Questions, answered.

You get the audio — and a player that wastes your afternoon. The official transcript can take months, sometimes years, while the appeal clock runs. Today most attorneys either scrub hours of DAR audio by hand to find one exchange, drop the recording into a generic voice-to-text tool that can't tell the judge from the respondent, or skip review altogether. Emeriti gives you a searchable, speaker-attributed transcript you can work from now, with every line linked to the exact moment in the audio. The attorney who already holds that starts the briefing window with a draft in progress; the one who doesn't starts it with hours of audio.

It's our working transcript of the hearing, prepared from the court's digital audio recording using AI-assisted processing with attorney-designed quality controls. It is not an official transcript and is not certified — it exists so you can work from the record before the official transcript arrives. Think of it as our best, careful estimate of what the official transcript will say, ready in days instead of months.

Emeriti Solutions was built by former immigration judges — including a former Assistant Chief Immigration Judge — people who oversaw how hearings are conducted, how they're recorded, and how the record is supposed to read. After years on the bench, and since then handling BIA appeals and consulting with fellow immigration attorneys at Emeriti Law, we kept hitting the same wall: there was no good way to turn a digital audio recording into a transcript you could actually work from and trust. So we built one for our own practice. Over six months it changed how we prepare appeals, reconstruct what happened across multiple master-calendar sessions, and get the granular, moment-by-moment review you need to spot weaknesses and due-process issues in a record. It worked well enough that we're now offering it to the wider immigration bar.

It's the heart of the product. Read the transcript like any document; when a passage matters, click the line and the audio plays from that exact second. Reading and verifying are one click apart. That's what turns a draft you'd be nervous about into a tool you can build a case and a brief on — because confirming the record is instant, not an expedition. As far as we know, no other DAR transcription gives you that.

You export it from EOIR yourself, then upload it to your Emeriti portal. From the ECAS CASE Portal (or the Respondent Access Portal):

1. Log in to ECAS with your authorized credentials.
2. Search the A-Number and open View Case.
3. Click Export DAR, check the hearing date(s) you need, and click Export Audio.
4. EOIR downloads a .zip file; extract it to get the recording (it's multi-channel — EOIR's own RCPlayer is what separates, e.g., the interpreter from the judge).
5. Upload those DAR files to Emeriti, and we take it from there.

Access to DARs is restricted to authorized representatives with a Notice of Appearance on file (or pro se respondents), so you're only ever working with records you're entitled to — we have no special access to EOIR's system and don't pull records on your behalf, and the official Record of Proceedings stays with the court. If the DAR isn't in your portal, you may need a request to the immigration court or a FOIA request. EOIR's official walkthrough is available on the EOIR website.

On formats: we process the native multi-channel DAR files from the EOIR export — that's what lets us transcribe each speaker's channel cleanly. We don't currently process MP3 files, though we may add that in the future.

Yes — and how you cite depends on the forum, because that's what determines whether an official transcript exists.

In a merits appeal to the BIA, the Board prepares an official transcript after the appeal is filed, and EOIR practice is to cite testimony by transcript page (e.g., "Tr. at 42"). There, your Anticipated Transcript is a head start: you draft and locate the passage now, then drop in the official page cite — and verify it against the audio — once the transcript arrives.

Where EOIR doesn't prepare a transcript — bond proceedings and bond appeals, motions to reopen or reconsider, interlocutory appeals, and briefings before the Immigration Judge — there's no official paginated transcript to cite. In those settings, practitioners work from the hearing's digital audio recording, and citing by time mark is how you point to what was said. This is exactly where click-to-hear earns its keep: you pinpoint and verify the moment, and so can the adjudicator.

Either way, the discipline is the same: the official transcript remains the official record where one exists, and you should verify any passage against the audio before you file or rely on it. For example, citing a statement a respondent made a year ago, before a different immigration judge now hearing the case — our timestamp takes you straight to it; confirm the exact language against the DAR before it goes in a filing.

Yes. Search the transcript, select, and paste straight into a motion or brief — then verify the quoted language against the audio before filing.

Yes — and unlike EOIR's DAR player, speeding up doesn't raise the pitch. Play at 1.25×, 1.5×, or 2× and voices stay natural and clear, so fast review is genuinely comfortable instead of a chipmunk chorus.

Wherever you work — laptop, tablet, or phone. Open a hearing to read it and play any line straight from the live audio link. You can also download a Word and a PDF copy to keep and share. One note: the Word and PDF files don't carry the click-to-play links — those live in your online portal, where verification is one tap.

We don't lead with a percentage, because the honest answer is better than one: you never have to take our word for it. Every line carries a timestamp — click it and hear that exact moment. Verification is one tap, not a re-listen. No transcript produced from courtroom audio is perfect — there's cross-talk, interpretation, background noise, and passages no one could make out — so the real question isn't "is it flawless," it's "can you trust what you rely on." Here, for the passages that matter, you confirm them yourself in seconds instead of scrubbing two hours of audio.

It's an estimate of how much of the hearing was interpreted — measured against the legal standard, which is full and complete interpretation of the entire proceeding (a standard that can be waived). It is not a judgment about the content or accuracy of the interpretation. What it does is flag places in the record that appear not to have been interpreted for the respondent. Where substantive portions may have gone uninterpreted, that can raise a due-process question — a potential avenue for further review, remand, or reopening. We surface the flag; you decide whether it warrants investigation.

Flag it. When you mark a line, that flag triggers human review on our end — we re-examine it against the audio, incorporate the correction, and provide an updated draft. The transcript stays read-only; your flags drive the corrections.

It's a fair question — and security and privacy aren't features we bolted on; they're the first principles the system was built on. Three things matter:

"AI" is doing less exotic work here than the word suggests. Turning speech into text is mature, everyday technology — running a recording through our service is no different in kind from transcribing it on your own machine. The genuinely new part is AI-assisted speaker attribution: working out who said what across overlapping voices, interpreters, and channels. That's the hard, valuable part; it's been generally reliable in our own practice, and — like any AI judgment — it can be wrong. Which is exactly why every line links to the audio: you confirm anything that matters in one click.

Security and privacy by design. Your hearings are processed and stored in a dedicated, U.S.-based environment on enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure (Amazon Web Services) — isolated per firm, encrypted in transit and at rest, and gated by enforced two-factor authentication. The AI that handles speaker attribution runs on an enterprise account (Anthropic's Claude, within AWS) that is contractually barred from training on your content; we never sell or share it. It's the same caliber of trusted, secure infrastructure behind the legal-software vendors you already rely on — built for confidentiality from the ground up.

The same footing as the tools you already trust. Representative ABA and state ethics authorities generally recognize that lawyers may use cloud and AI-assisted vendors to handle confidential client information when reasonable care is exercised — the posture attorneys already apply to platforms like Clio, NetDocuments, or Microsoft 365. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Access is by invitation, and security is enforced, not optional. Every account requires two-factor authentication, passwords meet a strong policy, and your session is private to your account and your firm's case library. Today you sign in with email and password plus a one-time code from any standard authenticator app — Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator, 1Password, Authy, Duo. Chances are you already use one; whatever you have works as-is, nothing new to install. You can trust a device to skip repeat prompts. Coming next with our branded auth.emeriti.ai sign-in: passkeys (Face ID, Touch ID, Windows Hello) and one-time codes by email.

No. Emeriti Solutions, LLC is a separate company from Emeriti Law PLLC. It's a technology and litigation-support vendor — not a law firm, it does not provide legal advice, and it does not provide court-reporting or transcript-certification services. Using Emeriti creates no attorney-client relationship with either entity. You remain the attorney of record, responsible for your representation and how you use the deliverables. We built the tool as lawyers; we offer it to you as a vendor.

Our subscription plan, DAR Review, includes 30 hearings per month, with your case library shared firm-wide — every attorney works from the same record, indexed by A-Number and hearing date. Prefer a single matter? Single Case covers one A-Number (up to 5 hearings) one-time, with 90-day access. Higher volume? We'll build a custom plan — email [email protected].

Additional hearings on any plan are $15 each. Higher volume? Enterprise plans are priced to your caseload — [email protected]. Full details on the pricing section and in our Terms.

Why it's worth it — three reasons, in the order attorneys usually ask:

• It's higher quality — and verifiable. Every line is timestamped and click-to-play against the actual courtroom audio, and uncertain speaker attributions are flagged rather than guessed. You never have to trust the transcript; you can verify it, line by line, in one click.
• It costs far less than human transcription. A certified human transcript of a multi-hour hearing typically runs several hundred dollars — and a full case can involve several hearings. Here an entire case, up to 5 hearings, is $79. Your first case is free.
• It's much faster. Human transcription of a long hearing typically takes a week or more; the official transcript can take months or years. Your Anticipated Transcript is measured in hours — you work from the record while the hearing is still fresh.

Reconciliation is included with a DAR Review subscription. Today we perform it as a concierge service on a reasonable-efforts timeline: when the official transcript arrives, send it to us and you get a divergence report showing exactly what differs from the Anticipated Transcript you've been working from, with your saved timestamps converted to official page-and-line cites. In-portal automation of this step is on the roadmap.

We refine the system continuously. Coming soon: a keyword index — the key names, terms, and topics in the record, each linked to where it's said — the official-transcript reconciliation report, and timestamp-to-page-number conversion. Have a feature or workflow you'd like to see? Tell us — email [email protected]. Some of the best things we've built started as a practitioner's suggestion.

Your first case is free — up to 5 hearings under one A-number. Get started or email [email protected]. Emeriti is offered only to licensed attorneys and law firms — a litigation-support tool, not legal advice, and not a court-reporting or certification service.