Boca Raton

Boca Raton court reporting agency CourtScribes leads courtroom technology change.

Technology is changing the legal landscape, and court reporting is no exception. That’s why companies such as Boca Raton’s CourtScribes have embraced the digital revolution.

A Reuters report outlines some of the area’s technology is changing:

  • Virtualized and paperless courts—Virtualized legal proceedings will reduce the distance and logistics difficulties that plague present-day courtrooms. Further, the news agency argues, more records will move into cyberspace.
  • Video use will increase—Telepresence, video conferencing and video evidence are all becoming less rare, and soon will be commonplace.
  • Democratization—Technology will increase access to the legal system.

Court reporting is certainly not immune to demographic and technological changes.

Ducker Worldwide predicts there will still be a strong market for courtroom stenography in the years to come. But the research firm adds that the work is changing. From Ducker’s report:

“New technologies have been developed to assist the court reporter in producing an accurate record with better equipment and better software. At the same time, competing technologies such as digital recording and even voice recognition are making headway. Increased emphasis on improving digital recording procedures and voice recognition software accuracy will occur.”

CourtScribes offers both complete standard court reporting services and advanced services other court reporting companies don’t have, including live, on-demand courtroom video.

“CourtScribes is embracing technology and leading the way in a new age of court reporting. They provided me with dramatically superior service and price,” says Justin Rundle of Rundle Law in Miami.

According to a white paper by entrepreneur and professor Barry Unger, the Boca Raton court reporting agency is leading a wave of change disrupting the century-old profession.

Unger writes: “CourtScribes is changing the court reporting industry by using Internet age technology to create the official record of court proceedings, using remote transcriptionists and charging attorneys up to 50% less than what they now pay, and as … a disruptive technology will not only improve the quality of services but also ultimately extend and even democratize the use of services that are today often restricted only to high profile or high dollar value cases.”

The Boca Raton court reporting company, Unger points out, offers its services for as much as 50 percent less than typical court stenography companies. To do that, the company has embraced innovation.

Unger writes, “CourtScribes uses professional-level recording systems and digitally based technology to create the record of legal proceedings. For decades, this has been a successful reporting method in federal, state, and local jurisdictions. Indeed, both the United States Supreme Court and the United Kingdom Supreme Court use digital reporting exclusively to capture and preserve their historic public records. CourtScribes is bringing the most sophisticated digital technology into the private marketplace to provide the highest quality transcripts. Their court reporting includes two elements: first and foremost, the electronic court reporter who oversees the process, and secondly, the sound recording process itself. CourtScribes uses computer-based digital systems that perform recording functions that have enhanced features, added convenience, flexibility, and economy. They offer high quality (courtroom videos) as well.”

Here’s a rundown of some of CourtScribes’ services:

  • An experienced court reporter oversees recording equipment and takes simultaneous notes.  Digital annotations are time-linked to the recording so it’s a simple process to find and listen to actual testimony.
  • Each primary participant in the proceeding is given a discreet sound channel so that each voice is distinct, eliminating confusion caused by crosstalk. “This voice isolation feature permits a full and accurate transcription of exactly what was said — and who said it — because each channel can be listened to individually,” Unger writes.
  • Because of the quality of the recordings, court reporters are less obtrusive than in more traditional court stenography. Unger writes, “The recording process captures all words exactly as spoken — then in transcription, the audio can be replayed as needed to verify verbatim accuracy.”
  • Lawyers or other interested parties can obtain copies of the digital recording as well as the transcript, and, “With digital annotations directly “hot-linked” to the audio, points of interest are located quickly and efficiently,” Unger writes.
  • Notes and audio files can be delivered over the Internet. Unger writes, “Both log notes and audio files are transmitted over the Internet, reducing or eliminating shipping costs and delivery delays. Storage and archiving are efficient and compact. When the audio and log notes are saved as computer files, there are no cassettes to store, nor files of reporters’ paper notes to maintain.”

As with other aspects of the digital economy, the cost-savings and higher quality the Boca Raton court reporting agency offers work to democratize the court system by making a key service more readily available.

According to Unger: “The idea of legal audio and video recording has been around for decades, but only within the last few years has the technology and pricing caught up. Likewise as a co-founder of Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc., an early artificial intelligence and digital imaging company which then became Xerox Imaging Systems, I saw first-hand the enormous positive impact of what is now called digital photography, and how this new capability has both improved the quality of photography and equally importantly opened up active photography to a much bigger audience and to new uses. Think for example how many of the countless unforeseen ways we now on a regular basis use the electronic cameras built into our phones to communicate with each other and facilitate our workflow, and even recording images like damage to our cars or receipts for expense reports or to identify items for purchase, or to make video calls around the world, and how integral video recording is becoming to law enforcement activities. This, of course, is the impact disruptive technologies can have. Looking at the already successful implementations of CourtScribes’ technology and internet based service, I can see an analogous type of phenomenon beginning to happen in the legal industry, where court reporting and videography will become a new standard, a “no-brainer” as it was, for the legal professional, and thus extend both the amount and uses of legal reporting, and its practicality and availability to a larger part of the public the legal industry serves.”