variable information to be added onto prerecorded materials without having to be told; to select the correct paper stock when it has not been indicated, or even when it has been in- dicated incorrectly; to prepare the customary number of carbon copies even though no copies were called for; to know when to consult a dic- tionary; to be able to handle basic cor- respondence on one's own; etc. Above all, we need to have secretarial help that is capable of understanding how automatic typing equipment can be made to do all the jobs it's able to do, and how to design documents and encode magnet if media appropriately. What's really devastating is that the clock watching, line counting, timekeeping efficiency experts with their quanti- ty thinking may, in fact, be screening out of the word processing environment the kind of quality support staff we most need in it. Myth: The one lawyer/one secretary arrangement is in- effective and must be replaced. Reality: What's wrong with the one lawyer/one secretary arrangement is that it's unthought about. Under some circumstances it may in fact be extremely effective. Where it is, it should be retained; where it's not, it should be replaced. But what's really important is that you ought to be thinking about alternatives. What is the ultimate reality? Perhaps it's that there is no one in charge of methods. Individual lawyers and secretaries do their thing in their own way. Sometimes well, sometimes poorly, sometimes differently from thf ^ time before. Perhaps it's that no one thinks about how- each job could have been done better, and no one asks how the best method could be institutionalized. Perhaps it's that no one cares about efficiency. Perhaps we delude ourselves with the belief that we somehow offer a service so unique that its efficient delivery is of no consequence. Perhaps that will some day be seen as the ultimate myth.

Bernard Sternin is a systems analyst and consultant in the fields of word processing and automated typing, par- ticularly as related to law office practice. An attorney, he is a co-author of How to Creat-A-System for the Law Office, published by the Section of Economics of Law Practice.

(Reprinted from "Legal Economics" September/October, 1981, with kind permission of the publisher, American Bar Association, and the author.)

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