AI transcription for prosecutors

More recorded hours than hours to review them

Played in real time, an hour of audio costs an hour of staff time, and a single felony case can now arrive with dozens of recorded hours.

One defendant can generate bodycam footage from four responding officers, two recorded interviews, an hour of interrogation video, and weeks of jail calls. Multiply that by an active caseload, and the recorded discovery in one attorney's files outruns the hours anyone has to hear it.

Why offices end up rationing review

There is no fast way to listen, so offices respond the only way they can: they triage, review the recordings that look important, and hope nothing material sits in the files nobody opened. Outsourced transcription at per-page rates forces the same rationing, because a few key recordings get transcribed and the rest get a skim or nothing.

The staffing side of the equation is fixed

Public offices do not add attorneys and paralegals because body-worn cameras rolled out countywide or because the jail started recording every call. The same trial team that once handled a case built on a police report and two witness statements now handles one built on forty hours of recordings, on the same budget and the same calendar.

Transcription turns listening into reading

A transcript of an hour-long recording can be scanned in minutes, skimmed for names and admissions, and searched for an exact phrase. Sonix returns timestamped, speaker-labeled transcripts in minutes, and multi-file search runs one query across every recording in the case at once: a name, an address, a date, or a phrase. Every hit links back to the exact moment in the audio or video, so verification is one click, not another full listen.

Every recording readable before charging decisions close

That is the practical standard: every recording in the case file readable, searchable, and checkable before charging decisions close and before trial prep begins. What your office must disclose, and when, stays entirely in your hands; searchable text simply makes the material easier to find, review, and produce on time.

Jail call review at scale

Jail calls are the highest-volume recordings most offices touch: facilities record nearly every call, and a single defendant can log hundreds.

Somewhere in that stack may sit an admission, a witness-tampering attempt, or nothing at all, and listening straight through is not a plan. With Sonix, staff batch-upload an entire export of calls and the files process in parallel, so a week of calls can come back as text in minutes.

Triage by search, not by listening

Scan transcripts for names, phone numbers, nicknames, and phrases instead of listening call by call. Speaker labels separate the two sides of each call so staff can name them once, and every line carries a timestamp, so a paralegal can jump from a flagged sentence to that exact second of audio to confirm what was said.

The triage pattern most offices settle into

The pattern is simple, and it gives every call in the export a documented pass:

1. Transcribe the full export the day it arrives.
2. Run the case's standing searches across the batch: victim and witness names, the defendant's known contacts, addresses, and case-specific terms.
3. Flag the calls with hits, skim their transcripts, and queue only those for a close listen.
4. Note a documented pass for every call with no hits instead of letting it go silently unreviewed.

Call audio is hard, so verify what matters

Compressed phone lines, background noise, crosstalk, and slang all lower machine accuracy, which is why Sonix transcripts work as triage and review drafts, not as a substitute for hearing the call. The transcript tells your team which calls deserve a close listen, and your team verifies the ones that matter against the recording itself. The full workflow, including translation of foreign-language calls, is on the jail call analysis page.

From evidence review to the chronology your team owns

The AI transcript organizes the evidence, and your staff verifies any line that matters against the recording before it goes into a charging memo, a motion, or a timeline.

Evidence review

Upload the recorded portion of a production (bodycam audio, interviews, interrogation video, and 911 calls) and review it as text. Search every recording at once, anchor the moments that matter to timestamps, and leave the recordings themselves untouched as the source of truth. The full workflow is on the evidence review page.

Case chronologies

Timestamped transcripts are raw material for a timeline. Search every recording for dates, times, and events, pull each statement with its timecode and speaker, and your team assembles a chronology in which every entry traces back to the moment it was said. When an entry is challenged, you cite the recording and the timestamp, not a reviewer's recollection. Read how teams build case chronologies from their recordings.

Trial prep: pull the quote and keep the timecode

Trial preparation runs on exact words, and every line of a Sonix transcript keeps the timecode that shows where it came from.

Attorneys and paralegals search a case file for the statement they remember, confirm it against the audio in one click, and copy the line with its timestamp and speaker label into an examination outline or an exhibit list. Highlight a passage and Sonix turns that moment into a shareable clip.

Impeachment prep from prior statements

Put a witness's recorded statement next to what the witness said later. Because every line is timestamped, the comparison points to specific moments, and playing the clip in the courtroom starts from the transcript rather than from scrubbing through an hour of video at counsel table.

Grand jury and hearing prep

Search the file for the subject matter of each witness's expected testimony, pull the timestamped passages, and draft the examination outline from statements you can check in one click. When a quote has to be word for word, including false starts and filler words, verbatim transcription keeps them in the transcript.

Sharing built for how your office works

Role-based permissions give attorneys, paralegals, and victim advocates access to the cases they work, and a password-protected link shares a transcript read-only without handing over the account. Export DOCX or PDF for working documents, or SRT and VTT when the text has to follow video playback in the courtroom.

What goes into a disclosure packet, and when it goes out, remains your office's call. When something needs masking before it goes out, built-in redaction on Sonix Legal Enterprise replaces the marked words with [REDACTED] and silences the matching audio in the shared file.

Foreign-language evidence becomes reviewable text

Before translation, foreign-language recordings are the hardest to triage, because someone who speaks the language has to listen to every minute.

Most offices do not have that person to spare. Sonix transcribes 54+ languages, from Spanish to Vietnamese, and translates the transcripts so English-speaking staff can read a foreign-language call and decide whether it matters to the case.

Treat machine translation as what it is: a review tool. It is fast enough to triage a stack of calls and route the relevant ones onward, but it is not a certified translation, and courtroom use of translated or interpreted material runs through certified interpreters and translators under your court's rules. Sonix gets your office to the handful of recordings worth certifying, faster.

Security your county IT team can verify before rollout

Public offices answer to county IT, state policy, and defense scrutiny, so every control here describes how Sonix runs today and can be checked during a procurement review.

Hosted at AWS in the USA

All data is stored at AWS in the USA, in enterprise-grade hosting facilities with around-the-clock monitoring, on-site security staff, and regular security audits. Independent security firms also run annual network and application penetration tests.

Administration and audit logs on Enterprise plans

Enterprise plans add centralized administration for the whole office: single sign-on, organization-wide policies, data retention controls, and audit logs that record every action in the account, each with a timestamp and the user who took it.

Bring your office's checklist to legal sales

Compliance requirements, procurement security questionnaires, data-handling policies, and retention schedules differ from one office to the next. Send yours to our legal sales team to walk through each item with your IT staff before rollout, and read the Sonix security overview for the full stack.