SPANISH Services: What Role Do They Play in Legal Support?Posted by Storgaard Meyers on May 27th, 2021 As straightforward as legal cases can appear to outsiders, they often times involve unseen complexities that only attorneys and their assistants encounter, including the need for foreign language services for court trials, depositions, and attorney/client consultations. Several factors influence a law firm's dependence on translation service, such as its demographic, its geographical location, and its own area of practice. For example, a law firm in Los Angeles that specializes in immigration law would need Spanish language services a lot more than would a Midwestern lawyer focusing on estate planning. Yet, whatever a law firm's language needs, securing them from the proper place impacts the quality and option of the service. With this thought, many law firms choose to hire translation professionals through a court reporting agency instead of through a translation service. Foreign Language Services By way of a Court Reporting Agency Although a translation service would seem to be the most suitable choice for retaining translators, you can find advantages to retaining translators by way of a court reporting agency instead, three which we list below. 1. Trained Understanding of Legal Procedures Because depositions and court trials could be one shot opportunities to elicit critical information, it pays to retain a translator who's professionally trained to provide translation in a deposition and/or a court trial setting, as an untrained translator could easily talk with a witness/client in a fashion that a lawyer doesn't intend, even siding with the individual against the attorney. To ensure translators fulfill their role professionally, you need to hire them by way of a court reporting agency that scrutinizes their job experience. 2. Trained Knowledge of Specific Terminology When a case features complex terminology, it can help to have a translator that understands the terminology and will explain it fluently to a witness/client, as interruptions in the deposition/examination processes can weaken an attorney's hold on the exchange. Unlike the average translation service, many court reporting agencies specialize in supplying legal support professionals that have a firm grasp on specific bodies of terminology, such as for example medical terminology, business terminology, and financial terminology. While an improvement in native languages can create a communication barrier, so can the inability of a translator to effectively communicate this is of complex terminology. 3. Option of Additional Legal Support Assistance Unless a law firm prefers to perform its legal support services in house-a costly arrangement in today's cost savings culture-it could benefit from forming a relationship with a support agency that offers various types of legal assistance, as court reporting agencies are one of these. In Medical to offering language translation, reporting agencies also provide following services, amongst others: complex litigation support, document retrieval, document review, legal video, and court reporting.Like it? Share it! More by this author |