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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-29/family-court-transcripts-viq-solutions/105904558>
"Justice is being obstructed by inaccurate court transcripts — including some
where potentially prejudicial comments by judges were missing, according to a
slew of legal practitioners interviewed by the
ABC.
The prohibitive cost of obtaining transcripts also meant some appeals were not
even being considered, lawyers warned.
There are now calls for change, including the cancellation of a lucrative
contract with the foreign company that provides the transcripts, and for the
raw audio files to be provided to litigants as a matter of course.
The
ABC spoke to nine legal practitioners for this story but four declined to
go on the record — some saying they feared that speaking out could lead to
reprisals from judges in ongoing or subsequent court cases.
Four practitioners said erroneous transcripts in cases they had worked on
affected how their cases progressed.
Some said inappropriate or biased comments from the judge were missing from the
transcript, making it impossible to lodge an appeal on those grounds.
Transcripts seen by the
ABC attributed dialogue to the wrong person, named
the wrong legal practitioners, contained an abundance of typographical errors,
and one transcript had more than two hours of proceedings missing entirely.
The court later included the missing hours of dialogue, which totalled 29
pages, after a parent in the matter raised it with the judge’s associate.
According to the parent, more than one transcript in their case contained
errors, forcing them to repeatedly raise it with the court, and ultimately,
hindering their case."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
