Well, first what’s confirmed out of the way, BlueLedge is a qualified vendor right on NCRA’s website. BlueLedge being a leading digital court reporting training outfit famously integrated into Veritext’s pipeline.
I’ll be honest. I told my source I didn’t know about it, but it doesn’t surprise me. The National Court Reporters Association can’t really discriminate against BlueLedge without risking another antitrust lawsuit. And to be honest, the course as advertised by BlueLedge meets CEU requirements.
This being a real reason I support moving a good deal of our overall funding to individuals and companies that can actually speak out against bad business practices — such as BlueLedge gaining a presence on college websites across America through Ed 2 Go — rather than basically be forced to work with them and advertise them. But what do I know? I’m just a guy that documented all this in years gone by.
Moving on, I got a long email from an anonymous source. In short, it alleges that Veritext has “just bought” Kentuckiana Court Reporting, which encompasses Kentuckiana, Churchill Reporting, Kentucky Court Reporters, Pike Court Reporting, TriStar Court Reporting, and Milestone Court Reporting. Veritext itself has not yet advertised this alleged acquisition. The email mentions that there may be a lot of internal turmoil, with digitals preparing to flee if they “lose benefits,” the case apparently being that Kentuckiana keeps digitals as regular employees and that Veritext tends not to.
The main theme: “Students should be warned that Veritext will be headhunting them, and what to expect from them and what their reputation is.”
To be even more frank, students, here’s what to expect from most corporations: When they need you, the relationship is good, even often weighted in some way in your favor. But they are always working on reworking that relationship to a point where they don’t really need you, and as that happens, you can expect rates to freeze/fall or work to be withheld in favor of giving it to others who will do it cheaper. And as corporate consolidation of the court reporting industry continues, we can expect that the pool of satisfied reporters will become smaller.
Of course, as with all things, the truth is nuanced and layered. But take this as a very direction-of-the-river-absent-other-information type of post. Good luck.
Happy New Year, everyone. Things are going well for me personally. I very much hope the same for all of you reading.
This blog’s had quite a run, from the early posts trying to help new reporters to the shortage investigation stuff. It remains, within my knowledge, the largest independent publication in the industry, with approximately 1,500 visitors per month even when I’m not writing much.
As for what happens next, the interesting thing is that I don’t know. I’ve had some interesting articles fall through the cracks, like Naegeli taking advantage of a witness / pro se litigant. Will it be more sand sifting through my fingers or will I hit something concrete to write about?
That depends, in large part, on the community. The things you send me. The things you comment on this blog. The things you write to me on Facebook. And ultimately juggling all of that with my personal schedule.
Why We’re Betting on Human Court Reporters in the Age of AI
By Lindsay Stoker, CA CSR, RDR, CRR, CRC
At Filevine’s recent California webinar on the future of court reporting, I opened with a simple, unapologetic truth: “The record’s integrity is sacred, and reporter excellence is what protects it.”
Court reporters are being pushed out of their own industry by AI tools that are misrepresented and under-regulated. The enemy isn’t the tools themselves, it’s greed: deployed to cut corners and replace professional expertise with cheap inputs and ship the “savings” upstairs. Profit-first; standard-last. The profession I’ve dedicated 20 years to is being quietly strip-mined and resold with a sticker that reads “innovation.”
I joined Filevine as their Court Reporter in Charge to make sure the standards I’ve defended for two decades are built into the next generation.
What Filevine Is (and Isn’t)
Filevine is a software platform used by approximately 6,000 law firms to manage cases and conduct depositions in the same system. It handles scheduling, hosting, exhibits, realtime preview, analysis, and transcript delivery, while a licensed California court reporter owns and certifies the record. That line isn’t blurred; it’s enforced.
At Filevine, compliance comes first and we follow the law every time. Our processes are built to align with California’s Code of Civil Procedure Section §2025 and Business & Professions Code §8051. My role as the Court Reporter in Charge means there’s a single point of accountability for standards and sign-off. If the record is challenged, we answer with certified transcripts, produced under state law, by licensed professionals who were in the proceeding.
(A note on national practices: Filevine operates in states across the U.S., and the rules for court reporting vary widely. In California, we follow strict state law requirements. In states where digital reporting is legal and widely accepted, we offer compliant solutions that meet relentlessly high quality standards, upon stipulation by all parties, and only on prior notice – no steno-to-digital bait-and-switch. The record’s integrity starts with knowing who’s behind it, and our clients always know.)
Greed Is the Threat, Not AI
Christopher Day’s article, “Artificial Intelligence in Court Reporting: An October 2025 White Paper Generated By Artificial Intelligence,” maps the pyramid of the court reporting industry – low-value recordings at the base, bread-and-butter depos in the middle, and high-paying certified realtime at the top. As Day warns, “Somewhere along the line we convinced ourselves it was okay to give up most of the pyramid…Eventually all you have is realtime.”
The play he describes is simple: Hollow out the base by punting recordings and transcription of exhibits to AI tools and legal transcribers, move the goalposts in the middle by normalizing inferior shortcuts, then desperate novice “realtime” providers flood the zone at the top –consumers get duped, and the pros take the pay cut. Margin flows up, standards flow down. Students lose appropriate and viable paid on-ramps, schools close, and the profession gets hollowed out. AI isn’t the enemy; greed is. The “innovation” pitch is the oldest play in the book in a new hoodie: downgrade skill, cheapen inputs, move profits up.
How We Solve The Pyramid Problem
Big-box agencies make their money by capitalizing on your labor, so their incentives push them to swap certified reporters for cheap alternatives. We don’t. We make money selling software and our revenue comes from the platform, not from making money on you. The economics thus run the other way: keep a licensed CSR in the chair, pay market-leading rates with 72-hour payouts, and offer bonuses to reporters for client referrals. Our software-first model gives the pyramid back to reporters: we don’t have to hollow out the middle to hit agency margins, and we never have to pretend a machine can replace you.
We don’t play games with your business. Reporters can always sell certified realtime and rough drafts. Our AI-generated realtime insights and rough draft products are always clearly labeled, and when precision matters, clients upgrade to a certified reporter realtime or rough product. Greed blurs the lines – we re-draw them and pay the reporter for them.
The Stakes
The industry is eating itself from the bottom up. If we let cheap shortcuts replace real training and standards, there won’t be a profession left to fight for, just broken records and court challenges.
We’re not sitting back while that happens. Filevine is rebuilding the pyramid: certified transcripts by licensed CSRs, industry-leading rates, payouts in 72 hours, clearly-labeled AI products, and never, ever using your work to train a model. This isn’t innovation dressed up as disruption: It’s accountability, ownership, and standards backed by actual humans.
You want to fix this? Start by putting professionals back at the center. That’s the only future worth betting on.
Disclaimer: The content of this publication reflects my personal opinions and is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute the official position of my employer, clients, or affiliates.
That, alongside Andrew’s comment on the post (thanks for reading, Andrew!), compel me to explain that though I personally believe AI has some value, and though I believe we will eventually be ousted by attrition barring definitive action on our part (like me raising about $3 million to pour on a school and some media action! Dreamers can dream, can’t they?) — I still acknowledge that the colossal amount of money being spent on AI is likely to result in a big bubble burst and potentially cause another AI Winter.
And though I don’t intend to make a habit of using AI generated stuff on my website, I once again let AI do some googling for me just to see what it might say.
Is there an AI bubble in terms of investing and can it lead to an AI winter?
I’ll search for current information about AI investment trends and concerns about a potential bubble or AI winter. Now let me search for information specifically about AI winter risks: Based on the search results, here’s what the current situation looks like:
Yes, there are significant bubble concerns
AI investment as a share of the economy is nearly a third greater than internet-related investments during the dotcom bubble, and many experts are warning about bubble-like conditions. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that investors as a whole are “overexcited about AI,” though he maintains AI remains fundamentally important.
Key warning signs include:
Over 1,300 AI startups now have valuations exceeding $100 million, with 498 “unicorns” valued at $1 billion or more
Tech companies are projected to spend about $400 billion this year on AI infrastructure
Circular revenue deals between major players like OpenAI, Nvidia, and Microsoft, where these companies are simultaneously investors in and customers of each other
OpenAI is losing billions annually while making massive investment commitments, with projected revenues of only $13 billion against deals worth around $1 trillion
Could it lead to an AI winter?
The picture is more nuanced here. The IMF’s chief economist predicts that while a bust is possible, it would be less likely to be a systemic event that would crater the US or global economy, since AI investment is financed by cash-rich tech companies rather than debt.
However, an MIT report revealed that 95% of enterprise generative AI programs are failing or returning no measurable value, which suggests the practical applications aren’t yet living up to the hype.
The key difference from past AI winters: Unlike previous AI winters, companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft that survived the dotcom crash are now the primary AI investors, and they’re already profitable with strong fundamentals. This suggests any correction might be less catastrophic than historical AI winters.
While some companies will likely collapse under unsustainable economics, AI itself won’t disappear—it’s evolving toward more practical, specialized systems rather than mega-models. So we might see a market correction and consolidation rather than a complete “winter” where AI research grinds to a halt.
Back to Christopher Day, the author of most posts on Stenonymous.com
In short, it’s not the technology that’s going to kill us. More likely than not it’s the shortage exaggerated and exacerbated by the Speech-to-Text Institute and the large court reporting companies. For example, when U.S. Legal used its money to buy and kill Stenotrain and proceeded to bet everything on digital, or when Veritext built Blue Ledge into its pipeline instead of, say, using its money and power to create a stenographic program and build that into its pipeline. More or less, they saw an opportunity to bump out the “overpaid” stenographers, and they took it. And that’s what I spent the last few years documenting.
With some words on the internet and $10,000 from readers like you, we dismantled the fraudulent STTI, publishing again and again that they were using outdated, unadjusted figures to make their claims. We ended up informing thousands of potential jobseekers that digital was not the best way to get into court reporting. To this day I get emails and comments about various fraudsters in our industry. I’m one guy. There are 17,000 to 30,000 of us. That’s a whole lot of potential and brainpower.
So, I still hold out some hope we’ll do something special and reverse the course. My favorite Latin phrase is, after all, a posse ad esse, “from possibility to actuality.“
Thanks to a demonstration by a dear friend (Shoutout to Noah Collin!) I was recently turned on to trying out artificial intelligence, AI.
Best I can say, modern AI is not actually intelligent. It’s a highly sophisticated word guesser based on an immense amount of training data.
But, my God, it’s good at what it does. For example, I wanted to start by introducing the different types of AI for readers that may not be aware. And I let AI do it for me.
Here are the key differences among these AI types:
ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition)
Converts spoken language into written text
Focuses specifically on audio processing and transcription
Examples: voice-to-text features, voice assistants like Siri or Alexa
NLP (Natural Language Processing)
Broad field covering any AI that understands or generates human language
Includes tasks like translation, sentiment analysis, text classification, and chatbots
Can work with both text and speech (through ASR)
LLM (Large Language Model)
A specific type of NLP system trained on massive amounts of text data
Generates human-like text and understands context across long conversations
Examples: ChatGPT, Claude, GPT-4
More advanced than traditional NLP, capable of reasoning, creative writing, and complex tasks
In short: ASR deals with speech-to-text, NLP is the umbrella term for language AI, and LLMs are powerful modern NLP systems that can handle sophisticated language tasks.
Okay. Back to Chris Day speaking. Typing? Bloviating?(Special thanks to my biggest fan.)
So I got curious and I asked the AI to make a white paper on the pros and cons of AI in court reporting. And what it created was pretty damn good. Accurate. And perhaps an accurate portrayal of where the big-money types believe this field is going.
And, in my own way, where I suspect it’s goingbased on all I know today. Big money’s pushing its agenda and we just can’t seem to unite and fight back, so sooner or later it’ll get its way.
Now, when I write something so bold, I would say change is happening much more gradually than the big-money types thought it would. Stenography, particularly for highly accurate writers, is likely here to stay strong(ish) for at least a decade or so, depending a little bit on what state you’re in. From old forecasts, the best states are going to be California, Illinois, Texas, and New York.
To explain a little bit about why I think what I do, imagine a sort of pyramid where you have all the potential legal transcription work on Earth, with the top being the highest-paying jobs on top and the lowest-paying jobs at the bottom.
(And despite what I’m about to write, all legal transcription is important. I am not belittling the needs of people participating in the legal process. Access to justice is important to me, and it makes me sick to my stomach that I am hearing again and again that big box agencies are not dealing with pro se individuals.)
So on the low end you have your transcription of exhibits and/or recordings. Stuff that, 9 times out of 10, we don’t want to do anyway. It’s punted to the legal transcribers and AI outfits.
Then maybe you have your “crappy” depositions. The interpreter jobs that have fewer transcribed words per hour, the insurance EUOs that can be done in 15 minutes.
Then you have your good-pay deps. Think longer, typically fast work that keeps the word counts high.
At the tippy top, you got realtime reporting. The money in realtime is unimaginable to those that have not experienced it.
Somewhere along the line we convinced ourselves that it was okay to give up most of the pyramid. Well now what do our students take? Well, our students can’t get jobs. If our students can’t get jobs, schools have lower demand, they shut down or sell off, and the person they sell off to might just decide the court reporting program isn’t worth it. Taking this to its logical conclusion, eventually all you have is the realtime. So either people lie and say they’re realtime, and realtime becomes saturated such that the rates drop, or there becomes too limited a demand for schools and we’re siphoned out by attrition. Since big boxes are already calling digital realtime, it’s hard not to see the truth.
This has happened. This is likely to continue happening barring some amazing action on the part of court reporters. This is a peek at the future.
This is not much different from The Record XChange’s Long Tail, something that’s almost a decade old.
I’d also love to introduce what happened when I asked “how can one unionize a decentralized workforce?”
Unionizing a decentralized workforce presents unique challenges, but it’s definitely possible. Here are the key strategies:
Build Digital Community
Use online platforms (Slack, Discord, WhatsApp groups) to connect workers who may never meet in person
Create virtual meeting spaces for organizing conversations
Leverage social media to build solidarity and share information
Focus on Shared Issues
Identify common concerns across locations (pay rates, benefits, algorithmic management, lack of transparency)
Document patterns of unfair treatment that affect workers regardless of location
Emphasize that geographic separation doesn’t mean workers lack common interests
Adapt Traditional Organizing Tactics
Use virtual card-signing campaigns instead of in-person meetings
Conduct one-on-one conversations via video calls or messaging
Organize digital petitions and collective actions
Legal Considerations
Understand whether workers are classified as employees or independent contractors (this affects union rights)
Research which labor laws apply – some gig/remote workers may have limited protections
Consider forming worker cooperatives or associations if traditional unionization faces legal barriers
Leverage Technology
Use encrypted communications to protect organizers
Create databases to track worker contacts and organizing progress
Coordinate actions across time zones and locations
Build Coalition Support
Partner with existing unions that have experience with remote workers
Connect with worker advocacy groups and labor organizations
Seek public support to pressure companies
The success stories include gig workers (Uber, Instacart drivers), remote tech workers, and distributed customer service teams who’ve organized despite being scattered geographically.
“What percentage of court reporters are misclassified employees?”
I don’t have specific data on what percentage of court reporters are misclassified as independent contractors when they should be classified as employees. This is a fairly niche labor classification issue that would require recent research or surveys to answer accurately.
However, I can tell you that misclassification is a known concern in the court reporting field, as many court reporters work as independent contractors for agencies or courts, which can sometimes lead to disputes about proper classification under labor laws.
The determination typically depends on factors like:
Level of control the hiring entity has over work performance
Whether the reporter provides services to multiple clients
Who provides equipment and sets schedules
The permanency of the relationship
Would you like me to search for current statistics or recent studies on court reporter misclassification rates?
“Yes, search.”
Based on my search, I wasn’t able to find specific statistics on what percentage of court reporters are misclassified. However, I did find some relevant information about court reporter misclassification:
General research indicates that between 10% to 30% of employers across various industries misclassify workers as independent contractors, but this is not specific to court reporting.
What I found specifically about court reporters:
Court Reporter Misclassification Issues:
Court reporting is described as a field that “remains largely in the independent contractor space” with ongoing concerns about misclassification
The 2018 Dynamex case in California established new ABC test standards that required court reporting firms and freelance reporters to re-examine their business relationships to determine proper classification
When court reporters are misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees, they face challenges like lack of Department of Labor protection for unpaid wages, making it expensive to pursue legal remedies
The lack of specific court reporter misclassification statistics suggests this may be an under-researched area, despite being recognized as a concern within the industry. The fact that California’s Dynamex ruling specifically raised questions about court reporter classification indicates it’s a genuine issue, but without comprehensive studies, we don’t have reliable percentage data for this profession specifically.
“Do unionized workers make more on average?”
Yes, unionized workers do make significantly more on average than non-union workers. Let me search for the most current data on this:Yes, unionized workers make significantly more on average than non-union workers. Here are the key findings:
Current Wage Premium: In 2024, full-time union members had median weekly earnings of $1,337, while non-union workers earned $1,138 — a difference of about 17.5%.
The Union Wage Premium Breakdown: Research analyzing Canadian data found that unionized workers earn approximately 11% more than non-union workers, with about 60% of this premium coming from unions’ ability to negotiate higher wages and 40% from unionized firms being more productive.
Looking at 50 years of U.S. data, the adjusted hourly union wage premium has varied between 10% and 20% for most of that period, though it dipped below 10% during COVID. The weekly wage premium has been even larger, remaining between 20% and 26% from the early 1990s until COVID, and was still 16% in 2023.
Recent Wage Increases: Union contracts negotiated in 2023 achieved record-high average first-year wage increases of 6.6%, or 7.3% when including signing bonuses — the highest since Bloomberg Law began tracking in 1988.
So yes, the data clearly shows that unionized workers earn substantially more than their non-union counterparts, with the premium typically ranging from 10-20% or higher depending on how it’s measured.
“Did Einstein write in 1949 that the time had come where the rich controlled the means of communication, making it impossible for people to make informed decisions?”
Let me search for information about what Einstein wrote in 1949 regarding media control and informed decision-making:
Not quite. Einstein did write about this issue in 1949, but with an important distinction: he wasn’t warning about something that would happen in the future — he was describing what he believed was already happening at that time.
In his essay “Why Socialism?” published in the inaugural May 1949 issue of Monthly Review, Einstein wrote: “Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”
The popular social media paraphrases suggest Einstein warned this would happen in the future, but he was actually commenting on conditions he observed in 1949. He argued that private capital concentration had already resulted in an oligarchy whose power couldn’t be effectively checked, and that private capitalists already controlled the main sources of information.
So while Einstein did make this argument about wealthy elites controlling communication and making informed decisions nearly impossible, he was describing the present situation of 1949, not predicting a future scenario.
If you read this far, I’d ask you to consider donating on the front page of Stenonymous.com.
Kensie Benoit posted this article. It supports much of my past arguments that we may be headed toward an AI winter or an AI bubble collapse. Be that as it may, the damage has been done to our field, and short of some decisive action on our part, we’ll be siphoned out over the next few decades. Again, not irreversible as the STTI claimed, but now much more likely.
Several high profile people in the steno world have been hacked recently. This scam is so pervasive that my union has warned its members about it. I feel compelled to do the same.
To those that are hacked, or to avoid being hacked, it is best to enable 2FA on your Google or Gmail account. Two factor authentication means that a potential hacker requires access to more than your password to get into your stuff.
The scam looks something like this. If you click it, it attempts to download an exe file to your device. That exe, in all likelihood, is malicious spyware or malware.
I’ve written extensively about AI and ASR, and in particular how ASR could cause further delays in court record production. I’m sure entering the terms AI or ASR into the search box at Stenonymous.com will reveal plenty of the opinions and facts I’ve recorded over the years.
Truth be told, though, with clean enough audio, it’s also my firm belief that ASR can work the other way, producing a usable first draft of a court transcript. Sorry, but, from what I’ve seen, this is likely true. The catch is that, short of having a professional tech onboard to make sure the audio is coming in clean, you often won’t have the cleanest audio in depositions and courtrooms even under the best circumstances with fully willing participants.
I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the prevalent form of AI today, the LLM or generative chatbot or whatever you want to call it. When I was a kid, the closest thing we had to it was SmarterChild. Now there’s ChatGPT, Grok, etc.
And they have no problem killing people, because in America’s rush to see what this technology can do, we didn’t bother to put effective guardrails on the damn things.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are great use cases for these glorified chatbots. They can give pretty accurate information. Like when I asked Grok what Stenonymous.com is.
Grok’s response to “What is Stenonymous.com?”
But again, I’d like to take the time to mention that there will be casualties. These chatbots, for better or worse, tend to validate the feelings of the user. For the mentally ill, they can validate and enhance delusions. For the young, as we’ve seen, they can encourage suicide.
I am but one voice. But I say legislate. We need legislative guardrails on this technology. We need legislators to stop looking away from what they don’t understand and start understanding that the world is different now and the needs of society are great. Technology must be kept up with by lawmakers.
But I have very little hope. I’ve seen the executive branch fail at fighting the most obvious and documented corporate fraud, right up until the executive branch became enslaved to wealthy interests through The New Emperor. The Supreme Court is enslaved to wealthy interests through open bribery. The Congress is enslaved to wealthy interests through the Citizens United ruling. We have very serious problems in America.
At the end of the day, I can only hope that you’re doing as well as me, reader. Or better. I’ll continue to use my voice.
But for now a moment of silence for all the unsung victims of AI.
I had the privilege of receiving Pasqual Perez III’s reply to the motion to dismiss some time ago (May 2025!). It’s quite lengthy so I’m just going to offer it for download here.
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Perez had to file without a lawyer. I’ll be checking PACER someday soon to see if the court ruled on this motion.
I do think one notable assertion by this reply is that court reporting is approximately 85% white, which is something that Pasqual “Trey” Perez III has pointed out to me many times. I have noted the high percentage of white court reporters in the past and can’t help but wonder if there’s something that perhaps we have done historically or are doing now to create such a disparity.
I must admit, I always hoped this lawsuit would go places. I disagreed with suing some of the people involved, but I was very interested in whether a successful case could be brought against the Speech-to-Text Institute, or by proxy, the large players that backed that organization, such as Veritext and Stenograph.
Look out for a September update when I have some time to review more documents on PACER.
Some time ago I consulted with a law firm about the tying of the National Court Reporters Association’s certifications to its membership, possibly in violation of antitrust laws. I’m not privy to what happened afterwards except that they apparently found plaintiffs and are attempting to move forward with a class action. I got my hands on NCRA’s reply in support of the motion to dismiss and I’ve decided to share it.
Having only read a sliver of it, I must say it’s comical that they call the membership and certification inseparable. Anybody with a few brain cells can see that it’d be easyto separate out the testing and CEUs from the membership. The NCRA simply doesn’t want to because it would cost them money. I’m hopeful that the court sees through such a ruse and the lawsuit survives the pleading stage, because at that point they’ve boxed themselves into a corner of “yes, our membership is tied to certification [in violation of antitrust law.]”
I have no reservations about where I stand. In the question of institutional loyalty versus loyalty to my fellow court reporters, I choose my fellow court reporters. And I’ll clip a comment from Facebook that lays out some of what I think of when I think of NCRA.
This refers to Jim Cudahy leaving NCRA to return under the Speech-to-Text Institute years later, the fact that Dave Wenhold manages probably a dozen organizations and therefore by definition cannot be invested in court reporting in the way we need him to be at this critical moment, the decline of court jobs on NCRA’s watch, and the decades-old lie that court reporters cannot discuss rates.
There is a certain cult-like thinking in court reporting where we believe in people and organizations that are clearly failing us. This is due in large part to propaganda. Being something of a propaganda expert that has used propaganda to tell the truth and raise consumer awareness, I must point out that if we do not break free from this de facto mind control, we will collectively walk off a cliff that there’s no climbing back from.
I must point out that with the kind of funding court reporters pour into the NCRA and Dave Wenhold’s pocket, Stenonymous could disrupt corporate propaganda dragging down your incomes, and has proven that in the past through the annihilation of the Speech-to-Text Institute, a venture that was backed by all the biggest names in the business including Stenograph and Veritext — and a direct threat to the prevalence of machine shorthand reporting.
I must point out that you can make a donation today on the front page of Stenonymous.com.
If change from within is not forthcoming, change from without is the only path forward.
P.S. Trey, if you happen to be reading, I know I still owe you a post. Life got in the way. I’ll be working on it sometime soon.
It’s clear I haven’t been writing as much since my son was born. And I wanted to be fairly clear that I do intend to continue writing and informing people throughout the years. There are some things people have sent me that will be written about, but it’s taking much more time than usual because I’m taking most of my time for me and my family.
To this day I give guidance, advice, and information to students and reporters that write to me. That’s unlikely to end. I give and gave a great deal of my life to this career. I made it a point to publish information no other interest group would and raise questions that most others wouldn’t. I faced praise and success, which I am grateful for, but I also faced a great deal of derision and discrimination, which opened my eyes more widely to what’s important in life. My family and friends love me. My career does not.
DANY family, court family, union brothers and sisters — this kind of talk can suck in someone in their 20s and have them believe that the teams they’re a part of have love for them. My advice to the young would be to not be sucked in by such rhetoric. There is no replacement for family and friends. Maybe some of your coworkers become real family and friends. But for the most part, this is not the case.
I have love for a lot of people in this field. I am hopeful that those that have love for me will understand.
If you’re in dire need of court reporting reading, Steno Imperium has been writing up a storm. The recent piece on Wenhold was interesting, though admittedly I only skimmed it.
