Reporting Services

A deposition is a proceeding which is unique to the US legal system whereby attorneys from the States come to the UK and the Continent (and elsewhere in the world) to take evidence from witnesses based in those locations. Many members of BIVR have vast experience and are realtime-proficient in taking depositions in all areas (whether it be pharma, patent, Lloyd’s insurance, telecommunications, etc) both here in the UK, in Europe, and further afield.In the US, one of the roles of the court reporter is to administer the oath to a witness and/or interpreters. The majority of deposition court reporters in the US have Notary Public status, which gives them the authority to administer such an oath to the witness to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; however, once a US reporter steps outside of the state(s) in which they have notary status, that status becomes null and void.Conversely, in the UK, notary status is not something easily attainable and, more importantly, UK and EU reporters do not hold this authority. More often than not, the reporting firm booking the stenographer will have informed the attorneys of this extremely important fact and the parties will agree to the UK reporter administering the oath. If the parties do not wish to stipulate, then a local notary should be hired or, alternatively, a US consular official can be retained to administer the oath. Sometimes, in order to protect the record which they are about to take down in shorthand, a UK reporter will ask the US attorneys to stipulate on the record to her/him administering the oath to the witness/interpreter and, additionally, counsel should stipulate to waiving an objection to the validity of the deposition based on the UK reporter administering the oath.

A form of alternative dispute resolution, arbitrations are a process in which a disagreement between two or more parties is resolved by impartial individuals, called arbitrators. Jurisdictions include International Chamber of Commerce, ICSID and UNCITRAL. The arbitral panel can be composed of a single arbitrator or a three-person panel.

Captioning is an area of realtime work providing communication support for the D/deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, and also for people whose first language is not English. Captioning assignments include meetings, conferences, festivals, museums, seminars, lectures, or one-to-one support. The captioner may be either onsite or remote.DISCLAIMER: Live captioning is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility. This document contains the real-time captions in a text format, and has not been edited, proofread, or corrected. It is not an official, legal transcript and is not certified to be true and correct. It may contain computer-generated mistranslations of palantype/stenotype code or electronic transmission errors, resulting in inaccurate or nonsensical word combinations.

Any legal jurisdiction where a verbatim transcript is required, including boards of inquiry, Crown Court, civil proceedings, Coroner’s Court, High Court, parliamentary sessions, public inquiries, etc.

Daily transcripts are provided in cases where the parties require the edited transcript either at the end of the day, usually within two to three hours of adjourning, or first thing the next morning. Either a team of stenographers or a stenographer and scopist/editor team are used on daily transcript assignments.

The stenographers attending these hearings may be using pen or machine. Many professional bodies hold Fitness to Practise hearings, for example General Dental Council, General Pharmaceutical Council, General Chiropractic Council, Health & Care Professions Council and Nursing & Midwifery Council, having the transcript delivered within a set period of time, ranging from five up to ten working days. These hearings may be done by one reporter or several when daily transcript is required. This is also known as a write-out.

Transcribing downloaded, pre-recorded digital media, including MP3, MP4, opus or wav formats, for example from the Ministry of Justice’s Digital Audio Recording Transcription and Storage (DARTS), Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), etc.

Standard transcript delivery times vary between five and ten working days to expedited delivery as agreed with the client.