Its been years since I touched transcription professionally, but my memory is that they started off as a mechanical turk operation. Lawyers usually would purch

Its been years since I touched transcription professionally, but my memory is that they started off as a mechanical turk operation. Lawyers usually would purchase transcription devices, and then either they would have a pool of transcribers (i remember installing foot pedals for forward/back playback operation) or pay a subscription to the manufacturer for mysterious likely offshore people to transcribe for them. People have a hard time letting go of revenue, but I am betting most of the same people are still in business and want to pied piper consumers of transcription services to the same business model that now costs them pennies instead of wages.