The Gazette 1982

GAZETTE

APRIL 1982

Myths and Myth-conceptions about

Word Processing

by Bernard Sternin

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.