This article is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 published on LTN in August.

I once had a federal judge explain to me, in detail and with great conviction, that digital recording would never be adopted as an acceptable court reporting method. His argument was simple: Digital recording was fine, but judges and lawyers needed a written record. Since getting a transcript from a recording was difficult, time-consuming, error-prone and expensive, the method would never work. I owned a successful court transcription business at the time, but that was not enough for him to reconsider his position. Interestingly, this discussion occurred in the ForTheRecord booth at a court technology conference. FTR was already the leading provider of digital court recording software with thousands of systems installed in courtrooms around the world.