As the legal system continues to evolve and adopt new technologies, one question has emerged; can voice recognition software truly replace certified court reporters? While it may seem like a tempting solution to streamline court processes and lower operational costs, the answer is not as straightforward as it may seem.

For one, court reporters do an essential and sensitive job, using their transcripts as evidence in appeals or future cases. Inconsistencies, incompleteness, and errors can lead to grave consequences, including wrongful convictions, mistrials, and acquittals. Accordingly, the actors in the legal system have, for the longest time, preferred to hire human stenographers as they are more nuanced and accurate than AI systems. However, there have been some exemplary improvements in voice recording and recognition technology, and you cannot help but feel that human court reporters are almost obsolete.

Benefits of Technology to the Legal System

The use of modern technology has been a game changer across the board, with the chief benefits being a considerable reduction in costs and turnover times. The legal sector has also benefited from the adoption of technology, with the digitization of court records (and even proceedings, in some cases) resulting in low operational costs and more streamlined processes. For court users, the upside has been a significant reduction in the time it takes to file and conclude cases. Increasing digitization across many judiciaries, coupled with ever-shrinking budgets, has pushed many courts to consider using digital recorders, voice recognition, and transcription services in place of human reporters. While the reasoning behind this is understandable, it is pretty regrettable from a court reporter’s perspective, as getting into the industry requires a good amount of practice and knowledge.

So, Are Court Reporters Going to be Obsolete?

While digital recording and transcription technologies are evolving rapidly, they are still too raw to replace human reporters completely. For one, computer systems are not autonomous (yet) and require humans to operate them. In this case, even the most advanced voice recording machines need regular software updates and maintenance. Most importantly, digital transcription is relatively error-prone, and any transcripts generated by recorders need to be thoroughly proofread, edited, and certified. While this job can be given to low-skilled people on low wages, it is best done by court reporters, who are extensively trained to produce high-quality transcripts.

Moreover, machines are not smart enough to differentiate between actual speech and other distorting noises. As such, they record everything. They also cannot note and fix mistakes in real-time or seek clarifications from the speakers. If all these issues are at play, the result will be highly distorted transcripts that cannot be used in a court of law.

In Conclusion

The saying goes that the present defines the future; in this case, the future of court reporting as a profession seems entirely secure. As much as machines and software can help make things easier and cheaper, court sessions are an all-human affair, and only other humans can transcribe speech from different people (with different accents and intonations) in an accurate manner.

A certified court reporter is critical to the seamless functioning of the legal system, and for the longest time, there was never any worry that the profession would go obsolete. 

However, recent fast-paced technological advancements, notably voice recording and AI technology, have been increasingly worrying for many reporters and industry analysts. 

One of the questions on many people’s lips is; if automation has been so successful in other industries like banking, media, and healthcare, why can’t it be used in court reporting?

Can Voice Recognition Software Make Court Reporters Obsolete?

Admittedly, voice recognition technology has such a high ceiling that it could grow to replace human court reporters fully. 

Luckily, the available voice recognition software is not advanced enough to be a reliable, safe, and accurate replacement for human stenographers. 

From the looks of things, it may even take decades for the tech to become anything more than a convenient job aid.

Why Are Human Reporters Better?

Since court proceedings involve human conversation, human reporters are more reliable since they can identify different pronunciations, dialects, and other verbal nuances and note them down correctly. 

Voice recognition is not yet advanced enough to accurately transcribe natural speech in real time. Further, they cannot effectively lip-read when, for instance, a traumatized witness is whispering words and thus can’t be trusted to provide accurate transcripts.

The Case for Voice Recognition Technology

The popularity of  VR tech is mainly driven by the fact that it is cheaper than human reporters. With employees demanding higher salaries across the board, it makes financial sense for courts to work with systems that promise low and constant running costs. 

Additionally, high-end AI software can record and transcribe at much higher speeds than stenographers, who can only do about 150-200 words per minute on average. 

Moreover, systems like the Digital Audio Recording and Transcription and Storage (Darts) adopted by British courts in 2012 offer cheap and automated file storage and retrieval functionalities, making their transcripts more relevant than those produced by human reporters, which have to be manually uploaded.

The fact that digital recorders do not get tired and thus don’t need breaks or time off further increases their appeal to courts running on small budgets. 

What The Future Holds

Although there is a possibility that in the future, very powerful digital recorders, powered by sophisticated AI tech, will replace human reporters in courtrooms, all signs show there is no clear winner in the race. 

For all their pros, digital recorders are still not universally regarded as reliable. In all the courts where they are employed, human proofreaders still have to go through their transcripts before they are certified. Due to their experience recording court conversations, most proofreaders are court reporters.

What’s more, voice recognition technology consists of hardware and software elements, which need to be constantly monitored and upgraded when necessary. They are also prone to crashing without notice and thus need live monitoring and support. 

This means there is a need to hire specialized IT teams, which can eat a huge chunk of the savings made by foregoing human reporters.