How Digital Audio is Changing Court Reporting

Digital audio and audio-to-text synchronization technology is changing the courts and court reporting. While low-impact courts (courts with few transcript requests) are transitioning to digital audio, digital audio-to-text synchronization has become a lawyer and court reporter’s friend. This technology enables court reporters, as official keepers of the record, to click on any word or phrase in the proceedings and listen to the audio as a means of verifying precisely what was said. The same court reporting software that enables this text-to-audio synchronization also creates timestamps on the digital audio feed of the court reporter’s stenographic keystrokes. What these time stamps do is allow the reader of the reporter’s realtime feed to see exactly how long it took for a witness to respond to a question. Because there are often time limitations on how long a deposition can last, it may be crucial for counsel to know how much time elapsed from the end of the question till the witness responded or how long counsel conferred with the witness or how long a discussion off the record lasted. By requesting a realtime reporter or a reporter who brings a laptop to the deposition or a reporter who uses the latest stenographic equipment, all of which keep track of the elapsed time, counsel may be in a position to argue for more time to depose that witness. While time-stamped transcripts are typically reserved for digital video, they are available upon request from any realtime court reporter and most general court reporters as well. Just as a professional court reporter knows never to rely on digital audio synch to create the record, so too should counsel be aware that all it takes to drown out a human voice on a digital audio recording is something as simple as the closing of a door, the crinkling of papers, or a person coughing. Because digital audio technology has been integrated into realtime court reporting software, one is more likely to see a court reporter with both a stenotype machine and a laptop, rather than just a stenotype machine. This combination results in two, and in many instances three, archival/retrieval methods:

1. the hard drive on the laptop
2. the memory card on the steno machine
3. the paper tape (for reporters who still use that as a backup)

Although digital audio is being relied upon more and more for making a record in many low-impact courts, a realtime stenographer producing a transcript utilizing computer-aided transcription software with audio-to-text synchronization is still the most reliable method of keeping a verbatim record, especially in instances when there are more than one male or female voice. Court reporters avoid misidentifying speakers by inputting identifying keystrokes for every speaker, and they have the ability to interrupt when words have been muffled or lost by background noise. This eliminates “inaudibles” in transcripts. The best method for taking pre-trial testimony to present to a jury in lieu of a live witness is through digital videography and realtime court reporting because when a videographer synchronizes the video timestamps with the reporter’s, counsel can easily search the reporter’s transcript to locate the words and their corresponding timestamped references, find the exact portions of video testimony they need to present to the jury, and create clips. Paralegals, legal secretaries and attorneys appreciate the time-saving tools created by the use of a verbatim transcript synchronized with the video.