Court Reporting Blog – Calgary & Edmonton Court Reporters

Realtime court reporting services offers lawyers a key advantage in a deposition setting, and that is the ability to view the live testimony of a witness in real time on your own computer screen as it is being written by the court reporter.

Providing realtime court reporting services requires a court reporters who is well trained in this area. So, you ask, aren’t all court reporters trained?

No, not really for providing realtime services.  Most court reporters are trained to provide a verbatim transcript, but very few have any additional training that allows clients to truly enjoy the benefits of using realtime services. There is a small percentage of court reporters who can properly provide realtime services. The key reason for this is additional training and the time that it takes for a court reporter needs to undertake over the course of a few years to ensure that what they are writing is useable to a lawyer in a live proceeding.

IR’s experience in realtime services is unmatched by any other court reporting company in Calgary or Edmonton. With over 500,000 pages of realtime services provided to the legal community since 1992, we have led our industry and continue to evolve and enhance the services we provide our clients.

At IR, we have a team of court reporters who specialize in realtime court reporting services. They have worked on their skills for many years and have been trained to write at a constant level of 98.5% true accuracy.

So, why should you consider using realtime in your examinations?  Here’s a list of things to consider:

Instant access to the testimony and the ability to go back and search earlier testimony – LIVE! By using realtime you can have the testimony quickly accessible at any time during the day, not just reading what is on your screen. You can immediately review what has been said rather than asking the court reporter for a readback.  As well, you can review at a break or at lunch the exact testimony instead of relying on your recollection of the testimony or cryptic notes you made during the proceedings. Really, how fast can you write anyway?

Strategy and confidence in knowing that everything being said is right in front of you and can be easily retrieved at any time throughout the day.  This can put the witness or other counsel on the defensive and let them know that you’re in charge of the room. 

Improved comprehension of the testimony. Various studies have shown that when one is reading AND hearing testimony that their comprehension of the testimony increases dramatically. This can result in time savings when questioning a witness as it can avoid repeating of questions and also allow you to be more direct to the areas that are important to your case. This also helps to ensure that you get the answers that you need from your questions now and not before it is too late.

Ability to flag key testimony during the questioning of a witness is crucial. Realtime allows you to mark the live testimony so that you can quickly jump back to it or search for it during the day. Another advantage of this is that opposing counsel will never know what you are marking as it can be done very discretely.  

View the realtime testimony anywhere in the world. Yes, you really can. Let’s say you are travelling and you want to maximize your time away from the office and get examination for this key witness dealt with as efficiently as possible. One way is to have a realtime stream sent back to your home office so that another lawyer or your support staff can view the live testimony and provide you with additional points to put to the witness. Or, do you even need to attend the examination of this witness in the first place? Are you only attending so that you can know what the other parties are examining on? id you know that you don’t even have to be at the deposition to view the realtime feed?  You can even send secure instant messages to other remote attendees in your group without other counsel knowing. This technology can save considerable time and money by reducing the need for everyone involved to attend in person and allows for improved collaboration among members of a team handling the litigation.

Many people don’t use realtime because they don’t understand the technology, think that it is too expensive or they find it to be distracting. However, when looking at the benefits that realtime offers, shouldn’t you consider how much more and comprehensive information you could be getting in your future examinations?

Contact IR for a personal demonstration and learn how easy it is to start using realtime in your future examinations. You can click here to book online and schedule your next file with realtime.