In December 2021, VIQ Solutions Inc. (“VIQ” or “VIQ Solutions”), a Canadian firm specializing in state-of-the-art recording and transcription products and services, acquired Auscript Australasia Pty Ltd (“Auscript”). VIQ took on Auscript, then one of Australia’s main transcription companies, in a bid to broaden its global footprint and bring its advanced technology to the Australian market.
But the acquisition did more than just that. It provided an excellent case study for what happens when a firm that exists to supply cutting-edge tech combines with a legacy company boasting a century’s worth of institutional memory.
As this is something of a niche industry, a little background might be useful, especially for readers located outside of Australia.
Founded in 1921, Auscript is a longstanding fixture in Australia. It was a presence beside the witness stand during the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and throughout the Second World War, entrenching itself as a reliable companion to the quiet-but-steadfast machinery of justice in Australia. As the decades passed, Auscript evolved in tandem with Australia’s justice system, transitioning from traditional stenography to advanced digital transcription and court recording technology during the onset of the information age. At the time of the VIQ deal’s closing, Auscript provided transcription services to hundreds of courtrooms located throughout all regions of the country, covering civil matters arising under Australian federal law, as well as some summary and indictable criminal matters.
It is also worth noting that while Auscript brought a century’s worth of Australian institutional experience to the table, integrating pre-existing transcription companies was not exactly new territory for VIQ Solutions in their Aussie division. Long before the Auscript acquisition, VIQ owned and operated Spark & Cannon, a well-established Australian transcription business it had held since the early 2000s. In 2020, Spark & Cannon was rebranded as VIQ Solutions, and when VIQ acquired Auscript in 2021, both these businesses still operated much as they had before. When Auscript was formally rebranded as VIQ Solutions in 2023, the focus shifted to fully integrating all Australian operations with VIQ’s global, scalable platform, a process which is now being implemented to bring the region in line with the company’s established global standards.
Importantly, Auscript’s acquisition by VIQ did not occur in a vacuum. Legal and judicial bodies the world over have been modernizing their recording and transcription capabilities, spurred on by new advances in speech recognition, workflow automation, and secure digital delivery. VIQ has further advanced this trend by integrating artificial intelligence trained on large, anonymized collections of industry-specific data sets into next-generation transcription tools, and legal organizations that don’t adopt the newest tech leave themselves open to backlogs, delays, and ballooning administrative costs.
Why is that? Well, before the advent of the microchip, AV equipment was extremely expensive, and audio and video evidence were comparatively limited. These days, police departments and law firms possess professional-grade recording equipment to document interviews, proceedings, and official statements in real time. These types of evidence are viewed as superior to handwritten or typewritten notes, as they capture testimony verbatim and preserve tone, nuance, and context, while also providing a replayable record.
Add to that the ubiquity of sophisticated recording equipment in the form of smartphones, and nearly anyone can capture recordings which can be acceptable evidence in most courtrooms (if lawfully obtained and properly authenticated, of course).
As a consequence, there is simply a lot more recorded evidence now than there ever has been before in human history, and courts and legal professionals have to deal with transcribing huge volumes of data while managing expectations for faster turnaround times and easy-to-use yet highly secure remote access.
This exponential growth in recorded legal evidence has also put a bigger spotlight on the importance of data security. Sensitive audio, video, and transcript files have to be protected against unauthorized access at every stage of the workflow, which is a tricky proposition considering how many people, systems, and handoffs can be involved with each recording. But as a global provider, VIQ operates with military-grade cybersecurity and encryption protocols built into its scalable architecture, ensuring that judicial and law-enforcement data remains secure from the moment it’s recorded all the way through to long-term storage and retrieval. This level of protection is increasingly difficult to achieve without the resources and infrastructure of an international platform.
But even though machine-based transcription has become increasingly sophisticated, industry observers are careful to note that human oversight, expertise, and intervention remain essential to the transcription process. In practice, VIQ’s approach combines technology-enabled speech-to-text and digital recording solutions to produce a highly accurate first draft, which is then reviewed and refined by trained professionals with deep knowledge of legal language, procedure, and context. This hybrid model balances speed and scalability without sacrificing the precision required in legal settings, where even seemingly small inaccuracies can ruin lives and distort justice.
Against this backdrop, VIQ’s approach in Australia has focused on alignment rather than restructuring. Instead of dismantling Auscript’s existing operations, the company has been working to bring the Australian business in line with the same operational standards, technology platforms, and quality controls used across VIQ’s other global operations, including its North American and European divisions. This includes the deployment of best-in-class workflow technology such as VIQ’s Netscribe platform, which streamlines production, improves accuracy, and accelerates turnaround times while maintaining rigorous quality assurance processes.
Importantly, this alignment does not signal a retreat from VIQ’s Australian operations’ well-established strengths. Legal transcription remains an area where accumulated experience genuinely matters. Regional dialects and accents, jurisdiction-specific practices, and legal terminology and courtroom protocol unique to Australia all require local human knowledge that cannot be farmed out to software alone, no matter how intelligent it may be. Industry analysts consistently emphasize that the most effective transcription models combine automation with skilled human editors who understand legal context. So, it’s not a matter of machine over man, but rather man working alongside machine to produce more accurate results. After all, in law, justice depends on establishing the facts, and that necessitates the highest possible accuracy in how those facts are recorded, interpreted, and entered into the official record of proceedings.
For VIQ Solutions, bringing its Australian division into closer alignment with its other global operations is about consistency and integrity of the end product. Standardized systems make it easier to maintain security, ensure quality, and respond to client needs across different jurisdictions. At the same time, VIQ’s Australian operations’ long-standing relationships and local expertise remain central to service delivery in Australia. Finding the balance between these two factors is of paramount concern for its parent company.
In this regard, the strategy that has been settled upon by VIQ is not a restructuring of its Australian operations, but a convergence of its existing core strengths with the most modern technology available. As a result, legacy expertise continues to anchor the business in Australia, while the latest in transcription tech supports its increasing efficiency and scalability. In an industry where both precision and adaptability matter a great deal, the integration of VIQ’s Australian operations into the company’s global operating model provides an example of how traditional institutions can adapt to serve a constantly changing technological landscape without losing what made them valuable in the first place.
It is a case study on which both the global legal profession and advocates of human-AI collaborative models are keeping a very close eye.
