By RealLegal and LLC of RealLegal, LLC
DENVER (May 22, 2006) - the market leader in technology to standardize, secure, and transmit electronic transcripts, today announced that the electronic signatures component of its flagship product family, E-TranscriptT, has been adopted by 250 reporting agencies and 2,000 individual court reporters nationwide. These customers use RealLegal E-Transcript SignaturesT to certify the accuracy and authenticity of legal transcripts, to seal them with a verifiable timestamp and author identification, and to prevent tampering and forgeries.
"Court reporters have adopted electronic signatures much sooner than expected. That is a clear indicator of court reporting professionals' dedication to protecting the integrity of their work product, to following new guidelines and mandates, and to providing their clients with an enhanced product," said Jason Primuth, General Manager for RealLegal. "E-Transcript Signatures give attorneys and their staff a new level confidence when working with transcripts."
Attorneys receiving digitally-signed transcripts have the absolute assurance that the page and line integrity is maintained with any printed versions of the transcript. If an electronically-signed document has been altered in any way, the end customer will be clearly notified. In addition, law firms never need to conduct the time-consuming process of ensuring that the paper transcript matches the electronic copy which they receive from their court reporter.
RealLegal is the only software company to provide signature technology specifically for the legal industry. Whether stored in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) System, RealLegal Exemplaris Official Transcript Repository, or any other transcript and case archive, transcripts sealed with an E-Transcript Signature will always be protected from unintentional corruption as well as malicious misuse. Unlike public key encryption services, or PKI systems, which may expire or become compromised, RealLegal E-Transcript Signatures incorporate digital time-stamping and a third party Certification Authority to forever verify the transcript came from a trusted source.
"Identity theft and the vulnerability of any electronic information are real issues in the Banking, Finance, and Insurance industries. It is only a matter of time before sensitive legal information - like that contained in transcripts - falls prey to hackers," stated Hamilton Temple, Director of Business Development for Surety, the makers of the AbsoluteProofT technology within E-Transcript Signatures. "With electronic evidence now admissible in courts of law, and with the growing dependence on e-filing, court reporters need the ability to irrefutably prove that the electronic records turned over to the court have never been altered throughout their chain of custody."
"I refer to E-Transcript Signatures as 'the watermark of distinction'. Since they guarantee transcript authenticity and security, they are a great way to make any transcript more professional," said Michael Hayes-Rivet of Video Courtroom.com, one of several reporting professionals to share their opinions of E-Transcript Signatures.
RealLegal applications such as Reporter EditionT and E-Transcript Signatures have been created to enable all court reporters of all types to fulfill their obligation to only affix their signature to transcripts when they can ensure the security and veracity of the transcript. RealLegal E-Transcript Signatures have been demonstrated to be an entirely valid replacement of the traditional practice of physically signing a paper-based transcript certification page. The digital signature that is applied to the transcript follows the Committee on Professional Ethics recommendations in Public Advisory Opinion 40 that reporters ensure the security of the information entrusted to them by the parties and would assure compliance with provision 4 of NCRA's Code of Ethics. The signatures and notarization are in accordance with the Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 186.
To emphasize the importance of digital signatures, RealLegal has included Unlimited E-Transcript Electronic Signatures and Unlimited installations of Reporter Edition software as part of the new Unlimited subscription plans. For more information about, this call 1.888.584.9988 to subscribe, or visit www.reallegal.com/unlimited for details.