Will there be silence in court?

June 13, 2012 - PRLog -- This year has seen the end of an era and hardly any one cares.

The last stenographer has left the Old Bailey, The Central Criminal Court, as The Courts Services moves away for people power in favour of the digital recording of proceedings.

Across the country some judges are upset; the stenographers have lost their ringside seat at some of Britain’s most celebrated criminal trials and a few technicians have been given jobs. Other than that hardly any one seems to care; it certainly hasn’t been front page news.

The art of the stenographer is little known but these highly-trained typists can input data at a staggering 220 words a minute using special machines. It takes years of training to achieve these speeds – a good journalist can only take shorthand at 120 words a minute.

While journalists are still banned from using recording machines in court and have to rely on their shorthand outlines, court stenographers are being replace by machines and legal transcription services.

The Courts Service is replacing them with DARTS – Digital Audio Recording and Storage technology.

The Institute for Public Policy Research said in a report that more information should be made available to the victims of crime and the move to digital recording may help this.

The report said victims should be able to track the progress of their cases online as this would increase confidence in the courts system.

Thanks to legal transcription services the UK Supreme Court, the final court of appeal for civil cases, now publishes details online of all its cases and the judgments reached. Technology is also helping Avon and Somerset police who last year set up a website called TrackMyCrime, allowing people to follow the progress of their cases.

In many areas of business life digital dictation services are becoming increasingly popular.

For professionals who spend time out of the office a hand-held dictation device is often a must. A chartered surveyor or architect is unlikely to take out a notebook when they are half way up a building on a construction site.

With so much business being conducted on line many companies have sprung up to cope with the increase in demand for digital dictation services

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