Requesting Audio

Superior Courts located in Washington State

There is a $25.00 charge per CD (holds up to about two days of trial) as well as an overall handling/administrative fee of $15.00. Where allowed, you will receive a copy of this audio. If a case is sealed, you MUST request and order audio yourself.

Bankruptcy Court

Generally, there are no extra charges for us requesting audio from the court for a particular hearing. Where allowed, you will receive a copy of this audio.

Everywhere Else

There may or may not be charges associated with requesting audio on your behalf and you will be apprised of them before your transcript order goes forward. Where allowed, you will receive a copy of this audio.

Approved Jurisdictions

Non-Bankruptcy Court:

• 12th Judicial Circuit of Florida
• Appellate Services Division, Oregon Judicial Department
• Benton County, WA
• Franklin County, WA
• Klickitat County, WA
• King County, WA
• Kitsap County, WA
• Snohomish County, WA
• Spokane County, WA
• Walla Walla, Washington
• Whitman County, WA
• Yakima County, WA
• U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois
• U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa
• U.S. District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania
• U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington

Some districts, such as Seattle Municipal Court, do not require a provider to be on an approved list, so this list is not exhaustive.

Bankruptcy Court

Here are the U.S. Bankruptcy Court districts in which AQC is approved to complete transcripts:

• Northern District of Alabama
• Southern District of Alabama
• Eastern District of Arkansas
• Western District of Arkansas
• Eastern District of California
• Southern District of California
• District of Colorado
• District of Connecticut
• District of Hawaii
• Central District of Illinois
• Southern District of Illinois
• Northern District of Indiana
• Northern District of Iowa
• District of Kansas
• Eastern District of Kentucky
• Western District of Louisiana
• Middle District of Louisiana
• District of Minnesota
• Southern District of Mississippi
• District of Nebraska
• District of New Mexico
• Northern District of New York
• Middle District of North Carolina
• District of North Dakota
• District of Oregon
• Eastern District of Pennsylvania
• District of Rhode Island
• District of South Dakota
• District of Vermont
• Western District of Washington
• Eastern District of Washington
• Northern District of West Virginia
• Western District of Wisconsin
• Eastern District of Wisconsin

About AQC

About A Quo Co.

A Quo Co., previously known as Washington Rapid Transcription Service, is a Seattle-based transcription company that specializes in legal transcription and court transcription. All our transcribers are AAERT certified and based in the United States.

All of our transcripts are proofed to audio. AQC transcribers do extensive research where possible and necessary for spellings and the like to provide you with an accurate transcript. We provide hyperlinked tables of contents and headers, tables of authority at the end of court proceedings where applicable, indexes upon request, and a range of services included in our rate. We provide hyperlinked case citations and rule citations via Google Scholar and .gov websites where possible. You can check out what's included in our rate here.

We are court-approved in jurisdictions in Florida, Oregon, and Washington as well as over 30 bankruptcy court districts and we continue to add to them on a regular basis. You can see the full list of courts where we are approved here for court transcription.

We thank you for your continued business. A Quo Co. strives to stay ahead of technology to provide you with outstanding service.

The owner, Erica L. Ingram, is a Microsoft Office Master, notary public in the state of Washington, and a member of AAERT, the American Association of Electronic Reporters & Transcribers, as a certified electronic court reporter and transcriber. A Quo Co., founded in 2009, is proudly a woman-owned small business and a certified corporate member of AAERT.

Why should you care if your transcriber is AAERT-certified?

AAERT, the American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers, established in 1995, is an industry association that certifies electronic reporters and transcribers after they pass a test and requires recertification every three years. AAERT trains their members on best practices in the industry.

Using an AAERT-certified transcriber means you know you are getting a certain level of quality and AQC is committed to providing only AAERT-certified transcribers. This certification is recognized by many, many courts and businesses throughout the United States and Canada, including the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, bankruptcy courts, and is a requirement in King County, Washington in order to be on their court-approved transcriber list (or as an alternative to AAERT certification, licensed court reporter).

About Erica L. Ingram

Erica's profiles

My name's Erica L. Ingram and I've lived in Seattle since July 2000. I love hockey, law, English, video games, cooking, and coding. I am a Microsoft Office Master, notary public in the State of Washington, and an AAERT-certified electronic reporter & transcriber. I have 15 years of experience in the court reporting and transcription industry and over a decade of direct court transcription experience. I can make Microsoft Word sing.

Here at A Quo Co., we're doing things nobody else is doing. We hyperlink authority and provide tables of authority where applicable at the end of transcripts for free. We also deliver transcripts via e-mail for free. We provide low rates. We frequently and regularly answer most e-mails received in off-hours within a couple of hours. We provide services others don't for free like condensed transcripts, word indexes, hyperlinked authorities as well as hyperlinked headings and headers throughout each transcript.

Why do I do this?

I am a big believer in efficiency and know legal costs happen usually when people can least afford it. Legal costs affect everyone in different ways. Being able to hyperlink authority makes it much more accessible to the general public reading these transcripts as well as saves courts and attorneys time (money) from not having to stop to look it up themselves or hand it off to staff to look up all the citations in the transcript. Couple minutes here, couple minutes there, it really adds up quicker than one might think. It also puts arguments in a certain context in the moment.

I've used my Microsoft Office Master certification and learned visual basic to develop efficiencies in our workflow here that allow us to offer all these services at our low rates. I wrote an Access database with an extensive amount of VBA code that generates many documents/paperwork I need for my work as well as helps manage our workflow here in terms of what we can and can't accept within certain deadlines, because meeting our commitment to you is so important. The database is completely offline. It does things like produce condensed versions and word indexes, insert TC entries, some hyperlinks, and TA entries in the transcript, and many, many other tasks, which means more value and savings for you.

Terms of Service:

By ordering a transcript, you agree to the following terms. If you do not agree, do not order. Click to jump down to that section.

Ordering Audio:

In some jurisdictions, there is a fee for ordering audio and, by ordering from this website, you agree to fees charged and/or listed here for ordering audio on your behalf in said jurisdictions.

Requesting audio from the court may or may not incur charges of $25 per CD and a $15 handling/administrative fee. Requesting audio from bankruptcy courts generally incurs no fee. There may or may not be charges elsewhere.

Refunds and Cancellations:

You may cancel at any time. In the event of a cancellation, refunds will be given for any work uncompleted at the time of cancellation. Payment for any work completed at the time of cancellation is still due and owing and you will not receive a refund for work already completed at time of cancellation. No refunds are given otherwise for any reason.

Upon completion of the transcript, you will be refunded any balance due back to you via the method you paid or the balance remaining will be due to us upon completion if applicable. If any refund is due back to you, it will happen within 72 hours of you receiving your transcript electronically, although usually within minutes of transcript delivery.

Turnaround Times:

Transcript turnaround times do not begin until both audio and payment have been received or arranged with AQC.

Information required for any transcript and not provided at time of order may delay your turnaround time further.

ALL jobs with a 24-hour turnaround or less are accepted on a case-by-case basis.

Deposit:

You will be charged a deposit in the amount of the cost estimate of your audio and as calculated by the "Instant Quote & Deposit Estimate" unless otherwise applied for and arranged for with our business credit terms, which businesses may apply for here. Orders from government agencies may not be required to put down a deposit.

A statement of arrangements and signed order of indigency are required for us to bill the Office of Public Defense and we can do so upon request with the required documentation. Oregon Judicial Department appellate transcripts are charged at a separate rate and you should inquire directly with us to get a price quote. Overnight/same-day turnarounds are accepted on a case-by-case basis. There are generally 45 pages per audio hour.

Format:

All hyperlinks in transcripts link to either .gov websites where possible, Google Scholar, or, rarely, another very easily identifiable publicly accessed website.

The base rate does not include transcript format customization. In court transcripts, it is dictated by rules and regulations for that court's jurisdiction. For non-court transcripts, we can provide custom formats for your transcript upon request at an extra charge. Otherwise, transcript format is entirely at our discretion. Generally, this includes a cover page in a format selected by AQC, one-inch page margins, 12-point Courier font, and 25 numbered lines per page. We will include a table of contents at our discretion when appropriate. Two speakers is Q/A format; three or more has identified speakers where at all possible. If you do not provide speaker names, we may or may not be able to identify speakers depending on audio context.

Transcripts will come notarized and certified to according to the jurisdiction's rules and regulations. We can notarize and certify to any transcript we complete upon request, but any transcript we notarize and/or certify to will not be editable by you and it will be locked for editing only. If you desire an editable transcript, we will not be able to notarize or certify to it. However, all AQC transcripts are searchable, viewable, and printable.

Minimum Order:

There is a $50 minimum order charge.

Rates:

Non-Court Transcription:

Court Transcription:

Click to jump back up to that section.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between transcription and stenography?

This is just a general explainer. Some states have different rules/processes to avoid problems listed here, and this is not intended to go into that much detail.

The biggest difference is mainly the method in which the record is taken. With stenography, a person comes in with a stenography machine, like you might see in the movies, who has been trained in stenography for 18 to 24 months, and takes the record down. They may possibly have a single microphone at their table in the courtroom as a back-up record, purchased by the stenographer. All equipment is purchased and maintained by the stenographer.

The stenographer keeps the record made and there is generally no back-up stored with the court. If something happens to the stenographer or the record they took, there's no other record or third party from which to obtain a transcript of the proceedings.

If you don't schedule a stenographer to come to your proceedings, then there will be no record of it. Further, most but not every stenographer records audio as a back-up, so what the stenographer says happened is what happened and there isn't as much of an opportunity to question the accuracy of the transcript as there is with the second method I'm about to describe. Generally speaking, you will not be allowed to buy or purchase a copy of the stenographer's notes or audio they recorded themselves because it is their work product.

If you want a copy, you have to buy the full transcript. Frequently, these stenographers sometimes will be 'tied' to or work for a particular judge and receive some of their salary from the state. Stenographers will frequently charge an appearance, a flat fee, just for showing up, not including the charge for the transcript itself.

With transcription, the process is a little bit different. With transcription, the record is electronically recorded by a court monitor or clerk who is paid usually an hourly rate by the court to monitor audio-recorded proceedings, note speakers, take down appearances, and things like this in something called reporter's notes or a reporter's log.

The courts who use this method record all proceedings that happen in their court, regardless if they need a transcript of it or not, and keep the log or notes as well as the audio, have their own storage process. The court purchases and maintains all recording equipment. There are usually, in any given courtroom, four microphones around the courtroom; one for each of the witness, judge, and two counsel tables. The audio will have four corresponding channels, each of which you can isolate to hear what they're saying.

Then, if the transcript is necessary, someone, such as a party appealing, can order a transcript of it from a transcriber, usually from a list of transcribers approved by that particular court. In some jurisdictions, the audio has to be transmitted directly from the court to the transcriber; in others, it doesn't. Once a party orders, then the transcriber will transcribe the proceedings.

The transcriber only purchases and maintains equipment they need to transcribe, which is usually just a regular computer and keyboard, although you can see how these two methods can overlap in some ways. For example, a stenographer can hook up their steno machine to a computer and transcribe audio recorded via the second method. Unlike the stenographer, the transcriber receives all their income from transcript orders only and this is part of the overall cost savings of a transcriber as opposed to a stenographer. A stenographer can do the job of a transcriber, but for the reasons described here, a transcriber cannot do the job of a stenographer, since their roles are slightly different.

In addition, there is a huge shortage of stenographers nationwide, so courts have been somewhat forced by circumstances to adopt the second method. Places that have a strong stenographer lobby (CA, TX, others) tend to shy as much as they can from adopting the second method.

Now, AQC wants to be clear. We're transcribers. This has been written from that point of view. There are a lot of upsides to transcribing, such as the ability to infinitely listen to a proceeding over and over. It's also usually cheaper because there is a greater incentive to be competitive, as there is no monopoly on who holds the official audio/notes/log record with the second method. You can review the proceedings via audio before you order a transcript with the second method, and when you go back and review audio of a given proceeding, you can hear the participants' own voices and are not relying on someone else's characterization of it.

But much like the rest of technology, electronic recording is only as good as its input, so there are also plenty of downsides to electronic recording if the people in the courtroom aren't carefully monitoring, such as using one mic or people speaking softly while walking away from their mic, that stenographers won't have a problem with since they're physically there. The second method requires people to be involved in the process to make a good audio record for transcription and for the most part does not involve only machines and no humans. Here's a judge's post on a self-published blog where he talks about electronic recording versus stenographers. There are lots of pro- and against-comments from both attorneys' and judges' perspectives posted there.

Both methods require the person maintaining the record, the steno or the monitor, to speak up when they aren't hearing things they need to hear. Both charge a per-page rate. Some charge for snail mail delivery, e-mail delivery, indexes, ASCIIs, condensed versions, and some don't.

Security

Your security and privacy are very important to us. As part of our overall privacy practices, we take steps to safeguard customer information. We restrict access to your personal information and account information to only those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to guard your confidential and personal information.