The advances in technology we’ve witnessed over the past decades significantly changed how we communicate and work. The best part of it is that no industry was left behind. The way we gather, process, and store information has probably been impacted the most, with demand for accurate legal transcription skyrocketing in recent years. This article will briefly cover the benefits of outsourcing legal transcription.
What Does Legal Transcription Entail?
Legal transcription involves converting speech from an audio or video recording of any legal proceeding into text. While this process was once handled by lawyers, things have significantly changed in recent years and outsourcing transcription is here to stay.
Today’s legal transcription professionals can work from home or anywhere else while still providing transcripts as accurate as their courtroom equivalents. These individuals are usually employed by law firms or companies specializing in transcription, while others prefer to work as independent contractors.
Regardless of the preferred working environment, every legal transcriptionist has to possess specific skills:
- Extensive knowledge of the US legal system
- High familiarity with legal terminology
- Great computer skills
- Excellent listening skills
- Refined attention to detail
- Ability to type fast — preferably 80 words per minute or more.
Key Advantages of Outsourcing Legal Transcription
Legal transcripts play a critical part in making sure information remains adequately documented. Both attorneys and other legal professionals depend on these transcripts to plan cases and develop winning strategies. Here are some of the main benefits outsourcing transcription can bring to your business.
Saves money and time
Suppose you outsource your transcription tasks to a specialized legal transcription service. In that case, you don’t have to hire employees to handle this work, train them, or pay their salaries, insurance, and other benefits. Even if hiring new employees is not an option, the existing ones will still have to deal with the increased amount of work. Outsourcing these tasks takes the burden of your existing staff, allowing them to focus on other, more important tasks.
It’s also worth mentioning that going with the cheapest service available doesn’t always pay off and can end up costing more in the long run. If your transcribed deposition, court hearing, or any other important document contains multiple errors, someone will have to waste time and effort to correct them. However, a high price doesn’t necessarily mean high quality, either. Look for a well-known legal transcription service with high accuracy guarantees, rigorous quality control measures, and positive client testimonials to prevent any negative surprises.
Improves convenience
With a reliable transcription service, you can get legal transcripts formatted in a way that benefits your workflow the most. These legal transcripts can include timestamps, speaker labels, and other information to help attorneys and their staff keep track of speech flow and other events. All this information is critical when building a case or looking for inconsistencies in testimonies.
Ensures ease of access
Scrubbing through audio or video recordings can be challenging if you’re trying to find a specific sentence. Legal transcripts provide attorneys and other staff quick and easy access to the content they’re looking for, while also making it significantly easier to share this information when needed. Also, storing this information on different devices and in different formats becomes significantly easier as text files require significantly less disk space.
Optimizes organization and archiving
Legal transcripts also offer great benefits in terms of storing content – you can store them digitally or on paper and organize them in a way to suit your company’s filing system. Businesses looking to digitize their archives can easily fetch these transcripts, print them, or convert them into other formats. Either way, even if your filing system is flawless, retrieving information from digital files is incomparably more efficient and simplifies gathering data from old cases to help in ongoing ones.
Offers higher precision and clarity
Legal transcripts are ideal for accurate presentations of all types of legal proceedings. Complex cases which involve conflicting reports or testimonies from multiple witnesses can be processed easier thanks to precise transcripts of events and testimonies.
Enhances workflow
Transcripts can enhance the workflow of legal practice in many other ways. For example, there are times when a defendant might not be satisfied with a verdict. In these cases, they can appeal and request their case to be reopened in an attempt to get a more favorable verdict. Accurate transcripts of the original trial can help attorneys prepare a more efficient strategy.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, accurate legal transcripts bring countless benefits to every aspect of a legal business. With that in mind, it’s essential to entrust your transcription tasks to a reliable transcription company.
