Thread by @DrRJKavanagh

I once had a court reporter transcribe my having said in court as "I did" when I in fact said "I did not."

Had I not been a lawyer, I am not sure if my later representation as to what I had actually said would have been believed.

nyti.ms/2S7ekK1

So you can imagine the position our clients are in when things are inaccurately transcribed to mean the exact opposite of what they in fact said.

Most of the time we don't have the complete transcripts of hearings & trials until years later when a case is appealed & it is an appellate not the trial lawyer handling the case, so they don't have the benefit of knowing what in fact was said to even assess if it is accurate.

Now when I do have the transcripts, I will comb through them meticulously to make sure they are accurate and make sure any corrections are made.

Because I do have an accent, I am often frequently mis-transcribed, but what I say is less important than what my clients say, although if my question is wrongly transcribed, the answer can then appear wrong. And if they both get wrongly transcribed, it can be a big mess.

And this can have real and devastating consequences for our clients, who may spend years in jail because of punctuation or mis-transcription.

There is no better illustration than lawyer dog.

washingtonpost.com/news/true-crim…