I have attempted in this paper to look at the history of transcript in computerised form which looks at delivering transcript in digital or computerised format. The different types of delivery from audio, computer assisted and remote is examined. Finally a review of software used to analyse transcript is given.

Traditionally there have always been court reporters taking transcript notes from the early days of trials. In ancient Greece, Xenephon used shorthand to compile his account of Socrates’ trial. Quill pens were replaced by shorthand pen writers, followed by stenograph machines, tape recorders, and computer assisted transcript (CAT).

The first phonographic manual of shorthand instruction was written in 1837 by Sir Isaac Pitman. His brother, Jacob, arrived in Adelaide in the same year and distributed 100 copies of his manual. The seeds of a long tradition of shorthand writing in all aspects of public activity from commerce, the church, law and the press were sown. In 1906 the first stenotype machine was invented in America.

Adelaide has always had a strong base of court reporters and many practising shorthand writers hail from there including Helen Case, who with her sister, Trudy, run Transcripts Australia which specialise in CAT. In 1990 the first realtime transcript (CAT) was taken in the Bond case in Melbourne by Transcripts Australia.

The following comments on computerised transcript are based on my experience in the state of Victoria, Australia.

The reasons lawyers use transcript is to record the proceedings so that they can:

• Refresh their memories reading the transcript.
• Come up to speed with proceedings if new to the case.
• Search for certain passages usually recalling what day, what witness and what time.
• Mark and notate transcript manually with relation to particular issues which supports / refutes their argument.
• Pull together all above for witness examination / closing address / submission.

The advent of computerised transcript has not changed the reason for using transcript of the proceedings in the first place. It is automation of a manual process.

Transcription services are an invaluable part of the hearing process for lawyers be it in the:

• Coroner’s Court
• Magistrate’s Court
• County Court
• Supreme Court
• Inquiries - eg Pyramid Inquiry
• Tribunals - eg Racing Appeal Tribunal
• Review Panel - eg Grievance Review Panel

Three methods will be discussed here. They are:

• Audio;
• Computer Assisted Transcript or Realtime Transcript (CAT);
• Remote transcript via live Video or Internet

The accuracy by which the court proceedings can be reported obviously is critical to the successful transcription process. Audio tapes are recorded in turns and taken down in word processed form in order that a digital output is made. It is possible to have a computer program search the audio tape using Digital Audio Recording Transcription (DART).

However tape transcription may be prone to many errors. On one occasion a search for Karkar, who was defence counsel in a matter, did not appear at all. An extensive search found it had been mistranslated from a tape as Rahrah. These mistranslates can easily be picked up using for example the word wheel facility in full text retrieval programs such as ISYS which is described below.

The first commercial Stenograph system called Steno-Comp was released in 1972. In 1990 the Supreme Court of Victoria heard the National Australia Bank Ltd v Bond Brewing Holdings Ltd 1990 169 CLR 271, the Bond case, which was famed not only because of its illustrious parties. It was the first time the Supreme Court in Victoria had used realtime transcript which allowed online searching of the transcript as evidence to be taken. Transcript produced on disk at the end of the day allowed for complete searching using full-text retrieval programs.

The best description of realtime appears in a report presented by Andrews J (1991, p 23) of Dallas, Texas:

Untranslates can be lessened by the parties providing in advance a list of names and terms which might be used in the court. The court reporters who use realtime are highly skilled and can record at normal speed of up to 250 words per minute. This may sound fast but an excited witness (or counsel) can easily reach this speed in the course of proceedings.

The setup in court involves each party who requires the realtime, connecting their computer via a digital splitter to the court reporter’s machine, a Smart Writer. Input is via a keyboard and output is a 3.5 inch diskette, paper tape or via a 9-pin serial RS232C port. Multiplexing is provided by an RJ11 Data Broadcast Box (digital splitter) which can handle up to eight connections over standard unshielded twisted pair cabling.

The software used to convert the shorthand code to English is either OZpc or more recently Premier Power, which is provided by Stenograph Corporation in the United States. There are some notable advantages to using the realtime transcript in court because it:

If there is any problem with the computers, the transcript is recorded on paper rolls, which are kept for two years. Most transcript companies also keep backup copies on diskette to allow immediate access to the transcript upon request.

Some judges and barristers may be concerned that the judge would be distracted by the realtime features of the system, and either would pay less attention to the witness or miss some of the interaction within the court. This is a somewhat fallacious argument because the distraction and interrupted flow of events caused by taking notes by hand can seriously impede the progress of the trial. However, a comment by an Official Referees Court Judge, Forbes J (1992), who has used the software, is quite illuminating:

This suggests that some advantages which this technology can offer may be stifled by the distrust displayed from the bar that court proceedings will change to their detriment.

There are two main ways in which transcript is taken on a remote basis. By video and using internet technology.

Video linking has been popular in Magistrates courts in Victoria particularly in Criminal matters, for mention, where the case will not be heard until a later date. Obviously this saves the cost of transportation of persons held on remand for more serious crimes.

However it is not the norm to have trials video linked. The John Elliot trial was geared up with a giant video screen for viewing of witnesses by the jury. If the trial had proceeded in the Supreme Court of Victoria perhaps remote proceedings would have been beamed live to the outside world.

The Estate Mortgage litigation which was heard before Judge Smith, in the Supreme Court of Victoria during 1997, had a number of milestones which proved to be innovations in the calendar of judicial hearings. Not least of which was the ability of lawyers to dial in and look at the transcript which was being recorded by CAT. Another milestone was the size of the discovery process and the ability at trial to view some of the thousands of documents discovered by image on large monitors.

The software was developed by Chris Priestley in conjunction with Systematics (the court technology providers). This meant that if lawyers from one of the many parties was not going to be directly involved for the day, they could return to their office and keep an eye on proceedings remotely. This is a significant leap in the provision of computerised transcript.

More lawyers and judges are using the electronic form of transcript. All the above types of transcript can be provided electronically.

With audio once it has been transcribed and checked it is

• either copied on floppy diskette
• or downloaded by Bulletin Board Service through modem and telephone lines to lawyers

(The advantage of the second method is that the transcript can be downloaded immediately it has been completed rather than waiting for a pick up and delivery service with the difficulty of access to offices after hours.) There is no difference in the final product whichever method of delivery is chosen.

Most transcript in Victoria can be obtained by 6.30 pm on the evening of the trial day. Five years ago the request for the transcript in ASCII format would have been met with silence and a remark as to "what is this Asskey?" Nowadays most court reporting companies prepare the transcript on wordprocessors and are willing to send the electronic version of the transcript (normally with an extra cost to cover the diskette) at similar rates to the hard copy version.

If lawyers use a transcript software package they can automate all their manual procedures which is discussed in the next section. However in order for computer programmes to locate areas of transcript the formatting of the document becomes paramount. Before we look at specific programs some general background issues on transcription services will be covered.

With the use of different software to search, annotate produce witness and exhibit lists it has been necessary to ensure that the standard of each page of transcript is uniform. For example the footer needs to have the page numbers correct at each turn in order that the search and retrieval programs such as Transcripts Analyser and CaseView, and others can pick up the correct page in reports and lists.

.

Greenleaf and Mowbray (1993) recommended developing national standards for the form in which transcript is prepared: "The standards should cover such matters as consistent references to exhibits and witnesses, numbering, text formats and any other matters which will facilitate the input of transcript into a wide range of retrieval programs." (p 59)

Despite various attempts to standardise transcript format, significant differences occur between states in Australia and between courts within the state.

No overview would be complete without a look at the software used to analyse transcript.

Once the edited transcript is received electronically it can be indexed using a full-text retrieval program. This proves very useful to the parties having to search and make notes about the day’s proceedings. Judges will use it in a similar manner.

Greenleaf and Mowbray (1993) discuss the treatment of transcript very extensively and list some of the desirable features of transcript retrieval software as follows:

It is difficult to find a product that will fulfil all the above criteria. A good full-text program such as ISYS will comply with (i), (iii), (v), (vi), (vii), and (x) and (xi). Folio views will provide hypertext links as specified in (ix). The other items (ii), (iv) and (viii) can be provided in some document control software. Transcript Analyser has the in-built capacity to generate exhibit and witness lists. This capacity is often performed on a daily basis by the transcript companies themselves.

Titan, which was used in the Rothwell’s case in Western Australia, had the ability to combine both full-text retrieval and indexing structure in its system. The proximity searching was limited to within a paragraph and there was no hypertext linking facility.

I understand that Lotus Notes has been used by Judge Seaman in WA.

The choice of software depends, to a large extent, on how sophisticated are the needs for the particular trial and how dedicated are the lawyers in the case to using the appropriate tools. Most lawyers could become familiar quickly with a full-text retrieval tool, such as ISYS.

The edited transcript which is received at the end of the day is loaded into a software program which allows for full text searching.

There are a number of full text retrieval programs being used by lawyers. They include:

• FolioViews (Dos & Windows)
• CaseView (Windows & Mac)
• ISYS (Dos & Windows)
• LiveNote (Windows - UK product)
• Lotus Notes (Windows)
• Total Research (Mac)
• Transcript Analyser (Windows)

The choice of software depends, to a large extent, on how sophisticated are the needs for the particular trial and how dedicated are the lawyers in the case to using the appropriate tools. Most lawyers could become familiar quickly with a full-text retrieval tool, such as ISYS. They would also be able to progress to more sophisticated tools which will assist in analysing the case. The most widely used program in Victoria with the judiciary and lawyers is ISYS and, more recently, CaseView and Transcript Analyser.

ISYS has been developed since 1988 by Odyssey Development and is a fully comprehensive full text retrieval product which is used in a wide variety of industries - not only legal. It is therefore a more forgiving program than the specific legal products such as Transcript Analyser. However its features are also more generic and not geared toward producing reports from the transcript. Thus it can be used for such things a the pleadings and witness statements.

These search features include:

• Word and sounds like searching using the word wheel
• Full boolean searching AND / OR / NOT
• Proximity searching ie ACT within 10 words of AWARD
• Wildcard * stemming
• Cutting and Pasting either through Clipboard or Notepad facility
• Annotating text with notes
• Linking text to images eg of exhibit
• Linking words with synonym rings
• Viewing of HITS by file, title line, in context or full browse mode.

Additional features include the use of the resource registry, dividing the text into sections for searching, use of concept tree for searching and hypertext linking which are not so widely used by lawyers.

This program has been developed by Stephen Foley of Imago Computer Solutions specifically for use with transcript.

There are two parts to TA -

• Full text searching & notating over multiple days of transcript
• Real Time search module

Mainly it is being used for the former and the Victorian Supreme and County Courts have a site licence at this stage. It allows the user to mark issues with the transcript and produce reports according to witness or exhibit lists.

Lawyers can make their own annotations by noting issues and comments alongside the transcript. The types of reports which the lawyers can print are based on selecting headings which include Date, Witness, Examination mode, Page no, Topics, Notes and transcript extract marked.

This program was written in conjunction with Stenograph systems USA by Chris Priestley, a Victorian barrister, following his success with a full text product for Macintosh - Total Research. It allows lawyers to mark up real time transcript in court and then synchronise that marked up text with the edited transcript at the end of the day.

CaseView has two working Windows which allows lawyers and judges to see the transcript as it is created, and can mark and copy text for later use in cross-examination, or when writing decisions. Selections from the transcript are stored by issue in a notes file or database. The database automatically structures the notes, recording court transcript page and line number as well as day and date information.

The split screen allows realtime transcript to continue in the lower screen, whilst being able to scroll back in the upper portion of the screen. Both screens can be sized for convenient viewing.

The annotations made in court are stored in an Access database. These notes are updated according to page and line number during the synchronisation program.

Although it is possible to synchronise manually it is much faster with a lot of annotations to synchronise the transcript automatically. In order to do this the program relates the page number in the real time mode to the edited mode. It needs to compensate heavily if the pages are a long way out. For example more than 2 pages out either side.

Thus it is crucial that the CAT reporters enter the approximate correct page number at the start of the day. The synchronisation process can compensate for a lot of untranslates in its process of matching the edited text with the realtime. (This is provided the lawyer has marked enough text to which it can relate).

Logically when synchronising the annotations CaseView moves through the text as it would in the realtime mode and looks for the next match after the last annotation was made. Thus if text is moved around in the edited transcript this will not only cause problems in CaseView but the lawyers will wonder why that text/evidence has been moved from its original place. Since most evidence is transcribed verbatim this should not occur.

The above has attempted to describe some of the ways in which computerised transcripts have and are being used in the current justice system. It is certainly not a comprehensive overview and systems described are ones with which I am familiar. This conference will, no doubt, illuminate other notable areas involving computerised transcript.