Deposition Transcription — Rough Transcripts for Prep, Search & Review

No. Deposition transcripts filed with the court, used as trial exhibits, or referenced in appellate briefs must be certified by a licensed court reporter. AI transcripts (from VexaScribe, Rev AI, or any other automated service) are rough drafts intended for internal review, testimony search, and cross-examination prep — not for filing. Nothing on this page is legal advice; consult your jurisdiction's rules of civil procedure and your firm's practice guidelines before relying on any transcript.

Yes — that's the workflow AI transcription genuinely fits. Court reporters typically deliver certified transcripts in 5-14 business days (24-48 hours expedited, with surcharge). During that gap, an AI transcript lets the reviewing attorney read the testimony, search for keywords, mark up passages, and start drafting motions or cross-examination outlines. When the certified transcript arrives, you use it for citations and filings; the AI draft accelerated the review work in between.

Licensed court reporters using stenography or professional voice-writing systems typically produce transcripts with 98-99% accuracy after review — the certification requirement holds them to a high standard. AI transcription (Whisper Large-v3, which is what VexaScribe uses) achieves roughly 92-95% word accuracy on clean deposition audio recorded with a single mic in a quiet room. In real multi-attorney depositions with overlapping speech, accuracy is typically 85-90%. AI is close-but-not-equal; that gap matters for certified filings but rarely matters for internal review.

Depositions typically contain confidential or attorney-client-privileged material. Uploading to any third-party service — AI or human — creates a data-handling question your firm should have a policy on. VexaScribe stores files encrypted at rest in AWS eu-west-2 (London, GDPR-compliant), transfers over TLS, does not use customer data to train AI models, and lets you delete transcripts on demand. Rev, Ditto Transcripts, and specialty vendors have their own data policies. For maximum privacy, use self-hosted Whisper (open-source, runs on your own machine with no cloud transit).

Yes, via the SRT + video player workflow. VexaScribe exports SRT and VTT subtitle files with word-level timestamps from the deposition audio or video. Trial presentation tools (TrialDirector, OnCue) accept SRT for click-text-to-play-video functionality. Standard video players (VLC, QuickTime) also display SRT synced to video. VexaScribe's own dashboard has click-to-jump-to-timestamp built in.

Reasonably, with caveats. Speaker diarization (identifying "who spoke when") is accurate on 2-4 distinct voices — typically plaintiff's counsel, defense counsel, and witness. Two attorneys with similar voices on the same side may occasionally be merged into one speaker label; in those cases you rename manually in the editor. Overlapping speech (attorneys interrupting the witness, or objections mid-question) degrades accuracy. For depositions with 3+ attorneys on one side, plan on a manual pass through the transcript to correct speaker labels.

AI transcribes everything on the audio — including off-the-record discussions if they were captured on the recording. You edit those segments out manually in the transcript editor before exporting. Certified court reporters, by contrast, only transcribe what's on the record; that's a manual annotation step they handle for you. If your deposition has substantial off-the-record content, budget extra editing time for the AI workflow, or use human transcription instead.

No, and we won't pretend otherwise. Court reporters produce the certified, sworn record of the deposition. That certification is a legal requirement for filing, appellate review, and admission as trial evidence in most jurisdictions. VexaScribe is an AI transcription tool. It's genuinely useful for the prep-and-review workflow between when the deposition happens and when the certified transcript arrives. It does not certify transcripts, does not employ licensed court reporters, and should not be relied on for the official record.

Errata (corrections signed by the deponent under most rules of civil procedure — e.g., FRCP 30(e)) attach to the certified transcript, not to any AI or rough draft. Because AI transcripts aren't certified and aren't presented to the deponent for signature, they don't go through the errata process. If your workflow requires errata review, work from the certified transcript your court reporter produces.

Ballpark figures verified 2026-07-03: AI (VexaScribe Starter plan) — $2 marginal cost within your monthly minute allotment. Rev AI — $75 total, delivered in about 6-24 hours. Rev Human — $450-$600 total, 24-72 hour turnaround. Specialty legal vendors (US Legal Support, Ditto Transcripts, Magna Legal Services) — typically $3-$7 per audio minute for verbatim, so $900-$2,100 for the 5-hour deposition. Certified court reporter — $2,000-$4,000+ depending on jurisdiction, page rates ($3-$8 per page × 250-400 pages typically), and expedited surcharges. The 30-100× cost gap is why AI has become the standard for the review-and-prep tier of legal transcription workflows.