Legal Transcription Errors Can Prove Really Costly

Legal entities have to deal with various important documents such as general correspondence, letters to clients, legal pleadings, interrogatories, briefs, subpoenas etc. There should be no room for error in court recording and transcribing. Most court reporters attend trials, administrative hearings, and depositions and create a physical record of everything they hear. These transcripts are distributed to the courts, attorneys, and other parties involved. What happens if the court reporter does not provide accurate transcripts? The entire process will get messed up. Though most legal firms and lawyers are now choosing professional legal transcription services for error-free transcripts, there are still certain cases where minute transcription errors are causing huge losses.

The major reasons for errors in transcription could be passive listening on the part of the transcriptionist, unusual accents, problem in audio/video recordings, poor judgment of the case, skipping the editing/proofreading process, transcriptionist not well versed in legal terms, error due to wrong OCR/ICR readings, illegible writing or even syntax error.

The Law Society Gazette recently reported the case of Edward Fail, Bradshaw & Waterson (EFBW), a leading London criminal law firm that lost out on a new legal aid contract as a result of a ‘basic transcription error’ in the marking of one of its bids.

The Legal Aid Agency (LAA), an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has now admitted that it made a basic transcription error in scoring at least one of EFBW's bids, and that consequently EFBW should have been awarded a contract in Hackney, a London borough. The MoJ recently revealed other mistakes it had made with regard to online forms related to prisoner release and divorce. 

Though the possibility of such an error has been identified by Bindmans, a firm that is acting for EFBW in the litigation, LAA has not addressed the issues though it acknowledged later that if the error had not been made, EFBW should have scored higher than at least one of the purported successful bidders. The error in this case may have been small, but its consequences were extremely serious.

Transcription errors such as the above can cause considerable damage, and it is rather unfair that organizations are required to bring legal challenges to reveal such errors. 

Legal transcription requires total dedication on the part of the transcriptionist and knowledge regarding what is being transcribed, if the transcripts are to be error free and reliable. In a professional legal transcription outsourcing company, you will find experienced editors and proofreaders as part of the QA team to ensure that the final document sent to the client achieves close to 99% accuracy.