By Donna Rogers




















The transcript is the official record of the court in 49 states; there is a greater demand for transcripts and faster turnaround than ever before. For example, in a high-profile case, a trial attorney might like to have the entire transcript of the day’s proceedings by 10 p.m. or even 6 p.m. that evening so they can review the case prior to the next morning’s proceedings. But, at the same time, the number of stenographers is languishing. Ten years ago, there were about 30,000 stenographic court reporters, today that number is around 14,000, says Eric Lige, of AVTranz, Phoenix. “What’s happening is the stenographic model is disappearing….schools have largely closed, and the numbers getting certified dwindling. Their average age is increasing—there is lots of retirement, and new judges are more comfortable with technology.” That once highly original mode of coding court happenings, and the very loyal worker to the judge, is giving way for several reasons: newer recording technologies, web transmissions, and more efficient remote workers.
 
Some courts are fearful the technology still isn’t 100 percent reliable, while Lige points out stenographers aren’t 100 percent reliable—two years ago a New York stenographer made the news when he typed repeatedly into the trial dialogue, “I hate my job, I hate my job,” and wrecked havoc on some 30 Manhattan cases he worked on.
 
Daniel Kochanski, 43, who claimed alcohol dependency, was fired in March 2012 for misconduct. Sources said the Manhattan DA’s Office later arrested Kochanski and forced him to try to make sense of his shorthand typing. But that effort apparently failed. This April, judges have been holding “reconstruction hearings” at which everyone involved in a case has to testify about what they remember. (New York Post, April 3, 2014).
 
As for problems with equipment not working, this has been largely overcome, adds Lige. In early days redundancy was more important. Today more than one room in the building is equipped, and if you’ve got a problem you simply move to another room, he points out.
 
It’s not relevant whether stenographers or digital transcriptionists are better, furthers Lige, “what’s relevant is that things are changing.” However, he adds, it’s not that simple: statues vary widely on what is legally permitted in the way of recording. For example, Arizona law states a stenographer must be present in a court proceeding, and California doesn’t permit digital recording.
 
Other states are early adopters and have been evolving to next generations of equipment. New York, Colorado and Connecticut all use digital recording technology. A good example is the state of New Hampshire, which began to migrate to audio recording in the early 1990s, and completed the conversion to all audio recording in 2006, utilizing a group of transcriptionists that created the official record of trial court proceedings, explains Director Donald D. Goodnow, JD, Administrative Office of the Courts. Then in 2011 the NH AOC issued another RFP asking for proposals to do a web-based system for both digital audio files and completed transcripts. In mid 2012, they launched a web-based system of transcription, called The Court Record Online New Hampshire, or TCRON NH, from AVTranz. The Court uses FTR Limited software and hardware from K + S Electronics.
 
The web-based transcription system from AVTranz works with all the leading vendors’ digital recording systems. The service provider can create a verbatim transcript from digital recordings produced by any vendor including: FTR, Jefferson Audio Video Systems (JAVS), CourtSmart, VoiceIQ (VIQ), AudioSoft, High Criteria (Liberty Recorder) VeriCore,  NCH Software (MSRS), Lanier Advocate, Sony BM 246 and others.
In the past the process of ordering a transcription was a labor-intensive process, Goodnow acknowledges. The steps involved calling the clerks office, securing an estimate, making a series of calls back and forth, until approval was secured and payment was made. Now, he says, we go to a single site, an automatic message comes back requesting a deposit, the deposit is made and a message relays instructions to get started.
 
The process provides benefits in several ways. He says not only are the transcripts returned on time—96% of all transcripts do get delivered on time and 97% of all appeals get delivered on time—but the process can be better monitored. Now that there is a single vendor managing the process, “we get information back about the transcription process,” says Goodnow.
 
“Underlying our decision to use AVTranz was the conclusion that actually making a record of court proceedings is a core function of courts, thus we make a digital audio record of all court proceedings. By contrast, the transcribing of the audio file to create a typed transcript is not a core function and can be outsourced to a vendor who specializes in that type of work,” he emphasizes.
 
“It not only relieves the Supreme Court staff and Trial Court of chasing around the status of transcripts, but the process is all done electronically, and we get a call in advance stating how many pages it will be. It’s much more efficient.”
He furthers that it is part of the court’s responsibility on behalf of those who need transcription services to assure they are getting the best rate possible. We put the entire transcript process out to bid, he notes—which includes obtaining page estimates, making deposits in advance of transcribing, sending the audio file to the transcriber, sending the completed transcript back to the requesting party, and doing the final accounting of funds.
 
“Before,” he continues, “the court set the best rate—but we had no way of testing the market and no way of knowing we were getting the best deal possible.”
And because it’s web-based, the transcription service is available 24/7 if an attorney working after hours wants to place an order. It’s simply a good business model. If your court “wants to do commerce, it’s the way people’s needs are met in 2014,” concludes Goodnow.
 
The Technologies
Prices on audio hardware have come down drastically—Tony Douglass, president of ForTheRecord, states the cost is 20% of the price it was five years ago. The 20-year-old company, which recently joined with Court Record Solutions, has its research and development office, FTR Labs, in Brisbane, Australia, and its sales and support team in Phoenix. FTR, which pioneered some of the technology which is the industry standard today, reports it is dedicated to providing digital recording, review and content management solutions for justice, law enforcement and public meetings venues.
 
It is used primarily in courts, and legislatures, government agencies, and parliaments across the world, says Douglass, wherever there are a significant number of different speakers and a multi-channel system is needed.
He reports the software, not the hardware, is the crucial piece of the technology today—for its search capabilities, ability to integrate with other systems, such as case management, and the ability to be used with a browser-based device. It can also be upgraded much more easily than can changing out the hardware.
“A newer development for us—a new approach to court audio and video is a browser-based system,” Douglass says. Called Court.fm, it allows near-live audio and video access made to the court record anywhere, anytime, streamed directly from the courtroom to any authenticated used with an Internet-enabled device.
For judges or attorneys, it is a boon—they can access the recording from an iPad or laptop without having the copy of the recording. “They do not worry about the recording gone missing,” he says.
 
Many courts are capturing audio in four channels in the courtroom, Douglass notes. Over the years, we’ve seen that moving to eight, while they are also adding some video and annotations—which is useful from a court reporting standpoint.
The court reporting process has evolved, and the technology may change up the workflow process to make it more efficient, he continues.  With the browser-based system, the encrypted digital recording is transmitted in real time or within a couple of hours while the proceeding is still in progress. The court reporter can work on it, and if it is large, others can simultaneously work on different parts of it.
 
In the past, a court reporter might be finished early for the day, and couldn’t be assigned another court, though another court might be overwhelmed. “They never got the right number of reporters in a given court,” says Douglass. With a web-based system and the pool of reporters working from home, the work can be allocated wherever there is best utilization of manpower. “Everyone gets pieces [of the data] and it keeps work in their queues.”
 
We are seeing a maturity of the capabilities of digital recording; another piece it can manage is centralized monitoring. Five hundred courtrooms can all be monitored from a central location—and the court can assign tech savvy people to consistently control how the court wants to manage those recordings. 
The Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County, one of the five largest counties in the U.S. and the largest Superior Court in Arizona, handling over 60% of the general jurisdiction cases in the state with 95 trial judges and 59 commissioners assigned to the seven departments, has centralized monitoring for some of its digital recorders. Approx-imately 178 courtrooms and hearing rooms are equipped with digital recording systems from FTR, some audio/video and some audio alone. At present, court recording monitor staff is stationed in control rooms that have responsibility for 51 of the audio/video courtrooms.
 
In March 2014 ExhibitOne Corporation was awarded a multi-year contract to be the A/V vendor of record for the Superior Court. (Since 1999 the company has been providing integration and support services to the court for a wide range of courtroom A/V technologies including evidence presentation systems, digital recording, sound reinforcement and audio conferencing.) In the centrally-located monitor space, staff can add annotations or images to the recordings, or get a video feed and see what is happening live in the courtroom on quad view monitors.  The bailiff can also start and stop the recording onsite in the courtroom, or the start and stop can be handled remotely.
 
Bringing It Together
“Rather than having a System A and a System B and a System C, they will be able to talk to each other,” says Jade Coldren, national sales manager with BIS Digital, Inc. in Fort Lauderdale. Founded in 1982, BIS’s primary business is the purchase, sales and service of digital audio and video recording equipment and it provides digital recording technology to over 4,000 customers including over 2,000 courtroom systems, hospitals, as well as Federal, State and Local government agencies. BIS Digital, which does direct sales in 16 states, provides turnkey A/V solutions based upon the specific needs of its users.
 
BIS Digital is a development partner with High Criteria, the Richmond Hill, Ontario-based manufacturer of the Liberty Recording line of audio, video recording solutions; in 2005 High Criteria began manufacturing the Digital Court Recorder (DCR) for BIS. It is based on an open standard so it can connect with a court’s CMS, monitors, mics, evidence presentation system, mobile devices, its video conferencing system and other components.
 
And it ties the entire record together. Any evidence presented in courtroom—surveillance videos, a contract, a photo—“it can be attached just like an email,” points out Coldren. It can be downloaded to a computer, and wherever the file goes it becomes part of DCR file.
 
BIS Digital’s latest release is a convenient feature called Remote Client. With it, the Court is “able to send out a link to a remote user, and as long as they have a web connection, mic and web cam, we can bring them in, similar to video conference, embedded directly in to the DCR program,” informs Coldren. If they experience inclement weather—as many were snowed in this past winter—they can be connected, actually become one of the channels, and can see the view from all the cameras, as if they were in the courtroom. It is also ideal for child testimony or any remote testimony.
 
Video, the Latest Trend
Some courts are now expanding into video or at least ensuring their new systems have the capability even if they don’t use it immediately. “There is a huge interest in having multiple channels of video, to document who is speaking without great notes or bookmakers,” says Coldren. While video once took up a great amount of bandwidth, H.264 is highly compressed video and can run on greatly reduced bandwidth.
 
Improvement of network consumption has reduced the amount of bandwidth consumed by synching process,” concurs Malcolm Macal-lum, CTO, VIQ Solutions, Inc., the maker of the Infinit digital recording product line headquartered  in Calgary, Alberta. VIQ Infinit provides the ability to securely control multimedia recording in multiple rooms from any satellite location across the Internet, WAN or LAN. Video files—which are a 100 times larger than audio—make a huge demand on network, he says, yet significant changes have been made and now video can synchronize faster, utilizing less bandwidth. It helps tremendously in remote locations. VIQ has implemented systems globally including in the U.K. and this past November was awarded a contract by the Australian courts. In Scotland networks are slower, he furthers, thus VIQ had to design the system for use on lower bandwidth, without necessitating the court to build a new infrastructure.
 
Last year VIQ introduced NetScribe Web Transcription Service that allows a court user to capture audio and transfer the audio via secure Internet to be transcribed and retrieved. With NetScribe, multiple transcriptionists can work on separate segments of the same file from one location or from various remote locations. Use of this server-based remote viewer in Australia has been implemented across a wireless network. The method they chose to implement has made their workflow much more efficient, says Macallum.
 
Into the future
Many courts are “far, far behind in outstanding cases,” says Macallum. Today timing and turnaround are so important, and in the next few years, the huge need to reduce costs will drive the adoption of technology. Still, digital audio is not admissible in some states and courts continue to work pen and pencil on paper, he furthers. With technology they can have so many more options than they would have had previously. By “implementing technology they can retask people, turnaround time is faster and they can improve the throughput of their cases.” He adds: “At Rikers Island, for example, it costs $80,000 a day to move inmates. That gives them good cause to look for these solutions.”
 
While state statutes may not yet allow the use of digital audio or video recording devices, he sums up, “Economics is driving the change for legislation to take place.”