Legal transcription, although considered as a common job for professional transcribers, what is actually inside its ‘suitcase’?
Legal audio transcription, as its name suggests, refers to transcription projects and services focusing on legal needs. Commonly, the transcribed documents are used and come from courts or other legal firms. Sometimes, other industrial sectors also require this service. Additionally, it becomes a standalone transcription service due to its more specific purpose and treatment, such as the use of legal terminologies and so on.
That being said, what makes legal audio transcription different from the general forms of transcription may also depend on the files or purposes. To understand better, here are the common files and projects of legal audio transcription services.
Legal Audio Transcription: Common Projects
In actuality, there are various types of projects within legal transcription services—each has its own distinct treatments. Just like treating friends, family members, or even work colleagues, who has different traits from one another, the treatment also differ, depending on the needs and characteristics. Some of those treatments, additionally, are pretty common while others are less common. This article, additionally, will explain the common projects legal transcription companies work on.
Memorandum
Memorandum or memo transcription refers to both dictation and recordings of internal communications within law offices. Most of the time, this is part of legal secretaries or paralegals’ jobs. However, since most of the time there are too many things to work on, it has no longer become a new thing to outsource a third party to do the job. This type of files requires a basic level of understanding of legal terminologies.
Depositions
Deposition transcription is highly crucial to support a motion during a court case. The transcription services might cover audio visual CCTV recordings, specific videos, or any files that act as evidence during a trial. For that reason, a high level of accuracy and context are extremely essential in the service.
Court Tapes and Hearings
As the name suggests, court tapes or hearings transcription deals with all the communication in a legal process, usually a trial. Besides being a long file to transcribe, most court tapes and hearings consist of a lot of legal jargons and terminologies. Understanding the context of the trial is also a crux in such service, thus expert legal transcription skills are necessary.
Verbatim
Unlike other services within legal audio transcription, verbatim transcription mostly does not have a very specific file or purpose. Basically, anything legal can be part of verbatim transcription. However, what differs verbatim transcription from the others is the treatment. Similar to its name, verbatim transcription literally transcribes words by words, including conversation, onomatopoeia, and so on. It has to be as original as possible, documenting every single audible noise in the source material. In other words, the final product of this service will have a similarity with a detailed movie script.
Wiretap
Wiretap transcription belongs to the process of wiretapping or lawful interception. Accordingly, the final product of wiretap transcription acts as evidence in a court trial, mostly pertaining to money laundering, mail fraud, scams, and other crime activities. Legal transcription companies can only transcribe wiretap audios after meeting specific regulations or trust standards. This is because those companies will work closely with law enforcement bodies in a crime investigation. Automatically, the confidentiality level is very high.
Meeting and Conferences
Among the legal audio transcription services, meeting and conference transcription is one of the kinds that does not only involve legal firms and law. What can be transcribed varies, ranging from minute-of-meetings to conference presentation or hearings. Other industrial sectors, such as medicine and academics, can use this service although most of the customers are government and law firms.
Interrogations
Transcribing interrogation process, mostly between the police investigators and the alleged offenders, shares some similarities with verbatim transcription. This is because a transcriptionist has to jot down every single audible noise or sound during the interrogation process to provide an attestation to the originality and truths. In a way, it testifies whether the police investigators have followed the right protocols during the interrogations. On the other hand, it also helps courts determine how alleged offenders cooperate during the interrogation process.
The Bottom Line: Legal Audio Transcription
Legal audio transcription is a transcription service that requires a high level of confidentiality. Accordingly, most of its transcription works, court tapes, hearings, wiretap, depositions, memorandum, verbatim, and so forth, help various law-related institutions conduct their work with the most accurate documentation as possible. Due to containing a lot of legal terminologies and contexts, this type of transcription requires trusted transcription experts and service providers to work on it.
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