Legal Transcription Errors
An attorney’s office or a law firm has to daily create a lot of documents or other paper work for clients like general correspondence, letters to clients, legal pleadings, interrogatories, briefs, subpoenas etc some of which will have to be produced in court. Legal transcription like medical and business transcription requires the professional transcriptionist to coordinate his ears, eyes, fingers and sometimes the foot (while using foot pedal). A transcription error can be defined as a type of data entry error that is made by a human operator. Quite often, while the transcript is being typed the operator may touch his fingers in the wrong place on the keyboard and this can result in a typographical error.
There are many other types of errors that can occur; like typing the wrong syllable, omitting word/ words, and using the wrong punctuation spellings, etc. What are the different causes for these errors in legal transcription? Well some of the basic reasons for errors in transcription include,
Passive listening skills
Unusual accents
Problem in audio/video recordings
Poor judgment of the case by the transcriptionist
Skipping the editing/proofreading process
Not well experienced in legalese / legal terms
Misdiagnosis of errors
Error due to wrong OCR/ICR readings
Illegible writing
Syntax error
It is very essential to use the latest digital technologies while doing legal transcription and all transcription work should always be done under the supervision of experienced law professionals. Frontline transcriptionists should also be trained to consistently deliver legal transcripts with a high degree of accuracy. The best and most effective philosophy to be followed in reducing errors during transcription is “Prevent defects closest to the point of creation." Thus if one can create a fairly accurate transcription in the beginning/ first level itself, will allow the second level editors and quality control staff to concentrate their attention on more subtler errors This will result in an almost error free transcript with a minimal turnaround time.
About the Author: The author of this article is John Kessel of Managed Outsource Solutions , a US based company that offers services in Legal Outsourcing, and Medical Transcription for clients across the US.
More articles by Johnkessel
Print Article | Download PDF | 12 views | Apr 05 2008
|
|
