These tips will help you improve transcription accuracy, deliver transcripts on time and increase your productivity and income.
The accuracy of legal transcripts is extremely important because they can be used as evidence in a court of law.
- Improve your grammar, punctuation, and spelling skills with online tutorials and classes.
Check out The Best Punctuation Book, Period: A Comprehensive Guide for Every Writer, Editor, Student, and Businessperson by
Here are some FREE online grammar tutorials that are available online: English Grammar 101 and Grammar Bytes. - Increase your typing speed and improve your accuracy by taking online typing courses. Test and improve your typing skills at these sites offering FREE typing tools: http://free-typing-test.com and https://www.typing.com/.
- Increase your transcription speed by using a foot pedal. A foot pedal enables you to play, rewind, and fast forward the audio with your foot and keep your hands free to type. Read more about transcription foot pedals here and which one to use.
- Become thoroughly familiar with legal terminology and various legal documents and procedures. The best way to learn those is by taking a specialized legal transcription course. Click here to get more information about the legal transcription course I recommend.
- Use transcription software to listen, stop, forward, rewind, slow down, and speed up the recording. Read more about transcription software here.
- Use a noise-canceling headset to block noise in your work environment and hear the content of the recording better. Read how to choose a transcription headset.
- Transcribe in a quiet environment without background noises.
- When receiving bad-quality audio, filter unwanted noise and enhance the audio with an audio enhancer or sound editor so you can hear the voices better. Some transcription software, including Express Scribe has an audio cleanup tool that can remove background noises.
- Avoid distractions and interruptions from other people.
- Follow clients’ guidelines and instructions.
- Communicate with your clients. Ask them what the purpose of the transcript is and what type of transcript they want (e.g. verbatim, semi-verbatim or intelligent verbatim transcript, or edited transcript).
- Ask clients to provide technical terms or names mentioned in the audio.
- Deliver transcripts within the required turnaround time. Be aware that transcribing time will take 4 times the length of the recording or longer depending on your speed and the quality and content of the recording.
- Don't accept transcripts you can't deliver within the required deadline.
- Have a team of experienced transcriptionists available to help you with overload work.
- Set up templates for commonly used documents and features.
- Learn formatting features you’ll often use in transcripts like indents, tabs, headers, footers and page numbering. Knowing those well will increase your speed.
- Learn keyboard shortcuts, macros, and word expanders to speed up your transcripts.
- Set up stylesheets for commonly used features.
- Relisten to any audio parts that are unclear as many times as needed.
- While transcribing, indicate any words you’re not sure of to review later.
- Avoid inaudibles as much as possible. But if some words are really inaudible or unintelligable, indicate them in the transcript with a timestamp, e.g. “(inaudible at 00:23:22)” so that your editor and your client can quickly find them.
- Check any unfamiliar words or legal terms with legal reference books. See the legal resources here.
- After finishing the transcription, listen to the entire recording a second time. You’ll often catch words you didn’t understand the first time after becoming familiar with the content of the recording.
- Spellcheck, proofread, and edit the transcript thoroughly. Check spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
- Have a rigorous quality assurance system in place. Have a different proofreader or editor check the transcripts to ensure they are accurate and error-free.
- Use encryption for secure file transfer and protect your computer and files with firewalls and passwords.
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Take a specialized legal transcription course to acquire the skills you need to become a legal transcriptionist and learn legal terminology and procedures. Taking a good course like this one will also expand your employment options. Click here to get more information about the legal transcription course I recommend.
- Practice transcription to develop excellent listening skills and improve your transcription skills. The legal transcription course I recommend includes lots of specialized legal transcription practice files.
How do you learn legal transcription?
If you don’t have a legal background or legal experience, taking a specialized legal transcription course is the best way to acquire the skills needed to become a legal transcriptionist. It will also expand your employment options.
Click here to get more information about the legal transcription course I recommend.
Not sure if legal transcription is right for you?
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