Importing Transcripts

Do you have deposition transcripts from different court reporters and want to make them searchable, summarized and stored under one roof? Parrot has you covered! Our platform allows you to import transcripts of depositions, even those not conducted by Parrot's court reporting services.

Such functionality proves invaluable in instances where opposing counsel has arranged a deposition with their own court reporter, or under other circumstances where Parrot's court reporting services were not utilized. Our clients can benefit from Parrot's advanced functionalities including powerful search capabilities and comprehensive deposition summaries even in these situations.

Another common use case – more likely than not you possess an extensive collection of old transcripts. How to easily review previous depositions of an (expert) witness when prepping for a next deposition with them? Our platform is ideally tailored for such needs. It enables the creation of a comprehensive database of all your past depositions, all searchable and summarized, helping you efficiently review and analyze relevant past testimonies, aiding in effective case preparation.

Here's how to utilize the feature:

To utilize this feature, adherence to specific guidelines is required to ensure the transcripts are compatible with Parrot's platform.

These include:

1. File format: Transcripts should be provided in a PDF or .TXT format, also commonly referred to as "ASCII" by court reporters.
2. Formatting requirements: To facilitate successful importation, transcripts must conform to certain formatting criteria, which align with industry standards:
   • Page numbers must be integer-based (e.g. Page 1, 1, 0001) and can be positioned in the header or footer. They may be right-justified, with a prefix like “p”, “p.”, “Page”, “PAGE”, or left-justified in a ‘page:line’ format (e.g. 002:01) or in ‘page’ format with zero padding, where the page is represented with at least 4 digits (e.g. 0001 or 0022).
   • Line numbers are mandatory for all spoken segments of the transcript, with at least one whitespace character separating each line number from the text.
   • The transcript must clearly delineate Question and Answer (Q/A) pairs for all spoken portions, with the Q and A labels distinctly separated from the transcript text by multiple spaces, a colon, or a dot.
   • No timestamps should be included in the margins.
   • Deponent, Court Reporter or any other information (e.g. ABC Court Reporters (800) 555-1212) should not appear in the header or footer of each page.

NOTE: We recommend only importing original .TXT files. .TXT documents that are converted from a PDF will usually result in an error. 

Upon meeting these requirements, clients can easily import their TXT/ASCII transcripts into Parrot's platform through a simple drag-and-drop action. This streamlined process enhances the accessibility and utility of your deposition transcripts, augmenting the efficiency of your legal practice.