TechTracker : transcript

Judge Deems Digital Audio Sufficient to Make Ruling

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:03:00 GMT

A U.S. district judged ruled that an audio transcript of a trial was sufficient to make rulings on post-trial motions. The plaintiff's attorneys argued that the judge need only to listen to the portions of audio that the parties have cited in their briefs, and they did clarify that they have no intention of creating a transcript from the audio recording. All parties involved did recognize that the case may still require a transcript if it is appealed.

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Transcription Software Reduces Turnover Time for Radiologists

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:55:00 GMT

Nuance Communications, Inc. Powerscribe for Radiology has dramatically increased productivity in the Baptist Memorial Health Care medical network. The goal when introducing the software was to reduce turnover time for the production of radiology reports. Reports were created and available faster and these benefits are passed on to patients who can receive quicker diagnoses and better quality of care.

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Judge Allows Digital Audio in Lieu of Transcripts

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:59:00 GMT

by Shannon P. Duffy, The Legal Intelligencer

November 10, 2008

As U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson sees it, advances in courtroom technology are valuable only if the courts are open-minded and flexible enough to harness them for all they're worth.

So when a losing plaintiff asked Baylson for permission to forgo filing transcript excerpts from a two-day trial -- citing instead to the court's digital audio recordings of the trial -- Baylson agreed.

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What's the Value in Your Digital Signature?

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:42:00 GMT

November-December 2008 JCR

By Sandy Bunch VanderPol, RMR, CRR

Can digital signatures add value to your transcripts? Here is one reporter’s story about how her clients embraced digital signatures.

Do attorneys or the courts need digital signatures?” I asked myself when I made the decision to move forward on digitally signing transcripts. I really wasn’t sure whether they wanted them, but I certainly understood that they needed them — especially in paperless cases and paperless fi lings. We all know and understand that judicial jurisdictions have and will continue to move forward with e-fi lings of not only pleadings and motions but also with both court and deposition transcripts.

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What is a digital signature? And how can it protect my transcript?

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:33:00 GMT

November-December 2008 JCR

By Alex Kasperavicius

Back during high school, when you spent hours lying on your bed and perfecting your signature, did you ever consider the purpose of your unique, special squiggle — other than being, oh, so sophisticated? How about today? When you sign a credit card receipt, rent check, or video rental form, what is the point of your special little scrawl?

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Online Repositories

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:29:00 GMT

November-December 2008 JCR

By David Ward

Court reporters find themselves face-to-face with the rise of vast online legal document repositories.

Whether run by the courts themselves — and right now the federal courts are at the cutting edge of this trend — or by a growing number of private companies formed during the past decade to serve the legal community, online repositories are growing in popularity as a one-stop resource to help attorneys store and organize all types of documentation for complex legal cases.

Online repositories are used for a lot more than just depositions and court motions. These huge databases can store tens of thousands of pages for a single case, including litigation-related and evidentiary documents, such as police and medical reports.

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Review: Premiere Pro CS4

Serge Obolensky, CAE — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:59:00 GMT

From a portion of a review on MacWorld by Antony Bolante

November 4, 2008

Speech transcription

However useful it may be, it’s hard to get excited about manually logging metadata—or as Adobe calls it, metalogging. But many editors will be thrilled to hear about one of the Metadata panel’s features: automated speech transcription. The speech transcript feature analyzes a selected clip’s audio and transcribes spoken words to the Metadata panel. You can specify one of several languages to transcribe, including English as it’s spoken in four regions of the world: Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. You can even set it to identify different speakers. When you play the clip, each spoken word is highlighted in the transcript. Conversely, double-clicking a word in the transcript cues the clip to the corresponding frame in the Source panel. To find a particular word in the selected clip, just type it in a search field.

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My Thoughts on the Record

Breck Record — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:49:00 GMT

These thoughts, posted to the NCRA Forum by NCRA Technology Evaluation Committee member Breck Record of Texas, represent the sole views of the author. This Tech Tracker publication aims to inform recipients of technological changes and developments in our industry and provide a forum for discussion on topics of interest to NCRA members.

I have never been averse to looking at new technology, as long as it is for the betterment of our profession. I have an analogy I'd like to share in regards to scoping that might apply to other areas. One of the problems I have with scopists is whether to pay them by the page when they work for me, or whether to pay them by the hour. Over the years, I've fought with that because on the one hand, if paid by the hour, they know that they are going to make so much every hour and I see the production sometimes go down because whether they do 5 pages an hour or 50 pages an hour, the pay is the same. On the other hand, I have paid scopists by the page and have seen over the years at different times the push, if you will, to get pages out and edited at the expense sometimes of being accurate because "the more pages you edit, the more you make."

Now, I am by no means picking on scopists, but the point is if paid by the hour, are they more inclined to be more accurate? If paid by the page, are they more concerned with quantity over quality? Those are questions I always ask myself and always wonder about. Do I give a scopist a nice hourly salary to edit for me, or do I pay them a nice page rate?

This can also be applied to associations. Do we keep things as they are, or do we push to add members at the expense of the longtime members who aren't willing to change? I don't know. I remember the church I attended while in San Antonio and the average age of the members. The age was in the upper fifties, with a few families who were like me....in their late twenties and early thirties. Well, to try to get the majority to want to change or to do something different in church or to modify the service or the routine sometimes was about as hard as trying to get Congress to pass legislation or agree on anything. Many times, after new change was brought about, all were okay with it, but, in the beginning, it was a struggle and a fight to bring that change about.

We are probably, as a profession, at this same crossroads, whether nationally or in our own local and state organizations. Change is on the horizon, and how do we address this change? What's best for the reporter? What's best for the profession? What's best for the client? These are questions that we all have to ask ourselves and figure out what direction we are willing to go and what direction we are not willing to go. What changes are tough but okay in the future? I don't know. Should we fight ER or accept that it works? I don't know. Is embracing ER by using backup audio media with our software okay? Was that the right thing to do? I don't know. These are all things that have to be figured out and examined over the next few years and discussed. Knee-jerk reactions are definitely not the way to go, but in the defense of a knee-jerk, it just signifies to me the passion one feels about what they believe in.

I'm very passionate about court reporting. I hope to do this for many more years. Where does voice recognition come in? Digital? Do they scare me? Sure they do. Am I doing what I can with the technology that I have to fight it or protect myself? You bet I am. Is it something I should embrace in some form or fashion next year? Five years from now? Ten years from now? I don't know. Am I so set in my ways that I'm not willing to look at it and examine it? Not at all. I like to know my friends, but I like to know my enemies even better. I can sit here and badger that which I don't know all day long, but until I really look at something closely, I'm not going to be educated on what I like or don't like about it. I'm in no way suggesting that voice or ER are the way to go here, but I'm trying to have an open mind about it and understand the enemy before I go after it and try to destroy it.

I know a couple of things about digital right now:

1. Yeah, it can make a good recording.

2. Yeah, a person can sit there and monitor it.

3. Yeah, a tape can be made from it to transcribe.

4. Yeah, there are going to be "inaudibles" if the "monitor" doesn't speak up and say "You were talking at the same time."

5. Yeah, the judge, attorneys, monitor, won't know if there's a recording until after the fact, despite the monitor wearing headphones and monitoring the recording.

6. Yeah, you can get a transcript back within a few weeks or sooner, if necessary.

7. Yeah, you have to pay someone to transcribe that tape, be it a transcriptionist, or a court reporter, who will probably charge you more just because you didn't have them there in the first place and charge you the "rekeying" fee to have to sit there and rekey the job so they can edit it.

8. Yeah, a monitor can keep a note file of events that happened. But…

There is no way on this green Earth that a digital tape has been able to beat me on the turnaround and give the client a transcript within hours of an all-day hearing when I’m writing realtime and a scopist is right behind me; and,

There is no way that anyone is going to be able to get a rough draft of the proceedings immediately at the end of the day; and,

There is no way that a scopist can sit right there behind a digital tape and start editing it like they can sit behind me and scope on-site right now; and,

There is no way that, in a depo, an attorney is going to get a transcript within an hour or so of the depo; and,

There is no way an attorney in a depo can leave the depo with a rough draft either printed or emailed to him at that moment.

When my clients want to "See it Write Now," they call me to the job and not Sony or Memorex. "Is it a court reporter or is it Memorex?" It's a Court Reporter every single time
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Seemingly from the inception of NCRA more than a century ago, technology has spurred vital and heated discussions among members. That trend continues today with the inroads of ER, competing voice writers, and future technologies yet to be developed. As a reporter reading Mr. Record’s thoughts, do you agree or disagree? Where do you see the profession and Association heading, and is that path the right one? Debates such as these will allow for healthy discourse and continued member passion. Please take a moment to share a thought on this article by posting a comment to this blog.