Sectors We Serve
Court-experienced interpreters for hearings, police interviews and client conferences, in 300+ languages, for UK solicitors and chambers since 2013.
Prism Linguistics provides legal interpreting services across the UK: court-experienced interpreters for HMCTS hearings, police station interviews, solicitor conferences and immigration tribunals, in more than 300 languages. Certified written translation for the same matter is available alongside, so one supplier covers both the spoken and the written side.
We have been booking interpreters for UK law firms since 2013, from a head office in Warrington, drawing on a pool of more than 20,000 vetted linguists. Duncan Lewis Solicitors is among the firms we work with. Legal Aid Agency rates are accepted for eligible matters, and a quote comes back within one working hour during office hours. If you want the wider picture first, our interpreting services page covers every setting we work in.
Court work is the bulk of it. We put interpreters into Magistrates' and Crown Court lists, County Court hearings, Family Court proceedings, and First-tier and Upper Tribunal immigration and asylum work.
A hearing is not a conversation, and the register has to hold. What counsel puts to a witness gets interpreted as counsel put it, not softened, not tidied, not explained. Before the date we tell the interpreter what the hearing is, who will be speaking to whom, and whether they are interpreting consecutively for a witness or whispering for a defendant in the dock. Where the bench or your instructing solicitor wants sight of the interpreter's CV or a copy of a qualification certificate beforehand, ask and we will send it.
Listings slip and cases go part-heard, which nobody needs telling. Give us the listing time and a realistic finish and we will book to that. Court bookings usually carry a three-hour minimum, which is standard across the industry rather than a Prism rule; the ranges are set out on our pricing page.
Interviews under caution, custody suites, witness statements, going through disclosure with a client. This is a different discipline from a listed hearing, mostly because it happens at three in the morning and nobody planned for it.
Interpreters used in police settings are vetted and DBS-checked, and we will not assign anyone with a connection to the people involved. Impartiality carries more weight here than anywhere else in legal work. An interview under caution forms part of the evidence chain, and an interpreter who paraphrases has weakened it before anyone reaches court.
Telephone interpreting runs 24 hours a day, which usually covers the first call from the custody sergeant. For attendance in person, timing depends on the language and the location: common languages in the major cities are quick, and rarer ones take longer to place, which we will say up front. There is more on how we support forces on our police sector page.
Most of the work in a matter happens long before anyone reaches a courtroom. Conferences with counsel, taking instructions, reading a statement back line by line, prison visits, video-link appointments and remote hearings.
These are the appointments where a client either tells you everything or tells you nothing, so the interpreter matters as much as the questions. We match the linguist to the sensitivity of the meeting, and to the client where it makes a difference: a woman giving an account of domestic abuse may well ask for a female interpreter, and that is a reasonable request to make of us.
Which mode fits depends on the setting rather than on preference.
| Mode | Best for | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Face-to-face interpreting | Hearings, conferences with counsel, prison visits, anything long or contested | Book early for rare languages; travel affects the price |
| Telephone interpreting | Custody first contact, short client updates, anything urgent out of hours | Available 24/7, connects in minutes |
| Video interpreting | Remote hearings, video-link prison appointments, rare languages with nobody local | Test the link beforehand; sound quality decides the outcome |
Prisons and remote hearing platforms each have their own procedure for a third party joining. Tell us which prison or which platform when you book, and the interpreter gets briefed before the appointment rather than working it out at the door.
We accept Legal Aid Agency funded matters from UK solicitors at the published LAA schedule. On those bookings the minimum charges follow the LAA schedule rather than our own, which saves the conversation nobody enjoys having with a costs draftsman later.
For firms and public bodies that need it, we invoice to a purchase order, monthly or per assignment, and we are set up for the audit trail and reporting that publicly funded instruction involves. No sign-up fee, no retainer, no minimum spend. Give us the LAA reference at quote stage and the paperwork follows the process your practice already uses with other suppliers.
The same arrangements apply to the local authority and police work we take on, and to NHS trusts on framework rates. Terms and honest ranges are on the pricing page; for a specific booking, use the quote form.
Plenty of matters need both a person in the room and paper on the file. Where the written side is the job, our legal translation services page covers contracts, witness statements and evidence bundles, and legal document translation deals with single documents such as court orders and powers of attorney. Certified translations carry a signed statement of accuracy and are accepted by HM Courts & Tribunals Service, the Home Office and UKVI. What certification actually means in the UK is explained on our certified translation page.
Almost everything that reaches us from a law firm is confidential, and a fair amount of it is privileged. Every linguist is bound by a non-disclosure agreement, and we will sign your firm's own confidentiality terms instead if that is simpler for your risk team.
Handling is UK GDPR compliant. Case details go to the linguist assigned to your matter and no further: not to a wider pool, not to anyone who did not need them to do the work. An interpreter is told what they need in order to prepare, which is usually the setting, the subject and the language, and nothing beyond that.
Interpreted conversations in this sector tend to be the most private ones people ever have. An asylum account, a police statement, an admission made to a solicitor. That is worth taking seriously as a matter of routine rather than on request.
Six things firms tell us made the difference:
What we do not do is pretend. If a language is hard to place for a Tuesday listing, you will hear that on the phone rather than at 9am on the Tuesday.
Tell us the language, the date and the setting. A project manager will come back within one working hour during office hours, with a price and an honest view of what we can cover.