Legal Transcription for Public Defenders and Small Firms

Public defenders and small firms can use Juris Compiler AI to turn recorded discovery, statements, and hearings into speaker-labeled, searchable transcripts. It costs $0.75 per minute of audio or video, so a 2-hour interrogation video is $90, with no subscription and no monthly minimum. Each transcript also gets a case summary, Ask the Record, and a contradiction finder to help you decide where to listen first.

It is a working transcript for your review, not a certified transcript, and it does not take the place of a court reporter.

More recordings than hours

A single case can arrive with hours of interrogation video, body camera footage, jail calls, 911 audio, and earlier hearings. Someone has to know what is in it, and in a public defender office or a small firm, that person is often already carrying a full caseload. The budget rarely covers sending every file out. A searchable transcript does not replace listening. It helps you decide which minutes deserve it.

What you can upload

Juris Compiler takes audio or video files, including MP3, MP4, M4A, WAV, MOV, WebM, and MKV. For video, the audio is transcribed. In practice that means recorded interviews and interrogations, phone and jail calls, body camera and dash camera video, hearing recordings, and client or witness statements. Plan around a few limits:

• English only. There is no language setting, and other languages are not supported. If part of a recording is in another language, such as an interpreted interview, plan to handle those passages another way.
• Poor audio means more flagged lines. Distant microphones, people talking over each other, and compressed phone lines tend to produce more low-confidence lines. Every line shows a color-coded confidence score, and the weakest lines get an extra marker.
• Speakers are labeled A, B, C. The engine separates voices but does not know who anyone is. You assign the names.
• Names and slang need checking. The vocabulary boost is a fixed list of legal terms, and you cannot add your own.

What it costs, and how to budget a case

The price is $0.75 per minute of audio or video, billed per file and rounded up to the whole minute, with a 1-minute minimum. Length is measured from the file itself, silence included, so a long video with a short conversation is billed for its full running time.

You pay for each upload when you make it, so you can start with the recordings most likely to matter and add others later. The exact amount appears on Stripe's checkout page before you confirm. The pricing page shows the rate, the rounding, and a cost calculator.

If you sign up with Google or Facebook, your first 30 minutes are free, with no credit card. A transcript processed entirely on free minutes can be reviewed in full but cannot be exported as a PDF or SRT. Starting free lets you try the workflow on a short recording you are cleared to share with an outside vendor.

A triage workflow for a stack of recordings

Here is one way to work through a batch:

1. Upload in batches. Add up to 10 files in one upload and one checkout. They process one at a time, in order, and there is no guaranteed turnaround time.
2. File each record under a matter. A matter holds the matter name, case number, and court. The matter view pulls together every record's legal issues, key parties, and contradiction findings, and lets you search testimony across every completed record in it.
3. Read the case summary. Each transcript gets a plain-English summary, the legal issues, key parties, possible actions, and a risk rating. It is framed under US federal law, and you can regenerate it and choose one state or all states for state-law context. It is a starting point for your own reading, not legal analysis.
4. Ask the Record. Ask plain-English questions about one transcript, such as whether anyone mentioned a warrant. Answers are grounded in the transcript, but they can be incomplete or wrong, and they are not saved. Check them against the text and note what you want to keep.
5. Run the contradiction finder. It flags statements in tension within one transcript as potential impeachment material for your review. It does not compare one recording against another.
6. Search, then go to the source. Search within a transcript highlights every match, and every line is timestamped. The app has no audio or video player, so keep the discovery copy you were given and check key passages against it at the noted time.

The demo shows a fictional deposition in the real product interface, with no account needed. For review and correction step by step, see how to transcribe a deposition recording.

Before you upload discovery to any vendor

Recorded discovery often comes with conditions. A protective order, a discovery agreement, or office policy may limit who can see the material, which vendors can handle it, or where it can be stored. Juris Compiler cannot tell you what yours allow.

How your recordings and transcripts are handled

These are the points to compare against those terms:

• Files upload straight from your browser to encrypted storage through a signed link that expires after one hour.
• The transcription provider receives the recording. The analysis features send the transcript text, not the audio, through that provider's language-model gateway.
• The uploaded recording is deleted from our storage once the transcript is produced. Transcripts stay in your account until you delete them.
• Every record belongs to one account, and the server checks ownership on every read and write, so records are not shared between colleagues' accounts.
• Deleting a transcript does not ask the transcription provider to delete its copy, which follows that provider's own terms.
• Juris Compiler AI claims no SOC 2, HIPAA, CJIS, or other compliance certification.

The security page lists each subprocessor and what it receives, which can help with that review. If you have questions about security or retention, you can talk to a human before you upload anything.

What it does not do

Transcription and analysis are fully automated, and no person reviews a transcript before you do. It is not certified, so if a case is appealed, it cannot stand in for the certified transcript of a hearing or trial.

In a federal appeal, for example, Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) 10(b)(1) has the appellant order from the reporter a transcript of the parts it considers necessary, or file a certificate that none will be ordered. State rules differ, so check your court's rules, local rules, and any standing order. Our guide on when you need a court reporter also covers what a working transcript of a recording is good for.

• Timestamps, not page:line. The PDF shows numbered lines with timestamps, not 25-line pages with page:line numbering.
• Redaction has limits. It masks detected identifiers in the on-screen view and the PDF only, it can miss things, and there is no redacted audio.