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dtSearch Case Study — Sellers Legal Services

Realtime transcription software for the 21st Century

“We were looking for a 32-bit solution which would offer our clients greater speed, functionality and reliability than our competitors' 16-bit designs ... we chose dtSearch”

Sellers Legal Services has some 90 years experience in providing courtroom services in the UK. Today it combines a team of expert stenographers and fully supported specialist software to provide a complete solution. Among the litigation support software that Sellers produce is a powerful new realtime transcript analysis tool called BriefCase.

Realtime transcription simplifies and speeds up court procedure. Mental notes can be quickly transposed into on-screen notes, making hastily hand-written reminders a thing of the past. Delays caused by note-taking, poor courtroom acoustics or ambiguities in evidence are avoided. Time spent each evening searching the transcript for key passages of evidence is greatly reduced.

BriefCase enables solicitors, barristers, judges or paralegals to mark, annotate and search for text in a transcript live in court within seconds of the evidence being given. Briefcase integrates with Computer Aided Transcription (CAT) - which translates stenographers' shorthand into English - to turn realtime transcript into formatted text on screen. Uniquely, BriefCase allows users to search the text, write comments on it, print or e-mail it, without disconnecting from realtime (CAT) so that nothing is missed from the proceedings.The system is completely networkable so that text can be transmitted to any number of courtroom laptops.


“The dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine allowed us to quickly produce a very advanced product...”
"We were looking for a 32-bit solution which would offer our clients greater speed, functionality and reliability than our competitors' 16-bit designs. After comparing with other search tools on the market we chose dtSearch", said Nic Lyons, chief developer of BriefCase.

The dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine allows BriefCase to offer full-text queries both on the transcript text and the annotations which the user had added, with Boolean, phonic and fuzzy methods supported. Query 'hits' are provided along with context and position information. Users just click to open the transcript with matched words highlighted. "The dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine has allowed us to quickly produce a very advanced product, and its 32-bit design allows for greater integration with future systems", said Mr Lyons.

"Sellers is well qualified to support BriefCase, having provided CAT training for three-quarters of all UK courtroom note-takers when it was first introduced into British courts in the early '90s", noted Ray Harris, MD of ElectronArt Design Ltd., UK distributor of dtSearch since 1992.

Sellers has provided court reporting sevices for:

Stephen Lawrence Inquiry 1998
North Wales Child Abuse Inquiry 1997
Regina v Judge Gee 1998

For more information on Briefcase and other litigation support software visit www.sellers.co.uk or contact:

Sellers Legal Services
High Holborn House
52-54 High Holborn
London WC1V 6RL
Tel: +44 (0)20 7405 4512
Fax: +44 (0)20 7405 4526
info@sellers.co.uk
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