Advanced Courtroom Technology: Real-Time Reporting and Digital Recording (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Let's focus on another feature of the McLaughlin courtroom, special technology available to the stenographer. In the McLaughlin courtroom, we have the three major methods of making a court record, which are stenotype, voice writing, and digital recording. The court reporter writes in real time, which means as she presses the keys on the stenotype machine, which is actually a computer, the electronic impulses of the keys are matched to words in her dictionary or database and translated into English almost simultaneously. She has entered all the words in the dictionary in the way that she writes each word. In an average day of court, a court reporter would write approximately 55,000 strokes at approximately four words per second and faster. The stenotype machine, or in this case, the Diamante computerized writer that the reporter is using today, is made by Stenograph Corporation, and the software she is using is Eclipse by Advantage Software. Voice writing is where the court reporter uses a steno mask that is connected to a computer and the reporter repeats every word that is said, who said it, including punctuation and formatting instructions, into the mask, which silences the voice so as to not be heard in the courtroom. With the use of software and a speech recognition engine, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking or IBM ViaVoice, the reporter's words are translated into English. Only the reporter's voice will be recognized because the reporter has spent considerable time training the speech engine to recognize his or her voice. Some software manufacturers of stenotype software make the voice writing software as well. We also have FTR, for the record, the recorder and the player, which is digital recording and transcription software supplied by FTR Incorporated. It is connected to the courtroom's microphones and speakers. A person serving as a monitor can listen by earphones in a different room to ensure the proceedings are being recorded, as well as make notations, or log notes, that are synchronized with the time stamps of the recording. At the end of the day, the proceedings will be archived. If a transcript is needed, a disc may be prepared and sent to a transcriber for typing. Real-time reporting, where the reporter's output or text can be read in real time. This can be accomplished only by experienced and real-time certified stenotypists and voice writers. For judges and lawyers using litigation support software, they receive the reporter's feed of streaming text on their own computers, where they make quick marks, annotations, notes, highlights, issue code, and even send instant messages to an expert witness who could also be viewing the scrolling text via the internet in a completely different location. At the end of the day, the judge and attorneys may have an unedited version of the proceedings to take with them to prepare for the following day.