Those dictation blunders have had Obiter chuckling once more this week. So many have popped into Obiter’s inbox, it’s a wonder there’s a secretary out there who still has a job.

We’ve had a Newton hearing turning into ‘Mutant Hero’; a BVI lawyer becoming a ‘beady eyed lawyer’; a high-yield department turning into a ‘high-heeled department’; commercial in confidence becoming ‘commercial incompetence’; Bolam negligence turning into ‘bowl of negligence’; below-knee plaster cast typed ‘baloney plaster cast’; a ‘part 8 claim’ coming back as an ‘apartheid claim’; and a legacy of three flying ducks being typed out as ‘three flying dicks’. Some interesting sentences, too: ‘In the matter of [client name], diseased’; ‘the claimant, threw his solicitor…’ And a complaint about two fee-earners at a firm that turned into a saga of ‘two Fionas’.

And more digital disasters from dictation software. One solicitor found ‘one possible way’ converted to the address, 1 Possible Way. Another said their software translated a ‘lump sum’ into a ‘plump son’, while an application for parental responsibility turned into a ‘treacherous personality’.

Best of all is the following tale of misunderstanding told by a district judge in Bury. While he was working as an employment solicitor, the secretary of a rival firm came in seeking advice after being laid off. Asked what had happened, she said that, when working on the conveyance of a very old building, she was asked to ‘schedule the leases’. She was sure he’d said ‘shred all the leases’. Oops.

Click here for more dictation bloopers.