Accessing and Editing Court Transcripts with Rev Legal

This article explains how to open, download and edit legal transcripts (court transcripts of depositions, hearings and other legal proceedings) in a Rev legal transcription account. What you can do depends on the service level: Instant Rough Draft and Human Rough Draft transcripts can be edited in Rev’s editor and downloaded with legal formatting options, while Ready to Certify and Ready to Certify Premium transcripts are delivered as finished documents.

This is separate from Rev’s standard transcription service. To view or edit a regular transcript of an interview, meeting or other recording, see Rev’s Transcript Editor Overview instead.

In this article

Open a Completed Legal Transcript

You’ll get an email when your legal transcript is ready. Open it from the link in the email, or sign in to your legal transcription account and find it in My Files, where all your legal transcript orders are listed.

HIPAA accounts: If your account is set up for HIPAA compliance, you can open your legal transcripts only by signing in to your account.

My Files page in a Rev legal transcription account, listing legal transcript orders with their date, rating and status.

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Download a Legal Transcript

How you download a legal transcript depends on its service level.

 

Download an Instant Rough Draft or Human Rough Draft

You can download rough drafts in Word (.docx) or ASCII text (.txt) and choose how the legal formatting is applied.

  1. In My Files, click the three-dot menu (…) next to the legal transcript, then click Download.
  2. Under Output Format, choose Legal Deposition.
  3. Under File Type, choose Word (.docx) or ASCII text (.txt).
  4. Under Additional Export Options, select any you need: Format deposition speakers as Q./A. instead of Q/A; Indent monologues (including Bylines & Exhibits) with spaces instead of tabs; Include page numbers; Include line numbers; Limit characters per line; Customize paragraph indentation.
  5. Click Export.

Q, A and colloquy paragraphs are formatted automatically from the legal tags in the transcript. See Edit a Legal Transcript (Rough Drafts Only).

Three-dot menu on a legal transcript in My Files, with options including Open, Share, Move, Rename, Download and Order Details.
Download Transcript window with Legal Deposition selected as the output format, Microsoft Word (.docx) as the file type, a list of additional export options for legal formatting, and the Export button.

 

Download a Ready to Certify or Ready to Certify Premium Transcript

Ready to Certify and Ready to Certify Premium transcripts are formatted during production with the template chosen for your order, and are delivered as finished, download-only documents in Word or ASCII. You can’t edit them in Rev or change the download options after delivery, so make sure the file type and template are right before you order. For questions about the template or format, email legalsupport@rev.com.

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Edit a Legal Transcript (Rough Drafts Only)

You can edit Instant Rough Draft and Human Rough Draft legal transcripts in Rev’s editor. Ready to Certify and Ready to Certify Premium transcripts can’t be edited in Rev.

To open the editor, click the legal transcript in My Files. If you ordered a Human Rough Draft and a Ready to Certify for the same recording, the rough draft arrives first, and you can edit it while you wait for the Ready to Certify transcript.

Rev’s editor open on a legal rough draft of a deposition, with the video player and Speakers panel on the left and the transcript paragraphs, speaker labels and timestamps on the right.

 

What you can do in the editor

Play from any word: The text is synced to your audio or video. Click any word to jump to that point in the recording.

Rename speakers: In the Speakers panel, click the pencil icon next to a speaker to rename them everywhere in the transcript at once (for example, Speaker 1 to THE WITNESS). To add a speaker, click Create new Speaker.

Speakers panel in the editor listing Speaker 1 to Speaker 5, each with a pencil icon for renaming, and a Create new Speaker option at the top.

 

Add legal tags: Click the speaker label on a paragraph to choose its speaker and legal tag. Spoken legal tags are Question for examination, Answer for examination and Colloquy. Non-spoken legal tags include Byline, Exhibit, Swear in, Examination title, Other parenthetical and Proceeding end. To tag part of a paragraph separately, press Enter to start a new paragraph, then tag it. These tags control how Q, A and colloquy are formatted when you download the transcript.

Speaker label menu on a transcript paragraph, listing the speakers, Spoken Legal Tags (Colloquy, Question for examination, Answer for examination) and Non-Spoken Legal Tags (Byline, Exhibit, Swear in, Examination title, Other parenthetical, Proceeding end).

 

Find & Replace: Click the magnifying glass in the editor toolbar to find a word or name and replace it throughout the transcript.

Need a finished transcript instead? Ready to Certify transcripts use Rev’s standard jurisdiction templates and arrive ready for the court reporter’s review and signature. Ready to Certify Premium, formatted to your own templates, is available on Enterprise/Unlimited accounts. To set it up, Contact Sales.

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Get Help With Legal Transcripts

For help with a legal transcript, email Rev’s legal transcription support team at legalsupport@rev.com and include your order number.

If you have an Enterprise/Unlimited account, you can also contact your engagement manager.

 

More about legal transcription:

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Video Guide

This video, How to Access and Edit Completed Court Transcripts, shows how to open, edit and download a legal transcript.

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