Transcription API for law firms and legal teams
Depositions, client calls, recorded hearings and intake interviews turned into timestamped, speaker-labelled text your team can search, quote and hand to a drafting tool — without a per-seat dictation subscription or a per-minute human service on every file.
- Step 1Deposition audio, client call, hearing recording
- Step 2POST /api/v1/transcribe · diarize + word timestamps
- Step 3Speaker-labelled transcript · SRT · DOCX · summary + quotes
- Step 4Prep memo, exhibit index, searchable matter file
From recording to business result: one POST, one poll, every output format from the same job.
Three things a legal business actually does with it
Each priced at the published rate — $8 per 1,000 minutes — about $0.48 an audio hour — as credits that never expire.
A 4-hour deposition recording goes in the moment it ends. Two hours later the associate has a speaker-labelled transcript with word-level timestamps, a summary and pulled quotes — enough to draft the prep memo before the certified transcript arrives.
Intake and update calls recorded with consent post to the API automatically. The transcript and a summary land in the matter folder, so the file has a record of what was said without anyone typing a note.
Years of hearing and arbitration recordings sit on a drive nobody opens. Run the archive once through the batch connector and every recording becomes text you can search across matters.
What you can rely on — and what we are not
Whipscribe produces working transcripts for preparation and review. It is not a certified court reporter and its output is not the official record. Use it to draft faster; order the certified copy for filing.
30 days on free, 365 on paid, and any file can be deleted on demand from its page. Nothing is used to train a model.
Transcription runs on our own GPUs. Audio is never forwarded to OpenAI or any third-party model — usually the first question a client will ask.
The whole integration
Two calls. No SDK to learn, no model to host, no GPU to rent.
# submit — returns a job id immediately curl -X POST https://whipscribe.com/api/v1/transcribe/url \ -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" \ -H "Idempotency-Key: legal-$RECORDING_ID" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"url":"https://example.com/recording.mp3","diarize":true,"word_timestamps":true}' → 202 {"job_id":"a1b2…","status":"queued"} # poll, then collect — every format from the one job curl "https://whipscribe.com/api/v1/jobs/$JOB" -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" curl "https://whipscribe.com/api/v1/jobs/$JOB/result?format=docx" -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" curl "https://whipscribe.com/api/v1/jobs/$JOB/insights" -H "X-API-Key: $KEY" # summary · quotes · topics
Wire it into what you already use
What it replaces or sits beside
Vendors legal teams compare us with — each has a side-by-side page.
Try it on a real recording before you build anything
Drop a file from your own business. First transcript free at any length, no card — that is how to check accuracy on your audio before writing code.
Questions legal teams ask
Is a Whipscribe transcript admissible in court?
No. It is a working transcript for preparation, not a certified record. Certified transcripts come from a licensed court reporter; use Whipscribe to start drafting while you wait for one.
Can we transcribe a recording with several speakers?
Yes — enable diarize at submit time and each speaker is labelled. Give it a name map afterwards and the transcript reads as counsel, witness, examiner.
What about privilege and confidentiality?
Audio is processed on GPUs we own, never sent to a third-party model, never used for training, and deleted on demand. You keep the retention decision; we do not make it for you.
What does transcription cost for a legal business?
$8 per 1,000 minutes — about $0.48 an audio hour — as credits that never expire. First transcript free at any length. There are no seats and no monthly minimum: a 3-hour recording is about $1.44, two hundred half-hour calls about $48, a thousand-hour archive about $480 once.
Is there a free tier on the API?
No. The API has no free tier — a key needs a positive balance ($50 minimum, spendable on transcription). The free part is the web app: your first transcript there is free at any length, which is how to check accuracy on your own audio before paying anything.
How do we get an API key?
Self-serve: sign in, add credit, create the key at /apis/keys. No email, no sales call. Up to 10 active keys per account; rotate and revoke yourself.
How do results come back?
Submit, store the job id, poll GET /api/v1/jobs/{id} until done, then pull txt, json, srt, vtt or docx from the same job. Self-serve keys collect by polling; signed webhooks are an Enterprise feature.
Where is our audio processed?
On GPUs we own, in a private, secured cloud. It is never forwarded to OpenAI or any third-party model, and never used for training.
How long is audio kept?
30 days on the free plan, 365 on paid, and any file can be deleted on demand from its page. Wire deletion into your own retention rule if you need it automatic.
Does it label who is speaking?
Yes, when you enable diarize at submit time. Each speaker change is labelled; map the labels to names in your own code once.
What languages does it handle?
99+ languages, auto-detected, or set explicitly. Set it when you know it — auto-detect on a short or noisy clip is the most common cause of a wrong-language transcript.
Can we automate it with tools we already use?
Yes — Zapier, Make, n8n, Airtable, Drive, Dropbox, S3, Zoom, Slack, Notion. Each integration page carries the platform's real step timeout and the submit-then-poll shape that survives it.
What about very long or very large recordings?
Files go up to several GB and are submitted whole, so timestamps stay coherent — nothing is chunked. Hand us a URL and let us fetch it rather than streaming it through a no-code platform.
Do we get a summary as well as the transcript?
Yes. GET /api/v1/jobs/{id}/insights returns a summary, key quotes, topics and speakers for the same job, at no extra charge.
Can we try it before building anything?
Yes — the widget on this page. Drop a real recording from your business; the first transcript is free at any length, no card, and you will know whether the accuracy is there before writing a line of code.
Demand behind this page — GSC 90d: 'deposition services transcription', 'attorney dictation service', 'ftr court recording', 'us legal support' — 49 queries, 153 impressions, position 44.7, 0 clicks. The demand is for prep work, and the pages that exist target the consumer app.