PLAN No. 605. LAWYER’S PLAN TO SAVE ON TYPEWRITING
A lawyer must have an office and a stenographer. Usually he can afford his office, and as far as books are concerned he can obtain them on time. But his stenographic help is always a problem as most of the time he cannot afford to have a stenographer.
He may find that a large part of the time his stenographer is more of a nuisance than a help. He is compelled to pay her $80 a month when over half of the time she is without work.
This attorney obtained a dictaphone and experimented with it for about a month. He accustomed himself to the use of it. When he kept the receiver of the dictaphone against his upper lip his voice took very clearly, but the stenographer who did his writing was not very familiar with the dictaphone, so he found the names of offices that had dictaphones, which information the companies selling dictaphones were glad to furnish. He then got in touch with their stenographers to ascertain if they had time to do extra work and found several willing to work for him. In this way he was able to get a price of 12 cents per roll—which contains 800 to 900 words. The stenographer figured she could do about four rolls an hour, which would give her about $4 a day.
The attorney dictated his work in his spare time. She called for the records, did the work and returned the rolls, shaven and ready for new dictation. It was a great advantage to the lawyer as he was only charged for the time she was actually writing his work. As a matter of fact, in using her extra time he could do twice as much as any other lawyer and stenographer could do under the ordinary method of dictation at one-third the cost. In that way all his work was done, when he had business to pay for, and there was no overhead expense when he did not have the business. This easily saved him $60 a month.