PEABODY, Mass., - January 29, 2001 - ScanSoft, Inc. (NASDAQ: SSFT), a leader in paper-to-digital solutions, today announced that its OmniForm® electronic forms technology will significantly increase productivity for the U.S. legal community via American LegalNet's website, uscourtforms.com. ScanSoft and American LegalNet have formed a strategic partnership to provide online access to numerous federal and state forms in a Web-fillable format for the first time. ScanSoft will benefit from two revenue opportunities as a result of the agreement: in addition to receiving licensing fees from American LegalNet, visitors to the uscourtforms.com site will be able to license ScanSoft's OmniForm technology for internal use.

Each year, the legal community fills out some 370 million documents by hand and files them in U.S. state and federal courts. As of its launch today, American LegalNet's uscourtforms.com is the first online court forms provider to deliver virtually all U.S. state and federal legal forms.

"We needed exact duplicates of compliance-based documents," says Erez Bustan, President of American LegalNet. "In a side-by-side comparison, a copy from uscourtforms.com needs to be identical to the original form, right down to the typographical errors. OmniForm's Logical Forms Recognition™ (LFR) technology and robust design tools made that process extremely easy."

Find it, fill it…

American LegalNet gathered hard copies of the thousands of federal and state court forms and turned to ScanSoft's OmniForm product line to perform the necessary paper-to-web conversion, editing, designing, and defining of "fillable fields"-giving legal professionals the ability to key in information instead of completing the form by hand. In a four-month period, American LegalNet's 200 forms designers used OmniForm to generate more than 40,000 unique forms outputted to160,000 form files and create fillable Word, .pdf and XFML electronic files. OmniForm's XFML electronic files are based off the OmniForm proprietary XML format, and used exclusively with the OmniForm ActiveX Control in OmniForm Developer's Edition. The XFML files and a third-party indexing technology were then combined to create a comprehensive search engine that allows legal professionals to quickly put their fingers on exactly the right document-whether it's a civil complaint form out of Billings, Montana or an SEC filing document.

…and (coming soon) e-file it!

American LegalNet says OmniForm's XFML file format could pave the way for the company to be the first to enable legal professionals to do e-filing-a hot topic in legal circles. Once e-filing kicks in on the site, legal professionals will be able to complete a form and with the click of a mouse file with the appropriate court. Once this happens, lawyers, judges, and the public could have instant Web access to any document filed, speeding up trial preparation, opinion writing and even the decision-making process while eliminating the frustration of lost documents.

"The combination of OmniForm's fillable forms and uscourtforms.com's breadth of available legal forms is a major time-saver for professionals like me," says Mary Catherine Farley, California Family Law attorney. "The promise of e-filing based on OmniForm's XFML file format makes the site all the more powerful for the legal community."

Bringing Forms Technology to Law Offices Nationwide

In addition to providing valuable online access to fillable, interactive legal forms, American LegalNet will provide visitors to uscourtforms.com with the resources to license OmniForm technology directly from the site, enabling them to design, fill and host their own online forms.

"If you're filling out forms on uscourtforms.com, it is more than likely you are using an OmniForm filler component," says ScanSoft's Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Wayne Crandall. "Even the most techno phobic of lawyers and paralegals will appreciate its robust features and simplicity, and will see the value of utilizing OmniForm for internal forms management."

OmniForm is available for $149.99 via the uscourtforms.com site, or by visiting www.scansoft.com.

About ScanSoft, Inc.

Headquartered in Peabody, MA with European headquarters in the Netherlands, ScanSoft, Inc. (NASDAQ: SSFT) is the leading developer of paper-to-digital solutions that enable users to leverage the power of their scanners, digital cameras and other electronic devices. ScanSoft's award-winning product line - PaperPort Deluxe, Pagis Pro, TextBridge Pro, OmniPage Pro, OmniPage Pro Scan Suite Plus, OmniForm, eOmniForm, Paper Converter, Kai's PhotoSoap2, Kai's SuperGoo, Kai's PowerShow, PhotoFactory, and numerous software developer's kits - enables users to capture, recognize, edit, manage and share documents and photos electronically by taking advantage of ScanSoft's cutting-edge technology.

ScanSoft has established numerous strategic partnerships with the industry's leading scanner and multifunction vendors to deliver the most comprehensive and cost-effective solutions for its customers. Vendors who have chosen ScanSoft's cutting-edge technologies include Brother, Canon, Epson, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM/Lotus, Mustek, Primax, Sharp, Symantec Corporation, Visioneer, Xerox and others. ScanSoft's leading technologies have been licensed by Microsoft for use in Office 10 and other future products. ScanSoft continues to cultivate and develop strategic partnerships to deliver the most comprehensive and cost-effective solutions for its customers.

ScanSoft software is sold, marketed and supported worldwide through retail, dealer and OEM channels and the Internet, capturing the small to medium size business and corporate markets. There are more than 6.5 million registered users of ScanSoft products. ScanSoft can be found on the Web at www.scansoft.com.

About American LegalNet

American LegalNet is a Los Angeles-based, privately held company that provides leading-edge technology to help attorneys practice law more efficiently and effectively. The American LegalNet web site is designed to save the California legal community time and money by making legal offices more productive. Powerful search capabilities let attorneys and other legal professionals quickly locate state and county court forms; rules for all state and federal courts in California; California Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal cases since 1934; U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1900 and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cases since 1995; all California codes; the California constitution; California legislation since 1995; jury instructions; court directory, calendars and filing fees; attorney and court reporter directories; public records; legal yellow pages and classified advertising; private and public chat rooms; trade discounts on products and services; and links to other legal sites on the Internet.

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbors created by those sections. These forward-looking statements include statements relating to the perceived benefits of the agreement between American LegalNet and ScanSoft, the implementation of the legal forms service, the functionality and content of such service and the commercial acceptance and use of the uscourtforms.com website. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of factors, including market acceptance of the services and the introduction of competitive products; the ability to implement the e-filing capability; agreements with and dependence on the actions of third party technology; the ability to generate revenue from web-based services; and the ability to attract traffic to the uscourtforms.com website. The matters discussed in this press release also involve risks and uncertainties described in ScanSoft's filings with the SEC. ScanSoft assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.

Trademark reference: ScanSoft, PaperPort Deluxe, Pagis, TextBridge, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro Scan Suite Plus, OmniForm, eOmniForm, Paper Converter, PhotoFactory, Kai's PhotoSoap2, Kai's SuperGoo, Kai's PowerShow and Logical Form Recognitions (LFR) are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks and trade names are hereby recognized and may be registered to their respective holders.

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