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”, which 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.