As told to me by a valued Stenonymous reader:
“Hi, Christopher. [REDACTED]. I was a decades-long practicing [REDACTED] court reporter, and [REDACTED]. I edited my own work, so I was well aware of my good days and bad days. I started scoping/editing full time for reporters in around [REDACTED]. I am still scoping/ editing for reporters from all over the US — [REDACTED]. I have to say I am extremely disappointed and dismayed at the lack of qualifications I have experienced from the majority of these reporters. I find they are dropping an extraordinary amount of text, at times 15-20% and I am typing in the missing text for the reporters. This is not a one-off or occasional occurrence. I only bring this up to you because of the threat this industry is facing re AI, digital recorders, big box corporations, etc. I don’t know if this is a subject you (gingerly) would consider addressing in your Stenonymous articles – which I thoroughly enjoy, by the way. You are a driving force in the fight to save this industry. I do not expect a response from you. I am asking that you please keep this writing anonymous and confidential.”
I have to say that I have been a voice for quality in our field since before Stenonymous’s time. We used to have this weird mannerism in the profession where we had to pretend we were all perfect and never made mistakes. That may seem like a foreign concept to students of this day and age, whose mentors seem more willing to say everyone makes mistakes. It was never true that we didn’t. Being in New York City, I saw firsthand the degradation of skill in the stenographic reporter. By the time I came into the field, audio had become ubiquitous and many were reliant on it to the point where they couldn’t pass the civil service test that the state eliminated a few months ago. And worse, people pretended, and encouraged others to pretend, that the audio was not in use.
As best I can tell, this was under pressure from agencies, who were under pressure from high-strung clients. The Introverted Lawyer, Heidi Kristin Brown, once spoke to a crowd of court reporters about the nastiness she’d experienced in the legal field. I’ve met that nastiness too. So I understand the wilting nature of the court reporter and its agencies. Without each other to hold us up, it is easy for outside influences to cause us to feel less than — and it is easy for the people holding the wallet to screw any individual “person” out of a day’s pay. That’s understandably scary.
But I never ran from the digital problem or the misinformation campaign spread by the corps. I can’t run from ours either. This is not the first scopist to mention this to me. Probably won’t be the last.
I’ve been on jobs where using the audio as a crutch would’ve made the transcripts unusable.
I’ve been on jobs where the audio was a must because I was physically prevented from interrupting (think public meetings).
I’ve been on jobs where I used audio as a crutch.
I’ve been on jobs where I’ve been ordered not to use audio even where others factually do.
I hired a scopist once who called my writing “labyrinthian.” Haven’t hired one since.
I understand, more than anyone (hyperbole), the importance of the use of the tool, where appropriate.
But if you’re at the point where you’re dropping a fifth of the testimony in your stenographic note taking, it’s time to identify and correct that issue. And might I suggest that the issue is likely that you never learned to “control a room” because you used audio as a crutch. And that’s okay. It’s what you do with the future that counts. Making mistakes in our line of work is a much smaller problem than taking no action to correct them.
Those “button pushers” we denigrate? Some of them are better. Think about the ones that are honest about who they are and what they do. What do we have on them? Isn’t that what all this is about? Speaking out against corporate dishonesty and corner cutting because the transcript is important? I know some of them have told me they were trained to lie, obfuscate, or even provide fake names (cough, cough, Naegeli rumor, cough, worst court reporting company in the country?) But for the ones that are honest and feed us info, aren’t they “on our side?”
Maybe I’m kidding myself.
Maybe everybody’s afraid of the truth?
After all, you don’t think people in positions of power have heard my allegations? I sent them directly to a judge quoted in an article about us once. You think he wrote back?
People so afraid of looking foolish they’d rather promote a comfortable lie or ignore a terrible wrong than look at a situation with the analytical nuance that they do any day-to-day issue or case. It’s not their job. Why care? And the people whose job it is? They can make up excuses ad infinitum why they can’t care right now without consequence or accountability. This is why my publishing strategy is to get louder and louder until they all look like assholes for ignoring it. I don’t see another way forward. Doesn’t anyone else get it? Being nice to people that deny the truth got us where we are.
Reader, in a world of evil apes and ostriches, be a lion.
Or a sheepdog.
P.S.
Anyone actually good at fundraising/P.R./sales? Maybe we can make a deal and split donations. It’s a gamble. I can go months with minimal funding or make $1,000 in a day. It’s not like the money isn’t there to turn this into a small media operation. It just needs to be redirected a little bit. My real-life friends are too busy to help, so I leave it up to my readership.
Having our marriage ceremony soon. It’ll probably get pretty quiet on here for a while. Thanks for putting up with my double-post days these last few weeks. Have a wonderful weekend.
Ever eager to be a platform for your…
Addendum:
Toward the end of March 29th, Erin Blair made a comment that I asked to share with my audience. They are a respected member of the field, so I’m happy to share their views with my audience.
We also had a brief discussion where I tried to explain I don’t mean to victim blame and believe the issue is nuanced.
Learning how to control a room… with only 40 apprentice hours, when attorneys will fire you for interrupting them (yes, they do!), when they ignore you anyway, when you ask them over and over and still no change, yes, the audio will get it (or maybe it won’t). We’re not held to 100% standard; it’s 97.5 or less depending on where. I used to hear stories about court reporters throwing shoes at attorneys if they don’t behave. Reporters used to be respected. Now attorneys look at us like we’re a bother.
I agree with pretty much all of what you’re saying and tried to nod to some of that on the article.
But, you know, it still varies. Some attorneys respect us as people. Some see us as the potted plant that’s only necessary because there might be a trial someday.
They’re all mostly watching us get replaced anyway, so there’s no more incentive to be kind about the behavior of the disgusting ones.
There’s no more incentive to not be a bother. Or at least what little incentive there is, is drying up fast.
Personal development such as improving your knowledge of communication and learning how to inspire your performance will resolve many of the problems court reporters have been complaining about for decades. I have written about, and presented on, these topics for years. Those who have studied my methods and implemented them are enjoying happy and productive careers. A few have chosen to be public about their experience with Outfluence. I coach my court reporting colleagues at a professional courtesy fee of only $25 per hour. The best professionals in the world work with coaches. – Al Betz, outfluence.com
You’re one of the good ones, Al.
Take him up on it, readers!
When things were really slow for me in 2021, I scoped a lot for reporters all over the country. I’m sad to say I agree with this a lot. I took jobs from a scoping agency and I lost count how many times I had to tell them “please don’t give me that reporter’s work again” because it was too much work to fill in all the drops. It was painful
But I also agree with anonymous above where there are a lot of attorneys that forbid you to interrupt, which makes it really hard for newer reporters to control the record. Also, I always encourage new reporters to scope their own work for as long as possible and maybe a lot of new reporters are rushing in to getting a Scopist when they’re not ready.
I definitely know the fear of interrupting when you’ve been ordered not to.
I am the enemy, so I’ll get that out of the way right away. I didn’t know I was a year ago, but I accept that my presence here is not a welcome one. But feel the need to give you the other side.
I scope for an agency that is in a few states and does both digital and steno. About 2/3 digi and 1/3 steno. I can say working with steno is a mixed bag. A lot of disparity between skill sets. But as a scopist, steno jobs are usually a nightmare. They are paraphrased. Attorneys wants are changing the things radically. They are asking for synced videos. They are asking for audios and transcripts together. Some attorneys are asking for 4 different kinds of media created from one simple insurance depo. How do you sync a paraphrased transcript to a video? I spent 25 years in printing and left because of digital, so I get it. Believe me. Xerox turned an artform into a 10.00 an hour, McJob. I left.
I feel reporting is going through this same transformation. It is driven by the demands of the clients.
That said, text-to-speech AI is not there yet. M**S***** and similar software is court reporting’s version of bitcoin. It won’t be ready for a while. Working in an AI job is comical. They are rolling this out in an unfinished state. So, I do share that beef with you. The attorneys are not aware of the inefficiency of this new tech and the litany of problems that may occur when its used.
Flame away. My skin is thick. I still appreciate what you do. I could not do it on my best day.
You are not the enemy. You are welcomed here any time. You bring a welcomed perspective. You are welcomed to contact me. I cannot understate the importance of us having these discussions.
I will not take the time to refute point by point, as we very well may just have different experiences and both of our experiences may be true. But from my experience, it was the lawyers that wanted it paraphrased, and it became court reporter convention. That can be untaught just as easily as it was drilled into us.
It would be trivial — trivial — to design systems where we could do all the things you’re talking about. It was never communicated to us that these changes were wanted or warranted.
My honest belief is that the companies are all mature companies looking to sell off. They couldn’t sell stenographer so they used buzzwords like digital and AI. At this point the money being poured on digital is self-reinforcing.
I have to spend time with my family today. Looking forward to more comments from you.
I’m totally confused by the assertion that some proceedings are not verbatim but, rather, paraphrased. What does that even mean? Having been both a court reporter and a CART writer, I understand that paraphrasing is sometimes necessary in a CART setting. But in a legal proceeding??? Where is this practice happening?
From my personal experience, agencies in New York were training new reporters to take out false starts, strike thats, and withdrawns. Literally adding more work to the plate and reducing the amount of money we’d be paid by reducing the line.
I spoke out against it as best I could.
And I also wrote about it in an article several years ago.
This is also one of the dangers of going digital. They are going to tell the digitals and transcribers how to do their job rather than there being an independent ethics culture, and that will lead to it being easier for court transcripts to be edited, because it’ll all largely be in the control of corporations that have proven they will break the law to make a buck.
I’m happy to expound.
New York courts are different. That’s as verbatim as possible. But the deposition game definitely got edited from its verbatim form. It was a question of how much was acceptable, with people like me saying “not too much.”
https://stenonymous.com/2021/05/10/literal-v-readable-a-primer-on-transcribing-what-we-hear/