ECSC Launches Pilot Project to Prepare Electronic Transcripts of Court Proceedings

(Press release) On Friday, March 1st, 2024, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) hosted a small ceremony to advise of a pilot project being conducted with the High Court in St. Kitts & Nevis to introduce software to convert the audio recordings of court proceedings
to text while the matters are being heard in court. This new software uses Artificial
Intelligence (AI) driven technology to automatically generate a text file of the transcript of
the court proceedings.

The introduction of this software is expected to significantly reduce the time it will take for
the court to prepare and make the official transcript of the court proceedings available to
case parties after a trial is concluded. The initiative is being launched as a pilot in the
Civil Court on St. Kitts to allow the ECSC to thoroughly test and evaluate the technology
and resolve any issues that could negatively impact its efficient use.

This is a significant development for the ECSC as the efficient production of transcripts
of court proceedings has been an issue in many of the ECSC Member States and
Territories for decades. One of the consequences has been delays in scheduling matters
on appeal and access to justice for those litigants where the transcripts cannot be
prepared promptly.

The product is from the firm “FTR – For the Record”, who has been in the business of
recording court proceedings for several decades. The version of the speech-to-text
software being implemented is the “FTR Justice Cloud”, which converts voice to text and
can produce a text transcript within 10 minutes of the recording being made in the
courtroom. Once the court matter has been concluded, the text file can be forwarded to
a transcriptionist for final editing and formatting.

The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) was established in 1967 by the West
Indies Associated States Supreme Court Order No. 223 of 1967. The ECSC is a superior
court of record for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which includes
six Independent States: Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada,
St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines; and three British
Overseas Territories: Anguilla, The Virgin Islands, and Montserrat. The Court has
unlimited jurisdiction in each Member State and Territory.

To learn more about the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, please visit our website at
www.eccourts.org or call us at 758-457-3600.