Personal injury transcription

One claim file, years of recordings

A personal injury matter is built in conversations, and months later all of them have to be pulled into a demand letter by someone who heard none of them.

The first call with a new client. The recorded statement an adjuster asks for in week two. The treating provider who explains, on a recorded call, why the injury will need surgery. The defense medical exam. Three or four depositions. Each one is an account of the case in the words of the person who lived it.

Why the file gets reconstructed

The information is not missing. It lives in audio, which can only be reviewed at the speed it was recorded, so details get rebuilt from notes, and notes drift. Sonix turns every recording into searchable text the day it is created, so the file builds a written record alongside the case instead of a backlog of unheard audio.

Where this page fits

This page covers personal injury practice broadly: premises liability, slip and fall, dog bites, product liability, workplace and construction injuries, trucking, and wrongful death. Two corners of PI have recording patterns distinct enough to get their own pages. If your docket is mostly crash cases built on dashcam video, 911 audio, and adjuster calls, see transcription for auto accident lawyers. If your cases turn on physician and expert testimony, see transcription for medical malpractice lawyers. Everything below applies to both.

Intake calls that stay exact for the life of the case

The intake call is the most complete account the client will ever give, and it is also the call most likely to be summarized in three lines by whoever picked up.

It happens closest to the injury, before memories settle into a rehearsed version, and it usually includes the details that matter later: where they were standing, what they felt, who they told, what the property owner or the other driver said at the scene.

Transcribing intake changes that. Record the call with the client's consent, as your jurisdiction's recording laws require, and upload it to Sonix. In minutes the firm has a timestamped transcript with the intake specialist and the client labeled separately, and it lives in the matter folder where the attorney, paralegal, and case manager can all read it.

That transcript earns its keep months later. When someone asks when the client first mentioned neck pain, the answer is a search, not a memory. When a case transfers to a new paralegal, the new person reads every client call instead of inheriting a notes field. Follow-up calls about treatment, bills, and settlement authority join the same searchable file.

Recorded statements, lined up against every later account

The value of a statement is almost always in comparing it with something else: the police report, a later deposition, or another witness who saw something else.

Insurers take recorded statements from claimants; firms take them from clients and witnesses. Sonix turns each statement into a speaker-labeled transcript with a timestamp on every line, and your staff can rename speakers and merge duplicate labels. Multi-file search then runs across every statement in the file at once. Search for the stairs, the wet floor, the missing sign, or a time of day, and every mention across every witness comes back with a link to the exact moment in the audio.

Statements taken by the other side matter too. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(3)(C), a person may request their own previous statement about the action, including a recording or a transcription of it, without the showing ordinarily required for work product. State rules vary, so confirm the rule in your forum. When a statement your client gave an adjuster comes back as an audio file, Sonix makes it readable and searchable the same day.

A statement transcript is a review tool, not the statement itself. The recording remains the source, and anyone quoting a witness in a demand or a motion should click the line and hear it first.

Depositions you can outline while the testimony is fresh

The certified record from the court reporter is the official transcript, and the outline for the next deposition is often due before it arrives.

Where a deposition is also audio or video recorded, which FRCP 30(b)(3) permits when the noticing party states the method, Sonix gives your team a working transcript in minutes. Upload the media that evening, and by morning the attorney has a timestamped, speaker-labeled draft to mark up and pull excerpts from. Files process in parallel, so a multi-day schedule comes back as a set.

That draft is a preparation tool. The certified record and the procedures around it, including the deponent's right under FRCP 30(e) to review and sign and the rules governing use of depositions at trial under FRCP 32, still run through your court reporter. Sonix does not replace a certified reporter.

For teams on Sonix Legal Enterprise, AI deposition summaries surface key points, themes, and timelines from each transcript, with every point tied back to the timestamped record so your team checks it before it shapes strategy.

Medical-provider interviews and IMEs, compared line by line

Damages are proven through medicine, and much of it is spoken before it is written: a treating physician on a recorded call, a therapist walking through functional limits, a defense exam.

Under FRCP 35, a court may order a physical or mental examination of a party whose condition is in controversy, and the examined party may request the examiner's written report. States have their own versions, and whether an exam may be recorded, and by whom, varies by jurisdiction. When a recording exists, a transcript lets your team set what was actually asked and answered next to what the report says, line by line.

Medical audio is dense with terminology: drug names, procedures, anatomy, and provider names that a general-purpose transcript will misspell. Sonix Legal Pro includes a custom legal dictionary, so your firm can add the terms and names that recur in its cases. Paralegals then verify the transcript in the in-browser editor, clicking any word to hear the exact moment and correcting what the AI misheard before anyone relies on it.

Recordings that touch treatment and diagnoses carry health information. Sonix signs a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement on Enterprise plans. Whether your firm's handling of a given recording calls for one is a question for your compliance counsel; disclosures of health information in litigation are governed by rules such as 45 CFR 164.512(e) and by state law.

Build the demand letter from the record, not from memory

A demand built on the claimant's, witness's, and provider's own words, each traceable to a recording, is harder to dismiss than one built on paraphrase.

With the whole claim transcribed, demand prep becomes assembly. Search for the liability facts: the hazard, the missing warning, the admission in a recorded statement. Search for the injury narrative: the first mention of each symptom at intake, the provider's explanation of causation, the client's daily limits at deposition. Each result carries its speaker and timestamp, and exports to DOCX or PDF drop the quotes into the draft without retyping.

The same timestamped record feeds the case chronology many firms attach to the demand: date of incident, first treatment, each provider visit, each statement. Sonix supplies the dated, timestamped material; your team assembles the timeline so every entry traces back to a moment in the audio. The case chronologies page covers how teams build one.

What goes into a demand is an attorney's judgment, and settlement communications are generally governed by FRE 408 and state counterparts. Check every quotation against the recording, which stays the evidence under rules like FRE 1002.

Transcription priced for a contingency practice

Plaintiff firms front case costs, so per-page transcription gets rationed: the big depositions get transcribed, and the intake calls and statements stay as audio.

Sonix bills by the audio hour instead. Pay as you go is $10 per audio hour with no subscription required, and the cost is known before anyone presses upload, so firms transcribe every recording instead of the loudest ones.

For firms with steady volume, Sonix Legal Pro is $880 per year, billed annually, with 480 hours per year of transcription and translation, one user, and additional seats at $275 per year. Sonix Legal Enterprise adds volume pricing, deposition summaries, redaction, SSO, full audit logs, and custom BAA terms for multi-attorney practices. Plan details are on the Sonix Legal pricing page. Firms rolling Sonix out across several practice groups can start on the law firms page, and the full legal toolkit starts at Sonix for legal.

Clients who tell their story in Spanish, or any other language

A Spanish-language intake call or witness statement belongs in the same searchable file as everything else in the claim.

Sonix transcribes and translates in 54+ languages. It transcribes the source language first, then translates, so a bilingual paralegal can verify the original words before anyone relies on the English. Accuracy depends on audio quality and the language pair. Details are on the audio and video translation page.

Machine translation is a case-prep tool, not a certified translation. Where a proceeding requires a certified translation or a qualified interpreter, that process still applies; Sonix handles the review work that comes before it.

Security for files full of medical and personal information

A PI claim file holds diagnoses, treatment histories, dates of birth, and claim numbers, and your IT team can verify every control Sonix runs before the firm uploads a file.

Servers are located within enterprise-grade AWS hosting facilities with 24/7/365 monitoring, on-site security staff, and regular security audits, on top of the controls in the grid above. When excerpts leave the firm, in a demand package, a mediation binder, or a production, Sonix Legal Enterprise includes PII redaction and manual transcript and audio redaction: marked words become [REDACTED] and the matching audio is silenced in every export and share, while timecodes stay intact. The full detail is on the Sonix security overview; for firm-specific requirements, security questionnaires, or BAA terms, talk to legal sales.