Client Meetings
If you have any doubt about your client’s ability to communicate in English you should opt for a professional interpreter. Friends, relatives, even children are usually willing to help. But an eager amateur is seldom a useful substitute for a real professional.
Deposition and Discovery
For such judicial proceedings held outside the courtroom, you should have interpreters who are qualified and accredited to work inside the courtroom. We can provide such professionals in twenty five different languages.
Review the Prosecution’s Translation
From time to time a defendant’s interrogation will be conducted through an interpreter. If that interpreter happens also to be a police officer… what more need we say?
Translate and Transcribe Wire taps and Body Wires
We have transcribed recordings in many languages and translated them into English – both for criminal defence and for civil matters. It is not an inexpensive process but, if it is done improperly, it can put words into your client’s mouth that never were there before.
Pre-translation screening
When you have a mountain of emails and other documents to sift you should do it with a expert translator beside you. She can generally tell you which documents need to be translated and which have no relevance. No need to be daunted by disclosure overload in a foreign language. In one case. our translator skimmed through a dozen banker’s boxes of disclosures, eliminated all but a dozen from further consideration (and pin-pointed the single paragraph that made our client’s case!)
Translation
When you have identified documents that justify translation, we can take care of that accurately and efficiently.
Declarations and Affidavits
Sometimes a simple Translator’s Declaration, under seal or not, is satisfactory. Other times it is necessary to prepare and execute a translator’s affidavit before a commissioner or notary. And, sometimes no formalities are required at all. We are comfortable in all such circumstances and can provide what you need.
Plea bargains and Pre-sentence reports
If your client cannot understand what he is signing or what the prosecution is saying about him, justice miscarries. Just because the accused speaks broken English, you must not assume that he is illiterate in his native language and would gain nothing from understanding the paperwork. Such documents are of supreme importance to him and may represent his last chance to affect his future.