Tell The FTC How Mergers Have Harmed Competition in Court Reporting Today!

As sent to me by a valued court reporter. Let me know if you want your name here!

I am preserving my public comment below. You can comment here, I believe. My comment tracking number is lzh-8ij7-4wuf. Feel free to comment yours!

“In the court reporting industry several large companies, including the biggest player, Veritext, have been buying up smaller firms at an alarming rate. The result is chaos. Consumers don’t know if they’re buying from a Veritext company or not. “Independent contractors” don’t know if they’re working for a Veritext company or not. Small businesses don’t know if they’re networking with a Veritext company or not. Repeat that for the four or five national companies, and you have a complex network of companies where it can be hard to find quality service at an affordable price.

The problems with this are well-documented. Companies like Veritext add outrageous charges to consumers’ bills in the hopes that they won’t dispute it. Where a court reporter might be sourced for $4.00 per page or thereabout, a final bill to a client might be worth the equivalent of $37 per page.

Worse yet, these companies are all able to openly work together without any interference from law enforcement. Several large companies, including Veritext, U.S. Legal Support, and Stenograph, got together under the fraud nonprofit, the Speech-to-Text Institute, to propagandize the market and make the stenographer shortage seem larger than it actually was. Using their subsidiaries and purchasing power, they systematically deleted information that consumers would’ve found helpful and promulgated information that was misleading at best. This was documented on my blog Stenonymous, and reported to the FTC and NYS Attorney General, but the situation is apparently too small for law enforcement to care about, since the industry is only $3 billion annually. The Speech-to-Text Institute, after being called out for fraud, was sued and shut down its website. It has yet to defend itself in court and has defaulted. Succinctly, called out for their illegal conduct by a hobbyist blog, they’re in full retreat and will never answer for the misinformation they spread.

But this has grave impacts on consumers, workers, jobseekers, and students. These companies are able to work together to box out anyone that disagrees with their egregious behavior using their market power. Consumers are paying higher prices than ever. Workers live in fear that they will be blacklisted. Jobseekers are left not knowing what path to take in terms of acquiring court reporting work. Students are sinking money into promising stenographic education while the companies work together to create an influx of workers and systematically reduce rates/wages.

Worse yet, there is a rampant misclassification problem in the business. These businesses could not exist without their “independent contractor” court reporters, and yet still somehow they are able to get away with not withholding taxes as required by law.

This has also impacted buyers of court reporting businesses. In a conversation with one businessman, I was told that the overvaluation of court reporting businesses due to the purchasing strategies of the so-called “big box” corporations left it impossible to buy into the business. So again, people are boxed out of competition by inflated values.

Even supposed bastions of ethical conduct in court reporting such as the National Court Reporters Association are terrified to speak out against the illegal conduct occurring in our field. Given the collapse of the STTI and its propaganda network, it would be easy pickings for the organization to capitalize on its mission of promoting lawful and proper professional ethics, as stated in its bylaws. It instead has pointed toward potential legal liability as the reason for its “deafening silence.”

Again, it cannot be understated how consumers, jobseekers, workers and small businesses have been failed by law enforcement. The conduct of these corporations has undoubtedly steered investors away from investing in stenographic education and caused massive disruptions to the hiring practices of courts, who have long trusted stenographers, stenographic education, and stenographic services.

It’s with sincere optimism that I comment and make a plea for law enforcement to come up with something to address smaller industries. This impacts the lives of at least 30,000 workers and innumerable consumer law firms, courts, etc. Veritext parent company Leonard Green was allowed to loot hospitals for poor people. Do not let that happen to the legal records in the United States.”