ScanSoft Dragon NaturallySpeaking Wins 2003 Law Office Computing Readers' Choice Award

PEABODY, Mass., July 24, 2003 - ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT), a leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions, today announced that ScanSoft® Dragon NaturallySpeaking® 7 Legal, the world's best-selling speech recognition solution designed specifically for law firms and legal professionals, has won the Law Office Computing Readers' Choice Award for "Best Speech Recognition Technology" for the second consecutive year. The winners of the Readers' Choice Awards represent the most widely used software applications in the legal community.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal has been proven by thousands of legal professionals to be the leading speech recognition solution designed specifically for the specialized needs of the legal community. Used by legal professionals and law firms worldwide, , Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal converts text into speech at up to 160 words per minute, reducing or eliminating the costs associated with manually creating documents and transcripts. The Microsoft Windows application is used to create contracts, citations, letters and transcripts by voice, and also enables hands-free interaction with practice management, legal research, e-mail and Web applications.

"ScanSoft is honored to receive this prestigious award from the readers of Law Office Computing magazine, widely considered to be the most trusted resource for legal professionals," said Robert Weideman, chief marketing officer, ScanSoft, Inc. "The readers of Law Office Computing are ultimately ScanSoft customers, and are invaluable to the company as we continue to develop specialized solutions for vertical markets and eliminate barriers to productivity."

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal is a significant new release, delivering unrivaled levels of accuracy and speed, the benchmarks most widely associated with speech recognition applications. The new version achieves up to 99% percent accuracy, and is 50 percent faster than the previous release. It also expands its support for mobile dictation, a mainstay of the legal industry, allowing users to record speech using Microsoft Pocket PC devices and have documents automatically created the next time they sync to their PCs. The software also comes standard with a vocabulary of more than 250,000 words, and includes a comprehensive legal vocabulary containing Latin and French law phrases, court names, and abbreviations and specialized legal terms.

Key Features of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal

To help legal organizations improve productivity and reduce or eliminate manual transcription costs, ScanSoft has added a number of key capabilities to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal, including:

• Most Accurate Ever - Significant improvements to the Dragon NaturallySpeaking recognition system has yielded an unprecedented accuracy improvement of up to 15 percent over the previous release, resulting in speech recognition accuracy levels as high as 99 percent.
  
  
• Fastest Ever - More than 50 percent improvement in the initialization time of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 enables "10 seconds to dictation" on baseline systems. Users can train the software on their voice patterns in just five minutes.
  
  
• Mobile Dictation Support - Users can now "talk-and-dock" using standard Pocket PC devices, in addition to handheld digital recorders, to record mobile dictation for automatic transcription when they synch to their PCs.
  
  
• Support for Array Microphones and Wireless Headsets - This release represents the first Dragon NaturallySpeaking to support array and wireless microphones, giving users the freedom to dictate without being tethered to their PC by a wired headset.
  
  
• Pre-configured Legal Vocabulary - Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal comes with a pre-configured legal vocabulary, and automatically formats citations.
  
  
• New Vocabulary Optimizer - Users can instruct Dragon NaturallySpeaking to instantly analyze sentence structure and word use frequency in previously created documents. Dragon NaturallySpeaking then automatically adjusts the recognition engine to match the user's unique writing patterns, thereby further increasing accuracy.
  
  
• Section 508 Accessibility - Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal can help people with disabilities achieve maximum productivity on PCs, as well as help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and other musculoskeletal disorders. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 is the only PC dictation application that meets US Section 508 mandates, which were established by the federal government to insure access to technology by people with disabilities.

Availability and Pricing

ScanSoft Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7 Legal is available immediately through the ScanSoft professional sales organization and its global network of reseller partners. The retail price is $995 for individual users, with multi-seat and site licensing available. For additional information on features, pricing and volume licensing programs, please visit www.ScanSoft.com or call (1) 800.443.7077.

About ScanSoft, Inc.

ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT) is a leading supplier of imaging, speech and language solutions that are used to automate a wide range of manual processes - saving time, increasing worker productivity and improving customer service. For more information regarding ScanSoft products and technologies, please visit www.ScanSoft.com.

Trademark reference: ScanSoft, the ScanSoft logo and Dragon NaturallySpeaking are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

The statements in this press release that relate to future plans, events or performance are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with market trends, competitive factors, and other risks identified in ScanSoft's SEC filings. Actual results, events and performance may differ materially. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements that speak only as of the date hereof.

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