Jackie Mentecky: It’s Deception. It’s A Bait and Switch…

(CDA stands for Christopher Day Annotation in this text.)

“We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment lawyer.”

Cheri Marks speaks to FL stenographer Jackie Mentecky

ME: Where are you from and are you currently working as a stenographer? And how did you get started in that field?

JM: I’m originally from England, but I grew up in the states, I lived in Pittsburgh for a long time. I moved down to Florida 28 years ago, and I’ve been reporting for since 1998. My entire career has been in Florida.

ME: How has the work been going recently? And can you tell me about when and how you started working with the reporters in Florida?

JM: I’ve always worked for the big boxes, but it was more recently I started asking myself, ‘what’s going on with our career?’ And I started nose diving and down rabbit holes, pulling up lawsuits, pulling up billing. And it was when I saw the writing on the wall that I decided to open my own agency.

ME: Could you give me some examples of things you were finding, what the bad practices entailed? I’m also curious where you seek out news, sources and information about abuses in the field of stenography. Is there good communication within the field?

JM: I can tell you this. Going into a job, attorneys were very vocal in asking, ‘why is my bill so high? What is going on?” And I would talk to my girlfriends, and again– more and more attorneys are complaining about their invoices. I’m like, ‘sir, I haven’t seen a bill since 2006. I don’t know what they’re billing you’.

We never got a copy of the bill. We never knew what they were billing. Attorneys, law firms, whatever it was, everything was kept in the dark, hush hush. Nothing. Nothing. We used to get copies of the bills that went out to the law firms–

ME: The bills were coming from who?

JM: The big boxes. So we used to get copies of the bills when they invoiced their clients, but then they stopped. Looking back, that’s kind of when things started going south.

Everything was hidden behind a back door, don’t ask questions, you know? And it was very, you could sense it. You knew it. You would bring it up once in a while, but, God, you were so busy! You just kept working, right? We were busy. You knew something wasn’t right, but you think, well, I’m still making good money, so leave it alone.

ME: Don’t make waves.

JM: And then you’d forget about it, until somebody else would bring it up..

JM: About six years ago, my son started having really bad seizures. And I stopped going out on live jobs, so I was working from home. I was working for a big box, already either appearing by phone or transcribing audios, before it was even cool.

So the first year of COVID I ended up going back to one of the big boxes because Zoom was now popular. It was a lot easier for me to go back to being a stenographer that was doing hearings and trials and depositions. We were having, oh, gosh, two, three jobs a day during COVID when people finally learned how to use Zoom, and we were slammed. Like, even if you tried to get a day off, they were blowing up our phones:

“Open job”, “do this”, “we need that”, “we need help”, “help. I understand you’re off tomorrow, but can you please take this job?”

I mean, we were slammed. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t so slammed anymore.

But attorneys were like, oh, my God. We’re still on backlog, we’re busy, busy, busy, busy. We gotta go to trial. And the court stenographers were saying, ‘what’s going on?’ Our two jobs a day are now, if we’re lucky we got two or three a week.

So, what is going on?

Covid was the perfect opportunity for these firms to do this to us, because we weren’t in the office together. We weren’t seeing each other all the time. Everybody was working by zoom now. So this was their big chance to cry ‘shortage’ and hire digitals, get them trained, and then try to get rid of the court stenographers. For them to say, we’re too slow, and then come to find out that they have digital reporters in Texas taking Florida work.

I started doing some research. I knew something was up. I knew that this had got to be over profits. I mean, they’re paying these typists $20 an hour. I did legal transcription for over 20 years at a big box firm. I know what AI software they’re using, and how much they’re paying their typist, everything.

Because that’s what it is. They get these digital court reporters, they’re paying them $20 an hour, but they’re still billing the law firms as if a professional stenographer showed up. And then they bless them with this title, ‘court reporter’.

ME: No way!

JM: It’s deception. It’s bait and switch, you know? You hear ‘court reporter’, you’re thinking, court stenographer. And there’s someone sitting there with a machine just pressing ‘record’. And then they input it into a system.

ME: Geez. Is there a Stenography Union?

JM: Well, Florida’s not big on unions. We have the Florida Court Reporters Association. And I always thought it was funny that the big box companies always had people on the board, right? The same people that have tried to strip us of our profession were on the board making decisions on whether we should get legislation to protect our careers. Weird, right?

ME: Yeah.

JM: And it’s so funny because they were all on the FCRA, and they would be big sponsors for conventions and stuff. Then Covid comes and they’re no longer doing that. They’re part of the AAERT, which is the electronic 8th-grade-comparable test to become a court reporter.

(CDA: In full disclosure, I’ve actually read AAERT’s best practices manual, and I believe if best practices were followed all the time, decent transcripts could be made. Best practices are not followed all the time and some of the transcripts I’ve seen over the years have been atrocious. But I suppose that’s not entirely unlike our own field, where some of us do not join into the “excellence culture.”)

ME: Wow.

JM: They were on the board, but they’ve been playing this for years. Covid was the best thing that ever happened to them.

ME: Right. Do you feel like there’s potential for individual court reporters to unionize as a way to push back against this? I don’t know If there’s much conversation between states, or if you’ve done any kind of organizing?

JM: Well, it’s still getting out. At all the agencies, all the managers would always tell us, ‘your job’s protected. We wouldn’t be an agency without the court stenographers’. But behind our backs, they were training digitals. I don’t know how much you know about Veritext, but they buy out to small agencies. They have a school to pump out digitals.

(CDA: BlueLedge.)

ME: Wow.

JM: And then especially, with Zoom, they’re able to get away with using a digital, and they’re billing clients as if a professional stenographer showed up.

I don’t know how New York does it, but down in Florida, we have an appearance rate, which is just us showing up, as an hourly rate. So, I’ll give you an example of a trial. For a court reporter to show up, let’s just say $1,100 for the day. The court reporting agencies would pay the court stenographer anywhere between 65% to 70%. So you’re looking at, you know, $650-700

So they made, like, you know, what, 400, $500 up, sending the court stenographer there.

‘Shortage. Shortage. Let’s send it digital!’. And we’re gonna pay the digital $20 an hour to hit ‘record’.

And then when I started doing the deep dives and the rabbit holes, and I’m seeing how much they’re telling us ($5 a page), versus how much they’re charging them, ($60!) I was going into courthouses and looking up lawsuits. Agencies were suing attorneys for non-payment, and they have to attach the bills– they’re charging them for litigation packages and storage fees and reads. And, you know, this poor court reporter probably only made a third of that bill.

So when I came across Chris and https://stenonymous.com/ I reached out to him. But a lot of the reporters just didn’t believe us.

ME: Really?

JM: Because the agencies kept saying, oh, no, your job is secure. They didn’t want to believe it. It’s denial. I’ve talked to Chris a couple of times. We should really unionize and try to get this going, but it’s also true that the perpetrators have a lot of money.

(CDA: I have spoken to an attorney and have extensive knowledge on this. Unionization, especially unionization alongside digitals with contractual ratios would change the game forever in our favor.)

ME: Yeah.

JM: And they have big dollar investors, millions and millions and millions of dollars. And if you even type ‘court reporter’ into Google search, all you see are the big box names. They bought up so much advertising.

You have to sort through so much to really find out really what’s going on. Though, the law firms are beginning to become educated. They’re like, what do you mean, ‘there’s a digital’? What’s a ‘digital’? They don’t know. The companies think the law firms don’t care, but they do care.

(CDA: Some care, some don’t.)

ME: Maybe if there were some kind of team effort between the stenographers and the law offices? Maybe my next interview should be with a lawyer, to see what their take on this is…

What’s the state of your work now?

JM: Well, now I’m busy. I’m making more money now than I ever have. But I hustle and I work for a couple small firms that take good care of me, and I have my own clients.

I keep telling every single court reporter, leave the big boxes. Go back to the boutiques, they have great clients. In that way, I’m doing well. But it makes me angry when I find out my friends aren’t busy. I’m like, you’re a real time reporter. How are you not paying your rent?

ME: Have you thought of starting a class action lawsuit or anything?

JM: I mean, they monopolized our market.

I started going on LinkedIn, and I started following some of the big law firms and other court stenographers, and I started posting the truth about what’s going on. And it was shocking, to find out how many lawyers did not know that a digital reporter doesn’t actually type the transcript or ever look at it, that they just make the audio.

They tell the lawyers, ‘this is a digital court reporter who’s making a recording, it’s transcribed by stenographic means’. But it’s not!

They don’t tell them that it’s going through AI. They don’t tell them that if it’s a 100 page transcript. There could be five typists that go through it. That’s why it’s all messed up.

I’ve consulted with a few lawyers in a small court reporting agency. She called me and said that she needed a stenographer. She had called to the big boxes, and they’d said, oh, yeah, we have a stenographer. Well, they end up sending a digital. And it was expedited. It was an all day export. And when they got the transcript back– 150 pages were duplicated!

ME: Oh, my God.

JM: And the transcript was trash. She called me up, and I explained to her exactly what happened. And what to say to the big box agency that did it, and what to say to the judge.

And they won!

So, I think we need to educate the lawyers about what’s really happening with the digitals and what the agencies are doing with their audios– how they’re being charged to expedite. They’re getting charged $16 a page, but they’re paying somebody $2 to do it. And then saying, ‘it’s because there’s a shortage, and we were trying to save money’.

So, when a court reporter shows up, in Florida, they don’t have to order. They can say, I don’t need that yet, so they don’t order it. But if they order it, that’s where the money is. But it depends how many attorneys are there. So usually it’s like two attorneys, plaintiff and defense.

But you could have two attorneys or you could have ten attorneys. You can see on the notice how many parties are on a lawsuit.

So when a court reporting agency goes, ‘Oh, look at this lawsuit. There’s one plaintiff and five defendants. That’s six copy sales right there. Yeah, let’s send the digital– because we’re gonna make a ton off the per diem. We only have to pay somebody $2 a page to do the audio and fill in the gaps’ (which are wrong, by the way).

And then they have five copy sales. And in Florida, a copy sale can range anywhere between $4-6. Up to $30 to 100 page transcript. That’s 100% profit margin to them. If there was a court stenographer, a real professional court stenographer that showed up, it’d be 70% of the entire amount that went to the court stenographer.

ME:Yeah.

JM: Digital is 100% profit margin. It’s not a shortage. It’s corporate greed, and profit margins.

ME: Totally.

JM: And then, once again, they don’t even tell the lawyers.

ME: It’s like, they’re taking advantage of this complex exchange. They’re exploiting it for profit. And it’s subtle.

JM: Yea. I want to say it was 2017 that Veritext, US Legal, and Esquire all got bought out by private equity firms. Like, within three months, all the big boxes got bought out. And it was so weird, too, that I was also finding newspaper articles and stories stating there’s a shortage of court stenographers.

(CDA: My memory differs here. I believe at least Veritext was already owned by private equity. It may have changed hands around that time period though. I have no memory of the status of U.S. Legal Support or Esquire.)

Isn’t that weird? All these articles started popping up, right when all these biggest private equity firms were buying up the big box companies for millions and millions and millions of dollars. Why would a private equity firm buy a company when they were crying shortage?

(CDA: I remember this being more like 2019 when all the articles were popping up. But it hardly matters. It was happening.)

And then I found Veritext’s patent, their big AI software and recording devices, and that the plan was to just get rid of stenographers altogether.

It went through during COVID last year, and I posted it. And I thought, is it just me, or does it seem like Veritext is really trying to make us all quit?

They’re really rude to us on the phone. They’re starving us. And then the work that we do get, it’s paltry, and there’s no write ups. It’s like they’re purposely giving us the jobs that they know aren’t going to write up, and we’re just getting a bad per diem.

And then, we started talking on Facebook, posting stuff. And then people were like, yeah, me too. And I’d preciously had stenographers reaching out to me at Facebook, I would take overflow for them. I would call them and ask, what’s going on? And they’d say ‘We’re fully staffed. We don’t need you anymore’.

We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment contract lawyer.

ME: Yes.

JM: Because in 2011, Veritext, US legal, and Esquire all got sued. There was a class action. Did you know about this in Florida?

ME: No.

JM: There was a class action lawsuit because attorneys were very upset that the word indices at the end of their [transcripts]. They were getting charged per page, like it was a regular transcript from the court reporter.

And the word index is all at the end of the transcript. If you said the word ‘the’ 100 times, it’ll tell you every time in that transcript where you said the word, ‘the’.

So, you know, it could be a hundred page transcript, but it could be a 30 page word index. And they were getting charged page rates, and they were fighting it. So they filed a class action lawsuit saying this is unethical. This isn’t part of the transcripts, it’s not part of the record.

And they ended up losing.

ME: What?!

JM: Because the court reporting agencies went in, and they said, this word index is part of the court reporters word product. It’s part of the transcript.

(CDA: In actuality, it’s more like tying a product under the antitrust laws. You can, and court reporters absolutely do, create transcripts without word indices.)

And that’s how they lost. Now, it’s funny because when that lawsuit came out, it’s running rampant in the office. We were all hearing about it. But, the court reporting agencies were like, don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about the clients. It’s an ongoing litigation. And then we just never heard about it again.

ME: Right.

JM: So when I started doing my deep dives and I was trying to find out what’s going on and what are the real rates, I happened to ask my friend, ‘whatever happened with that?’

ME: That lawsuit?

JM: Yeah. So I googled it, and I read the order when it was dismissed, and I was like, oh, my God. It got dismissed because they’re saying it’s part of our work product. It’s part of our official transcript. And she was like, wow. So why aren’t they paying us for it?

We have never gotten one penny for a word index. Yeah. I think somebody owes us a lot of money.

ME: Yeah!

JM: So, I was just finding out so much. So I called a lawyer. And I asked, was this dismissed because they were saying the word index is part of the court reporter’s work product? And he said yes. And when I told we never got paid for that, he said are you serious? I almost had a heart attack.

ME: Wow

JM: What a mess. Yeah. It’s so shady. I do believe there’s handholding. I do believe these agencies are in it. There’s no doubt. I believe there’s handholding because the AAERT, the two biggest big boxes are on the Association’s membership boards.

I mean, come on.

ME: What are your next moves? What are your hopes for the future of this community and for communications across the board?

JM: Definitely to get more information out. I think what’s going to save us is educating the lawyers. They need to know that if they want to protect their record, they need to have a stenographer.

ME: Yeah.

JM: If they’re gonna go with the digital, then you get what you pay for. When you’re paying for a professional, you should demand a professional.

ME: Yeah.

JM: You know? It’s very overwhelming. Chris and I were sending stuff back and forth all the time. I got very busy with work. I’m hoping we can get back on it. I would love to get a Florida court stenographer association up, and a campaign to educate the law firms and lawyers and really just bring everything to light.

ME: That sounds like a good path forward.

JM: Here’s my favorite example: this is from a trial transcript and appeal transcript out of Broward county, which is in Fort Lauderdale.

I live 20 minutes north of there. And the guy was charged with “lewd and lascivious molestation”.

The digital transcript says he was guilty of “ruining the gas”. The city’s gas station.

The transcript is on my LinkedIn page.

ME: Oh my god, so wild. Okay, I’m gonna end your interview with that amazing quote. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

JM: Bye.

“A LIVE HUMAN BRAIN”

Interview with stenographer Jennifer Murphy

by Cheri Marks

(this interview has been edited and condensed for clarity)

CM: If you could start with just telling me where you live, how old you are and maybe how long you’ve been doing stenography work? And how did you get into the field?

JM: I’m from Temple, Texas. I grew up here. I’m 45, and I was actually a teacher and a school librarian before this, for about 19 years. And then I decided that I needed a change. And so I contacted a friend of mine who was a court reporter. She’d been a court reporter for about 15 years. And she had posted on Facebook, “Looking for a really great job? Consider court reporting!” So I talked to her about it, and then I enrolled in school, and that was in 2019. I finished school and certified in 2021, and started working in early September of 2021 as a court reporter. So I totally switched careers.

CM: I love that! So the school was two years total?

JM: So, I started out on the machine in 2019, and in January of 2021, I switched over to voice, to be a certified voice stenographer.

CM: I didn’t even know that was a thing.

JM: Yes. So basically, we do everything that machine writers can do. We use the same software to provide real time and do our transcripts. Just our input is our voice instead of our fingers.

CM: How does that work in the space of the courtroom?

JM: We use what we call a stenomask, we speak into that so people can’t hear us. It silences our speech.

CM: Wow.

JM: Yeah. So we’re just right there, I sit right in front of my judge [and work].

CM: And so you’re speaking the shorthand.

JM: Yes.

CM: Wow. Is that like speaking another language?

JM: It is. It’s mostly English. And that’s why voice writing does not take as long in school, because we’re using a lot of English. We do use a verbal shorthand.

But we don’t have to learn a whole nother language like machine writers. Right. And our speed building starts at higher speeds because they start at like 40 words a minute, and we start at 120.

CM: Oh, wow.

JM: Yeah. Because if we started at 40 words a minute, it just wouldn’t work.

CM: So when your friend proposed the work, was she being specific about being voice stenography?

JM: No, she’s a machine writer. I took the A to Z program and I got through machine theory. And then in October of 2020, I was just ready to move out of education. And that was the way I could do it quickly. And I haven’t looked back. I love it. I’m certified just like a machine writer, same certification, it’s just a different method. Different input.

CM: Did you find it difficult to find a job once you were certified?

JM: Well, the school I went to, Arlington Career Institute, which I highly recommend, they do have a career services department where they will help you find job placement and give you help you find leads. It depends on your program.

I’m an official in McLennan County, and so I work for one judge. I found my job by searching the job openings in the counties around me [in TX] on their websites. All the counties list their openings. And they had a new county court at law opening up, and they needed a reporter. And so I applied and I got the job!

CM: Fabulous!

JM: Yeah. So that was in November of 2021 when I started.

And then this past December, my judge got appointed to a district court bench because there was a judge that retired. So he got appointed by Governor Abbott to take that bench. And we [the staff] moved up with him. So now I’m in a district court, and we do mostly family and civil law.

CM: Did you have to study much law?

JM: We did have classes on legal terminology. Again it depends on your program, but any good program will have academics like legal terminology, medical terminology, introduction to criminal law, introduction to business law. You know, things like that: court reporting procedures, how to do a transcript…

CM: I was interested in you being a teacher before this, too, as an inordinate amount of teachers are women, as compared to other professions, which is similar to stenography. Have you experienced any kind of gender based discrimination in your work?

JM: Well, I have noticed that by far it is a female-heavy field.

I’ve been in three years– and I’ve had the same judge the whole time. And he is just wonderful, great to work for. I went with him when he got his bench, and, you know, I didn’t have to, I could have, you know, stayed down in county court, but I wanted to work for him. I’ve been treated very well.

CM: I assume you read the Stenonymous blog? I’m curious as to your position on the potential for AI taking over the jobs of stenographers.

JM: Well, I will tell you.

You know, [with regards to] machine or voice stenographers being replaced– you’re always going to have a need for a live human brain. Smart as I think it [AI] is, it only knows what we give it. There’s just no substitute. It can do some cool stuff, but ultimately you’ve got to have a real live human in that seat.

I think that people see how the products [of AI] really can’t measure up to a real person who’s paying attention, who cares about the work, and who takes ownership and pride in their work. Once they see the difference, there’s no contest.

CM: Could you give me an example of an instance where you really had to employ this sort of human nuance to the work, and where a computer AI would have just fallen flat.

JM: Yeah. I think it was a divorce, a temporary hearing or a final hearing, but both parties needed an interpreter.

And so the interpreter sat in the middle between the two parties. And the attorneys were giving their arguments and the interpreter was talking the whole time. He’s in between the two people, and he’s talking low. I could still hear him, but I –as a person– was able to tune him out and listen to the attorneys. Who knows what AI would have captured.

CM: Absolutely.

JM: Yeah. Like almost a simple decision for a person to make, but something a computer couldn’t begin to discern.

CM: Has your stenography work influenced any other parts of your life?

JM: You know how we’ll do speech-to-text on our phones? So, I’ll find myself sometimes, speaking a text in the way I would dictate, because it’s not like I’m talking right now.. So right now, you know, like I could say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you’ve heard all the evidence: [speaking in voice stenography]. That’s what you would hear, what I would say would be layers.

Here’s an example of what voice stenography sounds like:

CM: Wow.

JM: It’s different, you know? It’s a different cadence. Different tone.

CM: Is this something you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life?

JM: Oh yeah. I’m 45. You know, I’m thinking maybe 15, 20 more years and then I might travel and sub in different courts around. It depends. I’m vested with my county, so right now it’s just saving up the money to be able to retire.

CM: Do you find it to be low stress work?

JM: It depends on where you are. I would say for me, most days, yes. Say if I’m in a trial or I have several transcript orders that I’ve got to work on, those times are a little bit more stressful. But overall, if I don’t have any pages to do or if it’s just a regular docket week or the judge is on vacation, it’s slow in court. It’s funny that my stress level is actually a lot lower than it was when I was a teacher. You’re only responsible maybe for one project at a time instead of all the kids. I love it.

CM: What’s the greatest challenge you’ve faced since entering this career?

JM: I guess, confronting imposter syndrome.

CM: Relatable.

JM: Just because– I took my test, I’m certified in the state of Texas, it says I can do this job, but there are days, you know, all of us have to hang on for dear life to get what they’re saying. And we have to have the courage to say, “okay, I’m sorry. I need you to speak up or slow down”.

CM: Absolutely. It seems like this has been such a positive experience for you, is stenography something you’d recommend as a field for people to get into?

JM: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s not easy. It is a hard job and it’s not for everybody. But if somebody thinks that it might be for them, then I encourage them to find out more about it, decide: do they want to go with the machine? Do they want to go with voice? You know, what’s the best fit for them.

CM: Right. Well, this has been really informative and it’s been lovely getting to know more of the nuances of this field, and your particular experience within it.

JM: Thank you for featuring me!

CM: Thank you!

Stenatious Lampoons by Cheri Marks

Two stenographers sit at their desks working rapidly behind a bundled man who wears a sign reading Stenonymous.com. The man staunchly holds up his hand in the gesture of “stop!” at a massive steamroller emblazoned with the letters STTI and henched by two evil capitalist boss-types, which is moving to run them all over.

As with much great satire, we are presented here with an ancient depiction of inequality: the powerful drivers of economic “progress” crushing the very people whose industry they purport to advance. In this cartoon, a lone man desperately puts his body in the path of the massive machine, indignant, recalling the famous photo from Tiananmen Square-– he knows that stopping the machine’s advance is a life or death situation. Behind the cartoon’s two stenographers working away, however, I imagine thousands more at their desks, who can’t see the tank coming, and won’t until it’s too late. Like a stop sign in the middle of it all, alluded to by the man’s Stenonymous.com sandwich sign, is that ephemeral thing that might just save the little guys– an information commons.

The average person may not be aware of the current plight of the stenographic community, but to the workers themselves it is unavoidable. The lettering STTI refers to the Speech To Text Institute, a recently formed and deeply dysfunctional corporate conglomerate pushing the replacement of traditional stenography by A.I. captioning. Their tactic? Aggressively manufacturing the idea of a shortage of so many willing and able stenographers.

It’s disturbing to think that a computer program would replace the very specific art of stenography, considering the sensitive nature of on- and off-the-record courtroom language. A.I. inherently lacks the ability to distinguish between registers and tone, not to mention its built-in biases. It would be a telling exercise, for example, to have AI interpret the same cartoon that I am now. Because reporting is not purely mechanistic– like writing and reading satire, it requires a decidedly human savvy.

Despite my personal convictions, STTI proposes a real threat to the already vastly undervalued stenography community. We can safely assume the man with the sandwich board in the cartoon is one whose job has already been displaced. And the men at the helm of “the STTI”, emblazoned like a war ship, are laughing all the way to the bank, with a chauvinistic belief that they are winning at a life built on the backs of others.

What steamrolling organizations like STTI forget is, at the end of the day, stenographers are writers, witnesses. The women, the workers, in the cartoon are transcribing their experience, even as it gets closer to destroying them.

Cartooning, writing and reading are all forms of collectivizing. Political cartoons date back to the late 18th century, where they were posted on public walls and published in newspapers. If STTI continues with its socio-economic bullying of stenographers, and its manufactured crisis of labor, they should expect a lot more of this kind of creative blowback.

…….

My name is Cheri Marks and I am a poet interested in stenography and many other forms of writing. Thank you for reading and check back at Stenonymous.com soon for more of my literary-flavored missives.