Deposition transcription

A working transcript, not the certified record

When a deposition is taken stenographically, the court reporter produces the official transcript and certifies it. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(f)(1), the officer certifies in writing that the witness was duly sworn and that the deposition accurately records the testimony. Scriven does not replace that transcript and does not produce a certified one.

What Scriven gives you is the copy you work from while you wait for the certified transcript, or the only transcript you have when the deposition, interview or call was recorded on audio or video. You review it, correct it and sign it as a working transcript, laid out with page and line numbers so it reads like the record you are used to.

• Prepare a summary or a digest the same evening, before the certified transcript arrives.
• Check a witness's exact words against the recording when your notes disagree.
• Transcribe an audio-recorded deposition, a recorded statement or a client interview your team needs in writing.
• Mark the passages to quote in a motion and cite them by page and line.

Deposition transcript format: the US conventions

There is no single national template, but transcripts across US courts follow the same conventions. Federal court transcript guidelines and state rules in states such as California, Louisiana and Arkansas call for at least 25 typed lines on a standard 8½ × 11 page, and reporters number the lines down the left margin so testimony can be cited as page:line.

• 25 numbered lines per page, so a cite like 42:7–15 points to the same words for everyone.
• Q and A: each question and each answer starts on its own line, marked Q or A at the left margin.
• Speaker labels for colloquy: attorneys and others who speak outside the Q/A appear by name, such as MS. CHEN: or THE WITNESS:.
• Parentheticals for events in the room, such as an exhibit being marked or a recess.
• Front matter with the caption, appearances and an index of examinations and exhibits.
• The reporter's certificate at the end, signed by the officer who administered the oath.

Local rules and reporting firms add their own details, such as margins and characters per line, so check the rules for your court if a transcript will be filed.

How to transcribe a recorded deposition

The free demo above transcribes the first 15 minutes of a file with no account, which is enough to see how your recording comes out. For a full deposition, use a free account or the desktop app.

1. Drop the recording above: audio or video, straight from the recorder or the video file of a remote deposition.
2. Set the number of speakers if you know it, for example the witness, two attorneys and the videographer. Scriven tells the voices apart automatically.
3. Rename the speakers once: WITNESS, MR. PATEL, MS. CHEN. Every line follows the change.
4. Correct the draft in the editor. Click any line to hear it, fix a word, press 1–9 to give the line to another speaker.
5. Review each line with ⌘↵, then sign the transcript and export it to PDF or Word with page and line numbers.

An editor built for correcting testimony

An automatic transcript is a draft. The work is in checking it against the recording, and the editor is built so you can do that without reaching for the mouse.

• Every word is tied to the audio: click a line to play it from that point.
• Space plays and pauses; J and L skip back and forward 3 seconds.
• Number keys 1–9 set the speaker, so a misattributed answer takes one keystroke to fix.
• ⌘B splits a turn where an objection interrupts an answer; ⌘M merges turns that belong together.
• ⌘F finds every place a name, date or exhibit number was said.

Words the system is unsure of are flagged, so you know where to listen closely: names, numbers, and testimony spoken over each other.

Review and sign

Every correction is marked with the name of the person who made it. When the review is done, the reviewer certifies the version: they confirm every section was checked against the recording, and the version is locked.

That signature records who on your team checked the transcript against the audio. It is your firm's internal attestation, not a court reporter's certificate, and it does not turn a working transcript into an official one.

Export with page and line numbers

Export to PDF or Word in a court-style layout: numbered pages, numbered lines, speaker labels and timestamps. Cite the working transcript by page and line in your notes, then match the cite to the certified transcript when it arrives.

Before you share a transcript outside the team, you can anonymise names and other details in it.

Keep the recording confidential

A deposition recording is client material. With Scriven you decide where it goes.

• The desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux transcribes and tells speakers apart fully offline, on your own computer, with no upload. It tests the computer first and shows realistic speeds.
• In the cloud, you pick the region: the United States, the EU (Germany), Singapore or Japan. Audio and transcript are processed and stored in that region only, and the region is shown on every screen.

Recordings dropped in the free demo above are deleted after an hour unless you keep them by creating an account.