The Court Record: A Hidden Access to Justice Gap

When access to justice is the topic of conversation, it usually centers on representation, court fees, and the ability to navigate a complex system. The court record rarely comes up. But it should.

Consider a person trying to appeal a decision. They had qualified for an order waiving their appellate fees. They had navigated forms, deadlines, and procedures that are difficult to maneuver for people without legal training, and they had made it through. Then they learned that the fee waiver did not cover the cost of the transcript. To appeal, they needed the certified record of their trial. To get the certified record, they needed thousands of dollars.

So, they started making calls to family. Unloaded savings accounts that were not meant for this. Took a small personal loan. And they pulled it off, barely. And then filed an extension request. After submitting payment, they waited to find out whether the extension requested would be approved in time, because without it, the appeal would be dismissed by default. Not because the case lacked merit. Because the clock ran out before the money came together. In their own words, it was a 'Hail Mary.'

This story is not unusual. We have heard versions of it more times than we can count. It is what we come to work for and why we build what we build.

In our experience working alongside courts and the people who have spent careers on access to justice initiatives, the conversation rarely turns to the transcript. It comes up as a line item, a logistical step, a cost of doing business. It rarely comes up as what it is: the thing that determines whether an appeal is possible at all.

The Transcript

In many courts, the official record of a proceeding is now captured by audio or video recording rather than by a court reporter. However the record is captured, an appeal still requires a written transcript. The recording is the record. The transcript is what the court will read.

In most jurisdictions, appealing a court decision means obtaining a certified transcript of the trial proceedings. Transcripts are billed by the page, with rates set by statute and court rules that vary by state. A multi-day hearing can become hundreds of pages. A week-long trial can become thousands. Fee waivers for appellate filing fees are available in some states, but they frequently do not extend to transcript costs.

In most U.S. jurisdictions, the responsibility for producing the appellate record falls entirely on the party seeking review. The court does not produce it. The appellant orders it, pays for it, and waits for it. And unlike a filing fee or a court cost, there is no practical substitute. Appellate courts review the written transcript, not audio or video recordings. Attorneys cite specific pages and line numbers. Appellate judges and clerks work from the written record. The transcript is not a convenience. It is the legal mechanism through which an appeal exists at all.

The gap this creates is not incidental. It is structural.

This problem is drawing attention beyond U.S. borders. In April 2026, the United Kingdom's Ministry of Justice announced a study exploring how AI could produce court transcripts faster and at lower cost, citing that transcript fees had forced people to pay hundreds, and in some cases thousands of pounds, to access what was said in court. The government framed it as an effort to tear down what it called costly barriers to transparency.

The result is a two-tiered appellate system. Those who can afford the record get to appeal their case. Those who cannot lose by default, and what actually happened in their case never gets reviewed.

The Backlog

Cost is not the only obstacle.

Appellate deadlines are fixed. Transcript production is not. Court reporter shortages, heavy dockets, and the absence of modern workflow tools mean transcripts can take weeks or months to complete, and in jurisdictions that still rely on manual, paper-based processes, appellants often have little visibility into where their order stands or when it will be ready.

Self-represented litigants account for nearly half of all federal appellate filings, according to the U.S. Courts of Appeals Judicial Business Report 2024. For them the combination of cost and delay is often decisive. They run out of time, run out of money, or both. The appeal dies not on its merits but on logistics.

Indiana confronted this directly. In involuntary commitment cases, a person's liberty is at stake, and state law allows commitment for up to 90 days, while the appellate process took roughly 150 days. Appeals were becoming moot before a single opinion was issued. According to Indiana Court Times, a publication of the Indiana Office of Judicial Administration, the average time from notice of appeal to opinion in Marion County mental health cases was 143.3 days in 2023, with the transcript identified as the central obstacle.

The court adopted an AI-assisted approach to transcript production. As documented in both Indiana Court Times and The Docket, a publication of the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks, the average time from notice of appeal to opinion dropped to 30.85 days, a reduction of more than 78 percent.

That is not an abstraction. For a person whose liberty is subject to an involuntary commitment order, the difference between 143 days and 31 days is the difference between an appeal that is decided and one that never gets there.

The Record

We are a software vendor. We build court technology for courts and the people they serve. We say that plainly because pretending otherwise would undermine everything else in this piece.

But here is what is also true: access to justice is not a tagline for us. It is the reason the work matters and the reason we show up every day. The people affected by what this piece describes are not abstractions to us. We work inside this system and we care about what happens to them.

We do not believe technology alone closes this gap. How transcripts are ordered, produced, certified, and delivered is shaped by court rules and legislation. That is where real, lasting change happens. Courts, bar associations, legislators, and access to justice advocates are the ones with the standing to change it. We are not. But we are part of the system, and we are committed to doing our part within it.

The record has always been the foundation of appellate justice. The rules and laws that govern how it gets produced are worth examining, and where they create barriers, they are worth changing.

The record belongs to everyone it affects.