How much does a court transcription cost?

Legal professionals work with a large amount of audio and video recordings on a daily basis: witness statements, legal settlements, trial recordings etc. Nowadays, these files are transcribed into text, either manually by legal transcriptionists or automatically using digital tools such as applications or software.

1. What does a court transcription consist of?
2. The work of transcribers, stenographers and steno typists
3. How much does a court transcription cost?
4. Probus transcription software

1. What does a court transcription consist of?

Court transcription is the use of shorthand methods and devices to capture, store, retrieve and transcribe pre-trial and trial proceedings or other information. It includes stenographers who operate computerized captioning devices that provide captioned versions of live or pre-recorded broadcasts to the hearing impaired.

In the legal sector the type of transcription should be literal or verbatim. This is because the way someone says something is as important as what they are saying, and is key to establishing verdicts.

Some of the most common legal recordings that require verbatim transcription are depositions, hearings, suspect interviews, witness statements, interrogations, and any other type of court proceeding

2. The work of transcribers, stenographers and steno typists

Shorthand is a fast and concise writing system that allows speech to be transcribed at the same speed as it is spoken. For this purpose, short strokes, abbreviations and special characters are usually used to represent letters, words and even sentences.

Stenotyping, a system similar to stenography, is a method of rapid writing that requires a keyboard called a stenotype machine. With this device, keystrokes can be executed with one or more keys pressed simultaneously. The operator is called a stenotypist.

Transcription (from the Latin transcriptio) is the systematic representation of a spoken form by means of written signs. Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is a system of graphic symbols to represent the sounds of human speech.

The requirements for a transcriber working within the framework of a police/judicial investigation should be very specific given the confidential nature and circumstances of this work.

3. How much does a court transcription cost?

A work as apparently mechanized and simple as transcription has limitations: problems of intelligibility due to sounds, interferences or overlaps between various speakers; the convenience of using a generalized transcription system that marks the relevant aspects for subsequent analysis, and the need for in-depth knowledge of the language as well as the dialects and slang used.

You have to be a fast typist to make the work profitable. This is because most jobs are paid per word or per “audio minute”. Depending on the complexity of the audio and the speed with which it is typed, one minute of audio can take between two and six minutes to transcribe.

In the legal field, the Corps of Writers, Stenographers and Stenotypists is two hundred years old, and is one of the most important in the context of the General Courts.. A parliamentary stenographer can earn around 3,000 euros gross per month.

4. Probus transcription software

Probus is an online platform for legal professionals to transcribe, index, analyse and edit content from video or audio recordings of court hearings, arbitrations and depositions.

The price of a transcript varies according to the characteristics of each lawsuit.

Probus is a SaaS platform, which offers options adapted to each workload, both for independent legal professionals and for large law firms.

You can choose the plan that best suits your needs:

• Now Plan: if you are a freelancer looking for something specific, this is the plan for you, as it allows you to pay only for what you use
• Monthly Plan: subscription with a bag of hours and other functionalities
• Office Plan: the optimal option for large law firms that also allows multi-user management.

In addition, with Probus you can cancel your plan at any time. Please note that this decision means that the contracted hours will be lost and, therefore, you will have to use them before the end of the billing period.

In this summary table you can see more details of each plan and its features: