Electronic Transcript Management: It’s A Reality

Jeff Koller, General Counsel and Business Development Administrator, Hutchings Court Reporters, LLC
Hutchings Court Reporters is a Member of the Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego Chapters of CAPROS.

Have you had it with time-intensive paper-driven protocols to access, search, store, replicate and retrieve the information contained in deposition transcripts and exhibits? Have you tired of too many lost of misplaced sticky notes and sessions at the copy machine?

With today’s technology, there are better options for utilizing evidence and case materials produced through the deposition process.

It is relatively safe to assume that court reporters handle more than seventy-five percent of the evidence in a case in the form of testimony and exhibits. Many reporting agencies now have the technology to capture this information digitally and provide it to you in a manner that allows both efficient organization and easy utilization of this critical data.

Following are descriptions of two of the major service tools available, that facilitate transcript and exhibit management: E-Transcript, which is an electronic version of the transcript that is emailed to you; and the transcript “bundle” which links E-Transcript with digitally imaged exhibits from the proceeding.

E-Transcript

E-Transcript is a transcript delivery method utilizing a free downloadable viewer (http://www.reallegal.com/softwareDownloadETranscriptViewer.asp) in conjunction with an electronic version of the transcript. It is similar to utilizing Adobe’s Acrobat viewer software. It bears mentioning that you do not need to purchase software to utilize and receive an E-Transcript file of the deposition, nor is this service exclusive to any one court-reporting agency. However, the viewer must be downloaded onto every computer (PC or laptop) where the E-Transcript is to be viewed.

E-Transcript allows you to:

• Search the entire transcript for single word occurrences and location—electronically
• Print in both condensed and full-size format (single or multiple pages), as well as in a PDF file format
• Copy testimony and the related deponent cite directly into your document
• Save to your computer system’s case file for future reference and retrieval
• Save the E-Transcript file in an alternative file format to accommodate a variety of litigation software programs such as LiveNote, Sanction, TrialDirector, and Summation
• Email portions of, or the entire transcript, to others as opposed to copying then mailing or faxing

It is also important to know that the page/line continuity of the E-Transcript mirrors the final certified paper version.

Transcript Bundling

Bundling is a service where a CD containing both the electronic transcript (typically an E-Transcript), and the related scanned exhibits is produced by the court-reporting agency. This does not replace the paper version of the transcript, but allows you the means to completely replicate both the transcript and exhibits from the CD from your computer instead of standing at a copier making page-by-page duplicates.

Bundled exhibits can be hyperlinked to the transcript exhibit index, as well as within the body of the testimony itself. As with E-Transcript, you do not need to purchase any software. In addition to the above E-Transcript tools, you’ve now expanded your arsenal of capabilities to include:

• Complete electronic portability and ongoing accessibility of the entire contents of the transcript and exhibits
• View and print the transcript and exhibits from a single source
• Electronically search the transcript documents if OCR (optical character recognition) was requested
• Replicate the CD, or portions thereof, for distribution to your co-counsel, or a retained expert
• Save the scanned exhibits to your case file for quick retrieval and replication

Jeff Koller, General Counsel and Business Development Administrator, Hutchings Court Reporters, LLC Contact: jeffk@hutchings.com.