Record watch: transcription and justice in Canada and the U.S. — early October 2026
U.S. state courts get guidance on AI-assisted transcription and on what makes it an official record; in Ontario, the Court of Appeal draws the line on French when the province is on the other side.
United States: when does an AI-assisted transcript become the record?
On September 30, 2026, the National Center for State Courts announced a bulletin from its Joint Technology Committee, a partnership of the NCSC and two associations of court administrators, COSCA and NACM: AI-Assisted Transcription in Courts: Governance, Use, and Safeguards. Written for state courts weighing AI-assisted transcription, it offers guidance on assessing possible uses, setting policies and safeguards, and deciding how much human review is needed. It covers accuracy, confidentiality and a question the NCSC put at the top of its announcement: what distinguishes an AI-generated draft from the official record?
Why it matters: the question is no longer whether AI will transcribe hearings, but who reviews the transcript and who answers for it; that is exactly the line between a draft and a record.
Ontario: arguing in French, yes; imposing it on the province’s lawyers, no
On September 22, 2026, the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed the appeal of a francophone mother, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, who is suing staff of CHEO, the children’s hospital in Ottawa. She had asked that the lawyers for the Attorney General of Ontario, who had intervened, proceed exclusively in French, in writing and orally. The panel (Justices Gomery, van Rensburg and Thorburn) held that the right to require the opposing party to be represented by a bilingual lawyer exists only in prosecutions under the Provincial Offences Act. It added that in arguing for the province in civil litigation, the Attorney General’s lawyer serves a client, the province, and does not provide a service to the public within the meaning of subsection 5(1) of the French Language Services Act. The Court nonetheless found it hard to understand why none of the lawyers, one of whom was bilingual, offered to communicate with the mother in her language. ONFR reported the decision on October 1.
Why it matters: when one party argues in French and the other in English, the record is bilingual by nature, and its transcript has to follow each language as it was spoken.
What we take from it
Two stories, one requirement. In the United States, courts are looking for the line between what a machine proposes and what is authoritative; in Ontario, the Court of Appeal is a reminder that one proceeding can run in two languages. Either way, a transcript is worth what the person who checked it against the recording, and signed it, is worth.
Sources
- National Center for State Courts, announcement of the Joint Technology Committee bulletin (Sept. 30, 2026)
- NCSC, Joint Technology Committee resources: “AI-Assisted Transcription in Courts: Governance, Use, and Safeguards” (September 2026)
- The bulletin, in the NCSC digital library
- ONFR, “Les avocats du gouvernement ontarien n’ont pas l’obligation de parler français, tranche un tribunal” (Oct. 1, 2026, in French)
General information, not legal advice. Rules change and differ from one forum to the next: check the current text and what your forum requires.
A recording or a proceeding in French, English or both? Send us the proceeding, the languages and the deadline.
Submit a proceeding →