Many lawyers and even courts are using the outsourcing of their transcription tasks to legal transcription services as a key method to drive down costs.
Although the confidentiality of client files is always noted, and agreements often signed - these offer little protection to the legal services or their clients, if the transcription is actually being performed outside of their country.
One thing that is not often realised is that there are many transcription services that are either based entirely or partially overseas, that is outside of the country that the confidentiality agreement has been made in and is binding within.
If a company is entrusted with the transcription and that company is actually not based within the country it is not subject to any of its legal obligations or legal enforcement procedures.
When outsourcing it is essential for legal services and other similar industries that require truly confidential transcripts that the transcription service that they are using is actually based, and the worked performed within the same legal jurisdiction.
3 Ways to check the locality and jurisdiction of your legal transcription services:
Check their phone number and posting address - easy! but often missed, and excluded by services that are based across numerous countries.
Check where the website itself is hosted as well as the registration "whois" of the domain.
Ring the company and ask them where they are based and where will the work be done. The way they will deal will a real phone call will often be very revealing!