For The Record Acquired By Tyler Technologies for $212 Million. What’s Next?

A cherished friend let me in on an article posted by JackimWoods & Co. it’s made its rounds on Facebook so I don’t expect it’ll be completely surprising to many of you. Let me go on record and say I respect Rich Jackim and the article, but I’d like to do a little bit of commentary on this one.

Right at the top, it’s written, “this transaction marks a decisive shift toward institutional-scale investment in AI-powered court reporting technology, signaling the beginning of a structural transformation that will fundamentally reshape the court reporting and legal support services sector within the next three to five years.” He’s not wrong that this is significant, but let’s not forget that For The Record was one of the companies represented on the Speech-to-Text Institute’s board. Rather than defend the organization or its fraudulent statements, For The Record and all the others let it collapse and flounder in the court case it was named in. And it was only three years ago that a For The Record transcript was called a deficit product in a high-profile case. I’ll just note generally, you have to see the guy has financial interests in the consolidation of the industry, so read it from that point of view.

But the fact remains that if big money is spending this much money consolidating the industry, that means they’ll be using their money to steer it a certain way. They have been using their money to steer it a certain way. That certain way is reducing the number of stenographer positions or pushing us into the role of transcribers, unseen, unheard, quietly correcting and/or certifying the AI’s work behind the scenes for a fraction of what we make today and a whole lot less autonomy.

Let me be really clear: You cannot skill your way out of this. This is economic warfare. This is us spending the next 10 years playing musical chairs while the big money collectively deletes stenographer seats one by one unless we start making moves. Moves like unionization. Our field has always thrived on a kind of survivorship bias. We watch this happen, it’s probably Armageddon. But at least the people who still have jobs at that point will be able to say “I made it.”

I’ll note also that people have been talking about the Veritext CEU webinar last night. Finally Veritext came out and said it, “digital is equal, we get 3,000 applicants a month and we accept 2% of those.” This is what I heard. Do I know the truth? No. Veritext habitually lies and abuses the trust of reporters. Do I blame Andrea Wecker, their current front person? Nope. She’s probably made the same exact calculation, and wants to be able to say “I made it.”

I’m exploring some ideas as to what to do about it all. I’m AI-powered too these days, so we’ve got a shot (joke).