The legal industry is often conservative, as lawyers and judicial officers are reluctant to embrace some of the changes that may assist in the administration of justice. Despite this, legal transcription is increasingly becoming more common in the legal industry.

To put this into context, legal professionals have begun tapping into legal transcription services in a bid to avoid the tedious and time-consuming tasks associated with doing this in-house. More importantly, lawyers, researchers, and paralegals who use legal transcriptions find it easier to solve complex issues and cases quickly. This article briefly elucidates the impact of video transcription in the legal industry and how judicial officers can benefit from it.

What Is Legal Transcription?

Legal transcription is when everything discussed in legal or court proceedings is transcribed from video or audio into text. Essentially, this helps provide an accurate, verbatim recording of the judge or jury decisions, witness testimonies, depositions, and declarations that happen during a trial of law.

How Does Legal Transcription Work?

As mentioned earlier, the process involves listening to or watching videos and then producing a written document. However, verbatim transcription is vital in the legal field to ensure any essential information is not left out. Additionally, it helps to safeguard the information that could prove critical to any given case. As such, when transcribing videos, it's important to consider the following:

· Include filler words such as ehm, um, ah, etc.

· Include all stutters and false starts from the recording

· Avoid correcting grammar mistakes

In other words, it is vital to take into account every piece of information when doing legal transcription, as this will ensure the final document is accurate and capable of providing compelling evidence in court.

How Can You Use Legal Transcription?

Legal transcription provides accurate records of court proceedings. Therefore, anyone who takes advantage of legal transcription can use it in various ways, such as:

· Developing trial plans

· Examining the credibility of witnesses through a testimony

· Deciding on questions to ask a witness during the trial

· Formulating a plan for an appeal

· Understanding the legal basis or the rationale behind the judge's or jury's decision

· Using transcription as compelling evidence

Also, law students are in a great position to take advantage of legal transcription because they can use it to study cases as part of their studies in law schools.

What Are the Benefits of Using Legal Transcriptions?

There are multiple benefits that you can derive from using legal transcription. Whether you are an attorney, a judge, or a law student, you can benefit immensely from legal transcriptions. Some of the benefits include:

Provides Accuracy and Clarity

One benefit of legal transcription is that the document produced helps avoid ambiguity and inaccuracies that may appear in a video or audio recording. Also, a judicial officer or a paralegal who finds it difficult to understand a foreign language in a video or audio recording can use legal transcription to comprehend better what the parties are saying and shed light on any legal issue.

Helps Highlight Important Parts

In addition to providing accurate information, a professionally-prepared legal transcription can help highlight important parts of the trial. This aspect is vital for people participating in the proceedings as these parts can help better formulate questions and keep track of the case.

Best Format for Lawyers

Legal transcription is ideal for legal professionals. Sporting timestamps and speaker identification, this format allows lawyers to keep track of the flow of information and the timeline of events. Essentially, this can help them build a more robust case, establish the validity of certain information or even identify inconsistencies in testimonies from witnesses.

In addition, since legal transcription has a standardized format and represents a record of everything said during court, it can help get everyone on the same page regarding evidence, thereby reducing the risk of misinterpretation.

Helps in the Appeal Process

Typically, an appeal proceeds based on information from the trial court. If written, such information can help create a robust case and convince the appellate judge to decide in your favor. On the other hand, if you rely on videos or audio recorded during the trial, your case may be complex, and you may have difficulty navigating the appeal. For this reason, it would be best to have legal transcriptions of all the interviews and proceedings which took place during the trial.

Final Thoughts

Legal transcriptions are increasingly becoming popular in the legal industry. As such, any lawyer or legal professional wishing to thrive in this industry must take advantage of its benefits. Essentially, this will help them save time and costs and, at the same time, simplify the process of their case in court.

For high-quality legal transcription services, be sure to evaluate all options at your disposal. Ideally, it would be best to partner with an established online transcription agency to help you in this endeavor. For more information, check GoTranscript's website to see what this trusted provider can do for you.