It came as news to me recently that the technology exists to search the spoken word in much the same way as e-discovery tools search the written word.
Bearing in mind the wide definition of “document” for the purposes of disclosure, lawyers need to consider whether voicemails and recorded messages and other forms of the spoken word should be disclosed. Basically, speech recognition companies offer a “culling” system similar to e-discovery by using search terms to pull out responsive material from audio tapes.
Increasingly, we are seeing regulatory investigations in the financial services sector where call centre tapes of recorded messages/ telephone conversations are being searched for relevant extracts.
Speech technology companies like Aurix regularly operate in this field, searching call centre tapes and it cannot be long before inquiries are made of lawyers’ voicemail servers!
The process is relatively quick too and not that expensive. For example. Aurix say that they can search 80 times faster than real time so that it takes only 1 second to search through 80 seconds of tape.
Is it now negligent for lawyers not to advise their clients to consider audio mining when involved in litigation, regulatory disputes, employment cases etc? We shall see!