Maybe three years ago I came up with the vast majority of lyrics for a parody of Under the Sea related to steno. In typical Chris fashion, it’s gone unused and unpublished, so I’m going to open it up to the community. Feel free to use this. Be mindful of fair use if you include music or anything like that. I won’t be enforcing copyright on the lyrics to the extent I own any, but Disney just might if you were to rip their music. ________________________________
The steno is always better… …in somebody else’s take. They think they’ll replace us… …but that is a big mistake! Just feel the words around you… …right here on the conference floor! Don’t let lies confound you! Stenographer’s what you looking for!
Steno and me. Steno and me.
Baby, it’s better. We get every letter. Take it from me! Upon the comp transcribe away… …even if it takes all day! While they are hatin’… …we demonstratin’!
Steno and me.
Here all the stenos happy… …as long as you pay the toll. And if the job is crappy… …bring on the alcohol! But if the alcohol is sucky… …this job’ll be in late! And if the boss unhappy… …it’s me she’ll berate.
Steno and me! Steno and me!
No one can beat us. AI won’t defeat us. You will soon see. We always play by the book… …perfecting the resting badass look! We is just typing… …calling it writing!
Steno and me. Steno and me.
Rinse and repeat now. Type to the beat, wow… …with alacrity! Even the secretaries, they… …want to learn the steno way! It is just faster… …to be steno master!
Steno and me.
The court do report. The CART write with heart. They get all the words… …and they play the part. The last Q was fast. The A was okay. Just look how this job shook my soul. (Ha!) Today, we can say… …the things this job brings… …are great but frustrate. I wish we had wings! Or an extra hand… …to get the words on demand. Just watch those orders grow!
Steno and me! Steno and me!
With this machine our work is pristine. I’m sure you’ll agree! What do they got? A lot of hype? I sure would like to see them type!
Our steno fam here… …know how to jam here. Steno and me
Each steno mug here… …lets us chug cheer. Steno and me
Each key we whale here… …steno never stale, dear.
That’s why it’s brighter… …to use Steno writer. We got your service! Never be nervous… …with steno and me!
Journalists, we need to talk about court reporting.
Court reporting? What’s that? Court reporting traditionally refers to stenographic reporting, where somebody is taking down verbatim notes on a stenotype. We do this in legal proceedings as well as broadcast captioning, and believe it or not, our keyboard design, invented in 1911, is the best technology in voice recognition and taking down the spoken word today. Sounds incredible, right? But look at the airplane. It started out in 1903 looking something like this:
But what about my in-flight movie?!
We all know what happened. The design got better and today we have airliners that can fly hundreds of people at once. Same with the camera of the 1800s that became the compact and ubiquitous technology we have today in so many devices. Very much the same happened with our stenotype. In fact, I have a handy guide here. Feel free to use that middle image in any article you want.
Manufacturer: Stenograph. The notations on the right are just me poking fun.
We started off with old timey machines where you tap the key and it punches the ink into the paper. We evolved into an era of Dictaphones and floppy disks where we’d narrate our notes to be typed up by somebody else. These days we’re packing laptops attached to minicomputers. We’re always asked “why don’t you just record it?” Truth is we’ve had that capability for a really long time. We go beyond that and have the ability to transcribe what we’ve “recorded” in record times.
We have audio jacks, SD cards, USB ports. Some of us even use Bluetooth.
We have a real perception problem in our field. There’s this ongoing push from tech sellers to come in and say our technology is old and that automation is on the way. The problem? Tech journalists, publications, or analysts often eat it up and publish it right away. I always point to this October 2020 article as a great example. It literally depicts an old-fashioned stenographer phasing out into computer code under the headline “Will court reporting undergo a pandemic shift?” It goes on to publish some quotes from Verbit and Veritext that point to things changing/evolving/shifting. The messaging is really clear. “We have the technology. Why do we need court reporters?” They term court reporter criticism as “resistance.”
Where did those SILLY court reporters get the idea we’re coming for their jobs?
A lie is being sold. This isn’t something that takes heavy investigation to figure out. When asked about the field in that article, Veritext’s CTO was quoted as saying “there will be no choice but to move forward with well-proven audio and transcription technologies and services to meet the need, and we expect to see rapid adoption there.” Meanwhile, when asked for a quote for Stenonymous, Veritext said with regard to technology “…it will not take the place of the stenographer…” They’re not alone. Tom Livne of Verbit has been quoted saying our world is not yet digitized when I just showed you that it is digitized and it has been for decades. In series A funding for Verbit, claims of 99 percent accuracy were thrown around. In series B funding, it was said that technology would not replace the human. All these automation proponents are pretty quick to dismiss automation. Could it be that automation of speech transcription is just not that simple?
It would be fair enough if it was just my word against theirs. But there are outside observers that have looked at the situation and concluded all the same things. In a May 2020 article from Scientific American, journalist Wade Roush noted that speech recognition simply was not perfect and might never be. He pointed to Microsoft’s claim in 2016 of 96 percent accuracy, better than human transcribers, and noted there have been few improvements since. In the Stanford study “Racial disparities in automated speech recognition” it was noted that automatic speech recognition was 80 percent accurate on white speakers, 65 percent accurate on black speakers, and “worse” on the AAVE dialect. “Worse” meant 25 to 50 percent accurate. So here we are taking stenographic reporter accuracy, certified with 5 percent total errors or fewer and comparing it to a word error rate between 20 percent and 75 percent.
But do we really need accurate court transcripts and good captions for captioning consumers? Nobody cares who this hurts as long as it makes investors happy, right? Sadly, there’s not much evidence to show that it’ll even do that. Much of the financial data for court reporting is hidden through private companies or paywall research data. When I examined VIQ Solutions, a company that recently acquired Net Transcripts and is ostensibly part of the “record and transcribe” crowd, I pointed out there’s plenty of revenue there, but net losses. In news regarding Verbit’s acquisition of VITAC, it was stated that revenue was in the millions and cash flow was positive, which means it’s likely profits are low or non-existent. At the risk of sounding like a cynic, I think it’s very clear, if there was profit and a decent rate of return they would be unreserved in telling us that. Like other AI ventures, there’s probably just a slow burn of money. So every time a writer jumps aboard the “technology” train without consulting anybody that actually works in the field or doing a little research, it’s burying the truth a little deeper under this false perception and really hurting a vibrant, viable field that really needs people. We’re not so different. The tech sellers are coming for your job too, and it’s just as hilarious and embarrassing.
I admit it. I skimmed the article because it was an absolute bore. That didn’t stop them from claiming that it “rivaled human skills.”
The other issue we have is that we know you can figure this stuff out. When our job is up for grabs, there’s a kind of jubilant repetition of the word “disruption.” Meanwhile, when it’s a job that has some sense of importance or power, like a judge, journalists begin explaining things. Take this article on Chinese holographic AI judges, where the author makes sure to point out there are differences in American and Chinese law that may make this more plausible, as well as explaining that the “AI” is only as good as its dataset. This is a big problem, because the companies invested in “AI” have zero accountability. If someone brings up issues with a technology’s output being racist or sexist, they are summarily fired and their opinion swept under the rug. In my field, at the very least, every member of the public is entitled to make a complaint about a court reporter that violates our ethical codes. That’s on top of any legal remedies that may be available or justified in the event a court reporter acts irresponsibly! If you can’t get it right when you report on it, these companies are not going to correct you when you’re wrong in their favor.
All we are asking for is some fairness in the way our field is reported on in the news. I’ve often joked that advocating for stenographic court reporting is a lot like the children’s story Horton Hears A Who. We’re here but we’re unseen and unheard. We’re in danger of being boiled by big money and tall tales. Those of us that speak up can face a lot of ridicule or be cut short. Take my appearance on VICE News about the Testifying While Black study. Here’s an important topic that deserves headlines, namely, addressing disparate outcomes based on the dialect that someone speaks. I was filmed for about two hours, and Taylor Jones and his people were, as I understand it, filmed close to nine hours. Nobody expected a ten-hour special, but this topic got fifteen minutes. Court reporters took some serious heat in the news because we scored 80 percent accuracy in African American Vernacular English dialect. Every single news source I’ve seen has missed or excluded pilot study 1, where regular people scored 40 percent, and pilot study 2, where lawyers scored 60 percent. VICE cut me talking about the pilot studies and how people who really care about record accuracy need to join our field. You have a story here where court reporters are twice as good as the average person at hearing and transcribing this AAVE dialect that we get no training in, and that got warped into many variations of “court reporters don’t understand black people.” That’s a concept mired in ignorance. The story itself acknowledges not all black people speak AAVE, and yet the headline and lede rips on us despite the fact that we’re the most likely ones in the room to understand AAVE. I cannot imagine such an irresponsible word game. It’s almost like publishing an article with the headline “Journalists May Be Reporting Black People’s Stories Wrong” just because they might ostensibly fit into the category of “regular people.” But I can’t imagine that anyone would ever lump groups of people together and make broad, false headlines just for clicks. Oh, wait —
It’s a perfect topic, a good story, and a great writer, but the headline pits people against each other. You harvested court reporters, AAVE speakers, and black people for clicks.
Even in a pretty amazing article about social justice where I got to offer some input, the accuracy of us versus others ended up not making the cut. I like the author a lot, but it’s pretty clear that somewhere along the way a decision was made to exclude the possibility that we’re hearing people better than anyone else in the room. Not much different from when Max Curry was quoted as saying digital reporting was too risky, but there was hardly any explanation as to why, despite a field of nearly 30,000 people and data that suggests recording proceedings achieves no real cost reduction and no efficiency gains. See what I’m saying? Sometimes it’s worse than simply not publishing anything from us. Sometimes it’s cherry picking what we say to make it look like both sides are represented when they simply aren’t or that a topic was explained when it simply wasn’t.
I know that this perceived unfairness is a result of many factors and that some are outside your control. The drive to get people to read strongly encourages clickbait journalism. Editors and outlets can decide to cut journalists’ work if it doesn’t adhere to a particular narrative or standard. The fact that court reporting and machine shorthand stenography is a fairly niche skill adds to the dilemma. Industry outsiders are not going to know there are national, state, and nonprofit databases to find court reporters for interviews and demonstrations. There are a myriad of issues that coalesce to create the situation I’m describing. But we really need some attention on these issues. We create the legal record for so many lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. We broadcast (good) captions so that the deaf can have access. The inadequacy of alternatives cannot be understated. But the average reporter age is 55 now, and to continue our good work we’ll need the media to be unafraid of publishing the truth. Help us attract people who will carry on this service for generations. We need the media to stop republishing the shortage forecast from 8 years ago and point people towards all the resources that we have built since then to help people find this career, such as Open Steno, Project Steno, and NCRA A to Z.
A reader suggested I define AAVE better in this article. I feel it better to point to the work of the linguist Dr. Taylor Jones if you want to learn more about this dialect.
A common line from the average person about my job is “why don’t you just record it?” There are numerous arguments against recording, including difficulty issuing a subpoena for testimony of transcribers outside the country, price concerns, and quality concerns. One thing that has not yet been adequately addressed is why recording seems to be working in some places right now and why many court reporters think that may change.
I have to turn to my New York experience. Our Workers Compensation Board took the reporters out of the workers comp “courtrooms” and wheeled in recorders. The legislature didn’t want this. The reporters didn’t want this. And over 50 reporters that didn’t leave WCB for the New York State Unified Court System remain in the background transcribing the recordings. To the outside observer, recording is working just fine. There’s no problem because society took the highly trained professional court reporters and hid them. They’re still there working behind the scenes, guarding the record via their expertise and knowledge.
Same thing happened in Massachusetts. They took reporters out of the courtroom and created an approved transcriber list, where many stenographic services continue our professional duty to protect the record. New York itself has many stenographic services willing to transcribe recorded matters. When jobs disappear, they’re really just shifting from public sector work to private sector work. The need for quality work still exists.
So what’s the problem? Who cares if we’re back office or in front of the courtroom? Well, it exacerbates our shortage. Schools see fewer job postings, they downsize or close. People stop seeing us and fall into the easy illusion that we don’t exist. We can already see it in the transcription industry. Companies like Rev boast about having as many as 50,000 transcribers. Beyond the few articles about their horrible pay and questionable working conditions, they might as well not exist to the average consumer.
It’s time to speak out against that for our field. We need to be bold and loud, albeit polite, and insist that people take us seriously. People need to know that their actions impact our situation. People need to know that recording is going well today because you still have an army of court reporters with court reporting experience transcribing. People need to know things simply won’t go as well when you take that army of reporters and replace it with people who do not have a strong educational or ethics-based culture.
For a fictional example of why recording will become a problem, imagine someone trying to slip me $1,000 to alter some trial testimony. I’d laugh. It’s against my morals. It could hurt the perception of my profession and court reporting family. It’s also nowhere close to worth risking my well-paid job for that amount of money. But for a transcriber, that can be 33 times their monthly pay for transcription work. Ethics are nice, but they take a backseat to things like eating and feeding the kids. But court administrators don’t know what they don’t know, so without input from reporters like you, this issue goes unsung.
It’s completely possible to make $6 an hour working for Rev! Yes, that’s what that breaks down to.
For a real-life example of advocacy, in recent months, a judiciary body reached out to just about every court reporting association in the country asking for help with their shortage. I wrote a personal reply, and I’m going to share it today so that others can see what I’m talking about when it comes to talking about these issues and trying to make a difference. If we do not make an effort to shape the conversation, we will simply be left out of it. So tell it like it is, recording works today because you’ve got a large contingent of reporters working behind the scenes.
In my Collective Power of Stenographers post, we explored how court reporters collectively out-earn every company in business today. In Aggressive Marketing — Growth or Flailing, we took a look at VIQ Solutions, parent of Net Transcripts, and saw how a transcription company could be making millions in revenue but be unprofitable. This all set me down a path of learning about zombie companies, companies that are not making enough to meet debt obligations, or just barely enough to make interest payments. You can watch Kerry Grinkmeyer describe how that happens here. This isn’t very rare. A Bloomberg analysis of 3,000 publicly-traded companies found one in five were zombies. The main takeaway? Companies can make lots of money and still be taking losses.
I had the pleasure of looking through the Kentley Insights June 2019 Court Reporting and Stenotype Services market research report. I do want to be upfront about it: I have some reservations about the methodologies and some of the reporting. Very much like the Ducker Report, as best I can tell, it’s based off a sampling of respondents from in or around the field. There are parts of the report that are arguably a little incomplete or unclear. For example, being industry experts, we all know the vast majority of the work is done by independent contractors. Independent contractor isn’t a term that appears in the report. Unsurprisingly, when we reach the job pay bands and employment section, it says there isn’t detailed data on the industry and compares us to the telephone call centers industry. So this report is not a must-have for court reporters, but it does have some interesting insights.
Those remarks aside, when we get to the profitability section of the report, we get to see something pretty striking. Based on their data, more than 1 in 4 court reporting companies are not profitable. Average net income as a percent of revenue for the ones that are profitable? About 9.3 percent. For the ones that are not profitable, a loss of about 9.6 percent. And a pretty chart that says as much.
I never want to see the term capital benchmarks again.
On the following page, there’s a forecast for operating expenses and industry revenue. That’s summed up in another pretty chart.
This was pre-pandemic, by the way.
If we look at the trends here, it’s pretty clear that the forecast is for expense growth to eclipse and outpace revenue growth. If that keeps up, the unprofitable companies are going to be looking at bigger losses year after year. Given all the information I have today, I surmise that the smaller court reporting companies are the more profitable ones and the bigger ones are the ones struggling. There are sure to be some outliers, like small court reporting shops that go bankrupt and leave their independent contractors unpaid. But overall, the smaller companies can’t afford to remain unprofitable for very long, so it’s probably the “big dogs” eating that 10 percent loss. If I’m right, that may also mean the push to go digital is the dying breath of companies that can’t figure out any other way forward. In February, I wrote “…we only lose if we do not compete.” That is becoming more evident with time and data. It is a great time for the stenographic reporter to open up shop and be a part of the 74%.
Speaking of data, if everybody that read this blog donated $1.50, we’d have enough money to stay ad-free for the next two decades. To all donors we’ve had to date, thank you so much, put your wallets away. To everybody else, check out this cool song from M.I.A. about taking your money.
When you care about something, how difficult is it to do? I can only go by my own experiences here. I hate calling lawyers. A family member got fired and there was potentially an attached legal issue. I was on the phone chain calling lawyers for them until I found one that could speak to the family member that same day. I don’t have any desire to be a public speaker, but I figured it out when I thought our profession might need it. US Legal, by all appearances, cares a lot about attracting digital reporters and strengthening AAERT.
I would love to talk to you too, senior recruiter.
In fairness, US Legal does have a reporter corner and a few spots on their site where they specifically mention stenography. But we have to look at the totality of the circumstances to decide whether this is out of genuine care or whether it’s a facade to point at and say “look, we care!” It’s been known for a while that US Legal is backing digital reporting. They bought out Stenotrain, made some announcements to look good, and killed it. Now reporters are getting offers to join USL as long as reporters drop the stenotype and fall in line with whatever junk USL wants to peddle to consumers. Again, I have to look at my own experiences, and when I don’t advertise very much, my site can get as little as 500 views a year.
What a year that was. Am I right?
Meanwhile, when I spend a few hundred bucks on an ad, I get the word steno in front of thousands of people.
A seven-nation army couldn’t hold me back.
Hopefully the point is pretty clear. If and when they cry shortage and say they just can’t fill the seats, it’s a lie. According to Owler, they have a revenue of over $100 million. They’re taking that money and betting it against stenographic court reporters. There are national, state, and nonprofit databases of reporters. This is a game to take our relatively high-paying jobs and organized, educated workforce, and replace them with low-paying jobs and people who won’t have the same ethics culture we do.
It’s a game I need some help winning. All corporations are made up of people. Educate those people on the truth, and just maybe they’ll realize they’re risking everything by backing the losing horse. If you happen to get a message from one of the recruiters working on this, please don’t blast them, but let them know what’s happening. Chances are good they have no idea.
I do wish him luck and success. But I also hope he finds a better employer.
This month I had a chance to sit down with Marc Russo of MGR Reporting. Marc’s a working reporter and business owner. We got to hit a lot of topics in this video, including Marc’s history in the field, how reporter skill relates to reporter treatment, and how scheduling ahead can help reporting firms fill their clients’ needs.
Using Marc’s words, it’s about treating reporters like people instead of numbers.
If you’re somebody in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada who’s sold on a career as a digital court reporter, or even if you’re just passing through looking for a new career, I’d like to introduce you to stenographic court reporting in a way that you have not been introduced. Just to get this out of the way, in very general terms, court reporting is taking down the legal record and providing an English transcript for judges, lawyers, litigants, and the public. Stenographic “court reporting,” can also be used to caption live shows and events, or transcribe recorded material when needed. The big difference between “steno” and digital is that digital court reporters record testimony or proceedings, usually on multitrack audio equipment, and take guiding notes as the proceedings go on. The stenographic reporter uses a stenotype to take verbatim notes of what’s being said. In our industry today there are a few big companies aggressively marketing to young people looking for work. Those companies insist that digital court reporting is an opportunity for them. There have even been journalists picking up these misconceptions without realizing they’re being misled. It’s time to dispel those myths, tell you a little bit about who we really are, and get you resources you can use to explore a career as a stenographic court reporter.
We Are Digital! One of the most interesting claims I’ve seen from digital court reporting proponents in the press is that “this world isn’t digitized.” We’re old-fashioned. The implication is that stenographic court reporting is a dying art with very little time left as a viable career. Every time you see a representation of us in the media, you get a stenotype from 1983! The truth is that we’ve been digital for decades. Most working reporters today roll with a stenotype that is more like a minicomputer than a typewriter. There’s software onboard transcribing the machine shorthand stenography as we go. So that’s a big red flag, right? There’s a CEO making a major statement who’s clearly lying or completely ignorant. Don’t bank your future on the words of people who are lying or wrong. Not only are we technologically advanced, we’re extremely adaptable. When the pandemic struck, court reporters were in a jam for a month or so. The field quickly adopted remote reporting and now reporters are talking about having more work than they can handle right from home. If you like tech, steno is for you.
We Are More Efficient! I know that this can come off as a loaded or insulting statement, so let me just get this out of the way. There’s nothing wrong with believing that technology improves efficiency. What’s often ignored in this discussion is that stenographic technology is evolving right alongside audio capture tech. There have been trials of automatic speech recognition in stenographic software. There have been leaps in text-to-text prediction and some software even attempts to guess what we meant when we mess up a stenographic stroke. Recording a proceeding generally entails the front-end recording and the back-end transcription. Machine shorthand stenography, on the other hand, loads the transcription on while the proceedings are going on. The most skilled stenographic court reporters can walk away from a proceeding and press print. The more average ones, like me, are able to reduce the transcription time so much that one person can do the entire job. You can also see this in the numbers. The average court reporter types (we call it writes) at 225 words per minute with a 1.4 syllabic density, so probably about 200 words per minute. The average transcriber types at about 100 words per minute. The average person hovers around 50 words per minute. So just by the numbers, you can see that stenographic reporting can get a job done twice as fast, four times as fast, or with far less manpower. Machine shorthand stenography is also much easier on your hands. We have the capability of getting down very large words or large groups of words with one movement of our hands. As an example, it took me over 18,000 hand motions to get this post down on a QWERTY keyboard. It would have taken about 3,000 hand movements on the stenotype that I was too lazy to plug in. If you’re a transcriber, imagine reducing the stress on your hands to a sixth of what it currently is.
We Have More Support! Some of the court reporting or transcription companies I mentioned before are riding on another misconception regarding our stenographer shortage. About 8 years ago there was an industry outlook and forecast by Ducker Worldwide that told us there would be a higher demand for court reporters than supply. That part is absolutely true. A shortage was forecasted. Some companies were having severe coverage issues. We saw the number of applicants for licenses and civil service jobs plummeting to about half the usual levels. This can lead to the implication that there are not many stenographers left. It’s an easy myth to propagate. How many of us have you seen recently? Unless you’ve been stuck in a lawsuit, been prosecuted, or seen me on TV, you haven’t seen a court reporter. The truth is that we knew the shortage was coming. Many initiatives popped up to begin recruiting stenographers or helping people get into the field. Depending on whose numbers you’re looking at, there are 10,000 to 20,000 of us working. That means that if you have a problem or a question, you have potentially thousands of people around to assist you. You have a nonprofit in almost in every state devoted to stenographic court reporters. Those nonprofits pull in cumulatively millions of dollars a year with the objective of promoting the welfare of stenographic court reporters. To put this into perspective, a popular stenotype manufacturer, Stenograph, recently donated $50,000 to Project Steno. Nobody’s dumping millions of dollars on nonprofits in a career that has no future. Why aren’t some of these “employers” telling you about this vast support network? Because if you join it, you will have sharper skills and better bargaining power.
We Have Options! There are freelance, part-time, and full-time positions available dependent on where you are and what you’re looking to do with this wonderful skill. Maybe you’re someone who needs to work from home and “just” do transcription — I know a mom just like that. Maybe you love the law and want to see the process of law firsthand. Maybe you want to caption live events over the TV, internet, or in person, via stenographic CART & captioning. Maybe you want to travel internationally and take work around the world. There are even reporters who have taken the general skill of stenotype stenography and applied it to computer programming, such as Stanley Sakai. The limiting factor is how much time you put into hunting down the type of work you want!
We Are Equality! If you clicked the link for my TV appearance, you saw that stenographic reporters got some really bad news stories run on them because while our certifications are 95 percent, we only scored about 80 percent in a study where some of us were asked to transcribe a specific English dialect sometimes referred to by linguists as African American English (AAE). VICE News filmed me for about two hours. They cut the part where I talked about the pilot studies. In pilot study 1, everyday people were tested and scored 40 percent. In pilot study 2, lawyers were tested and scored 60 percent. In a completely different study, automatic speech recognition was tested. It got white speech right 80 percent of the time. It got black speech right 65 percent of the time. It did worse when it was tested on AAE! What does this mean? It means that young people that want to ensure equality in the courtroom need to join up and become stenographic court reporters. I’m not gloating about 80 percent. But with no special dialect training, we’re the closest to 100 percent understanding on this dialect, and that was ignored by the media. I am proud to be one of the people fighting to bridge that gap and spread awareness on the issue. Beyond that, in the captioning and CART arena, stenographic court reporters are pushing to bring access to people for live programming and in classrooms. So if you choose this wonderful career you are not “doomed” to sit in legal proceedings for the rest of your life, you can also make a career out of taking down what’s being said and bringing it to the screens of millions of people who need that support. If you’re a person that believes that court records should be 100 percent accurate, someone that believes appeals shouldn’t be thwarted by missing court audio, or someone that believes that deaf people deserve real access, and not “autocraptions,” you’re somebody that needs to join up and be part of the team steno solution.
We Are Waiting For You! Remember that shortage I mentioned and the resources waiting for you? I have an easy list you can use to get a jumpstart, find the right level of training for your financial situation, and get involved with our field. This is not an exhaustive list, so if you find something online that seems better for you, don’t hesitate to give that a chance. To help you understand some jargon in our line of work, “theory” is a method or system of using the stenotype and its letters to take down English, often phonetically. “Speed” is taking everything you learn in theory and learning to do it fast. Speed is by far the longest and hardest part of training. “Briefs” are stenographic outlines or strokes that do not necessarily resemble English words phonetically in theory, but we use them to get down large words fast. “Phrases” are stenographic strokes or outlines that collapse multiple words into one line of letters. Generally you will “learn theory,” then you will start “building speed,” and then you will use briefs and phrases to reach those very high levels of speed that we work at. It is physically possible to write everything out phonetically, but it will be more stressful on your hands.
Try court reporting for free. NCRA A to Z and Project Steno’s Basic Training are both free ways to try out court reporting and learn basic theory at low or no cost. Both are great ways to jump into the field without blowing $2,000 on a student stenotype only to find out you don’t like steno. On the topic of finding stenotypes to practice with, there are vendors such as StenoWorks, Acculaw, Stenograph, Eclipse, and Neutrino. You can also search on eBay for old Stentura models at a discount, but do not go outside eBay’s buyer protection or you will get scammed.
NCRA-approved schools. There are several NCRA-approved schools across the United States and one in Canada. These are worth looking into if you are serious about making court reporting a career because of the quality of the education. Please note that not all NCRA-approved schools are accredited.
Online, self-paced, or programs not approved by NCRA. There are numerous programs for stenographic reporting. There are programs to teach theory like StarTran. There are programs like Simply Steno that focus on building speed after someone has learned the basics of theory, and there are programs like Court Reporting At Home (CRAH). You can also see if the court reporters association of your state has any advice or school listings. All of these things also have a great deal of social media support. There are lots of Facebook groups like Encouraging Court Reporting Students or Studying Court Reporting At Home. There are students and professionals online right now who are there to help with the journey.
Open Steno. I have to put Open Steno in a category by itself because there’s just nothing like it. It is a free, active, and open online community with Google Groups, a free way to learn theory, and its own Discord chat. There are enthusiasts that build stenotype keyboards from scratch. This is the community responsible for Steno Arcade. This is the community responsible for Plover, a free steno-to-English translation software. It was all started by Mirabai Knight, a CART writer in New York. If you’re motivated to teach yourself for free, Open Steno makes it possible in a way that it simply was not a decade ago.
Christopher Day. Chances are high you’re here because you saw an ad on social media. I’ve been a court reporter for almost eleven years. I’ve been funding this blog and keeping it an ad-free experience (with some very appreciated help!) just to help stenographers and people that aspire to be stenographers. I know people that have transitioned from digital (and analogue!) court reporting to stenographic reporting and become real champions of and voices for our field. Every reporter I know is supportive of stenography students and fellow professionals. You’ll rarely hear one of us refer to another one of us as being “low skill.” Compare that to this marketing infographic from Verbit. They said digital solutions do not require a highly-trained workforce. Do you really want to work with people that downplay your work when it’s convenient for them? These folks are setting themselves up to make money off you. I have no such incentive or financial ties. I’m a guy with a squid hat and a blog who fell into this wonderful career by accident, and I’d love for you to be a part of it.
So if you need more guidance, reach out to me at Chris@stenonymous.com. Do yourself the favor of getting involved with stenographic reporting. If sitting there hearing testimony is something you can see yourself doing, you’ve already got a whole lot more in common with us than half the world. Give our profession some consideration. It’s easy to learn, it’s hard to do fast, and though it takes 2 to 4 years of training, it really can be your gateway to an exciting front-row seat to history and a rewarding lifelong career. If that doesn’t sell you, we also have some top-quality memes.
We often highlight the success stories of our industry. I think this is very important because it keeps current students open to the idea that they can succeed. Like every industry, we will have people that make colossal gains, start businesses, and create a great life with lots of opportunities and experiences. On the other hand, there may be individuals out there who, for whatever reason, cannot finish school or do not land very lucrative work at the start of their journey. I had a rough time starting off. I didn’t have a lot of life experience and most of the work I got was from being a reliable and steady “yes man” instead of having strong negotiation skills or even strong steno skills. Things worked out great for me with time and effort, but it’s time to acknowledge that not everybody is going to have that same experience, and let you in on America’s best-kept secret.
Student Loans Are Dischargeable For over a decade America has sunk deeply into the myth that student loans are never dischargeable. I heard this as a student. I was told this by my mother and countless role model figures in my life. This myth is so prevalent that I never once bothered to fact check it. These days, you can find resources online to explain to you that they are forgivable, dischargeable, and under what circumstances. There are even United States government sites with that information. For easy access, I’m going to repeat some of the highlights here. Student loans can be…
The courts must decide if repaying the loan would cause you undue hardship. Undue hardship was not defined by the Congress, and so the courts look at whether you would be able to maintain a minimum standard of living if forced to repay the loan, whether there is evidence the hardship will continue for a significant portion of the repayment period, and whether you made a good-faith effort to repay the loan prior to filing for bankruptcy. A court may order the loan fully discharged, partially discharged, or the court may order you to repay the loan. In the event the court orders you to repay the loan, the repayment may be structured differently. It is notable that this is not a magic fix-everything button. There are significant hurdles and it is harder to discharge student loans through bankruptcy. But if you’re stuck in debt and can’t seem to claw out, it just might make sense to put together some money for a lawyer to help you navigate your way out of tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
This is really important to get out there because compound interest works both ways. When you have a savings account or certificate of deposit, every accrual period means more interest added to your money, which means more interest on future accrual periods. When you take out a loan or take on credit card debt, it works the other way, where your minimum payments are meant to pay the interest and pay a small part of the principal. Many people fall into a trap where they make partial repayments that do not cover the interest, and the debt begins to grow instead of shrink despite making consistent good-faith payments. This is how you come across nightmare stories where a person pays for years and yet their loan amount never goes down or doesn’t go down much. Unfortunately, it’s perfectly legal for people to sign agreements that they do not fully understand and incomes in any industry or with any education are not guaranteed. So when things go wrong, it seems like the right thing to do to let people know they do not have to suffer with lifelong debt that they genuinely cannot repay. Rights don’t matter if they go unspoken and unasserted, so if you know somebody stuck in the debt spiral, let them know there’s a way out.
Addendum:
On August 23, 2021, I was contacted by someone representing themselves as a Bankrate employee. They shared this link with me about buying a house while saddled with student loans and the article does have good general concepts to learn, such as trying to keep your debt-to-income ratio low. Please check it out if you’re looking for more information on finance. I’ve received no money for sharing this link.
Beyond the machine, there’s so much creativity and many laughs to be had about our work. A longtime friend had been tagging me in lots of Stenoholics posts, but I’m too boring for Instagram, so I never really paid any attention. Well, when I ran across this coughing video, all that changed. I think I’ve personally experienced almost everything they’ve made a video on, including the traumatic experience of having to take down numbers. Their tribute to Court Reporting & Captioning Week was a sight to behold and admire. Ten out of ten, go give their work some love and attention.
While we’re on the subject of court reporter humor, a best friend sent me this video from Andy Bajaña. Steno students, somebody understands! Andy says on the post he wrote this song when he was in school and didn’t think he’d graduate. So students, if you’re watching and you feel the same, just remember it can be done!
Or if you like to watch people trying to be funny instead of actually being funny, you can check out my very important video on modernizing the administration of the oath.
One of the biggest challenges of any professional’s career is time management. There are so many things we need to find time for. We need to find time for our families, our friends, and ourselves. We need to meet deadlines. We need to remember important events and time-sensitive information. Below are some really basic tips for finding time and staying organized in my words and style. If you want a much more professional look or if you’re a visual learner, you may actually benefit greatly from skipping my blog post and checking out Lauren Lawrence’s Stenovate Time Management Master Class.
Your Calendar:
Most of you hold in the palm of your hand a tiny supercomputer capable of wonderful things. Any time you schedule something, stick it in that phone calendar. There have been times where I’ve double-booked friends, work obligations, and life goals because I failed to make a calendar. I failed to take that extra step every time someone said “save the date.” I failed to take scheduling seriously and it bit back hard. If you have Gmail connected to your phone, it’ll even automatically update your phone with Google Calendar invites when you send or receive them. A calendar is a simple extension of your memory and you are ten steps ahead of the game when you start using yours. You can even even stylize it to be as neat or cluttered as you want. For example, my mind works best when it’s in a constant state of chaos:
These aren’t even real things. These are just things I want to remember. Imagine being someone with an actual life!
Your Alarm:
Whether you want to take a nap or get a full night of sleep, waking up is pretty important. Getting out the door is pretty important. Hitting whatever goal you want to hit is pretty important. There have been a few times in my life where I’ve suffered a night of bad sleep and had to take a snooze on my lunch hour. This stuff isn’t ideal, but it can help you get through rough days. Whether you use a loud and obnoxious alarm like Online Alarm Clock or select custom alarms by hand in your phone, setting alarms can mean the difference between getting in on time and having to explain to your boss why you’re habitually late.
Ah, yes, because I’m really going to get up the sixth time it rings.
Your Stopwatch:
Long used by fitness enthusiasts as a way to measure time and progress, the stopwatch is an incredible tool for the court reporter. At least once in your career, sit down before you transcribe a job and start running the stopwatch for an hour while you’re transcribing. At the end of an hour, see how many pages you’ve transcribed. In my own career, dependent upon my layout and the subject density, I found I was able to transcribe between 20 to 60 pages an hour. If I had a really bad day, that number could drop to ten pages an hour. This isn’t just useless trivia, it allows you to mentally gauge how much time you need to set aside to complete your work. Let’s say I went to an afternoon deposition and that was 120 pages. I knew that if I got home and sat down at 5 p.m. to do it, it would be done between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. This helped me schedule stuff around my transcription habits. I was able to avoid scheduling recreational time that conflicted with transcribing time because I knew roughly how long almost every transcript would take.
Your Schedulers:
If you use Gmail, you might be surprised to learn you have the option to schedule e-mails. This is helpful if you have a situation where you find time at 1:32 a.m. to draft an e-mail but don’t want to look crazy. You can click the little arrow next to send on the Gmail e-mail on your computer and schedule to send it tomorrow morning, Monday morning, or any time you want. If you’ve ever gotten an e-mail from me at about 8:00 a.m., responded, and then gotten no response from me until about 11:00 a.m., it probably meant that I was unconscious somewhere and had thoughtfully scheduled the e-mail to send to you regardless of what I was doing. I haven’t figured out a way to do this on my phone, but I spend so much time at my desktop / laptop it hardly matters. An additional benefit? The e-mail goes to your “scheduled folder,” so you can cancel it and edit it any time before it sends. If you’ve ever thought “wow, I come up with my best work right after I click send,” e-mail scheduling is for you.
Are you not entertained?
Coincidentally, if you have a WordPress blog or its equivalent, you also have access to a scheduler. Many people have asked me where I find the time to write. Magicians and salespeople don’t reveal their tricks because they want to stay in business. I show you how the magic works and ask you to believe in it anyway. A scheduler will let you do stuff on your time and send it off when it needs to be sent. A two-hour bus commute can turn into a two-hour writing project that launches by itself without any further input from you. Automating broadcasts through a scheduler means productivity gains!
What were you doing Tuesday night? I was writing you.
Your Word Processor & Spreadsheets:
The most famous example of a word processor is Microsoft Word. It helps you type notes, letters, and express yourself in many different ways. Keeping accurate notes on a meeting or situation is vital. It saves you an incredible amount of time and energy trying to remember things. Spreadsheets, like Microsoft Excel, also work this way. You can use spreadsheets as a budget, database, a calculation tool, or even just a list of ideas. The best thing about these tools is that they are so necessary that there are alternatives for people who cannot afford or do not wish to pay for Microsoft products. As of today, I know that Apache Open Office has a Writer and Calc version, which are akin to Word and Excel. Google also offers Google Docs and Google Sheets, also akin to Word and Excel. For the average user, any of these will likely suit your needs, especially if you’re starting from the position of having no word processor or spreadsheets. Personally, I am a fan of Google, because their phone apps allow me to access my documents anywhere with cell service or wi-fi for free.
Your Case Naming Convention:
Many reporters today struggle with naming their cases and folders appropriately. You can burn hours of time looking for a case if you are not careful about how you organize cases. My personal suggestion with regard to standard case naming? Use the date. When you use the date to name a case, if someone places an order, you do not need to know anything else about the job except what year, month, and day. I do not disparage reporters who like to name things by last name, location or any other naming scheme, but the date has always been incredibly effective. If you ask me whether I took court notes on any particular day, I can tell you almost instantly, because it’s all neatly sorted by year, month, day.
In my particular case, I have a “COURT” folder. That folder then has two folders inside it named “TAKEN” and “TRANSCRIBED.” “TAKEN” contains all the notes taken and not yet transcribed. “TRANSCRIBED” contains all the finished transcripts ordered by anyone ever. Inside “TAKEN” and “TRANSCRIBED” there are year folders for each year, and inside the year folders are month folders with the number of the month and the name of the month. Inside each month folder is a file named after the date, the courtroom, and the judge. For “TRANSCRIBED” these files also include the defendant’s name so that they are easily identifiable. If you have the date, I know where the notes are, and I know whether the transcript has been transcribed before. If you’re going to use “my” naming scheme, you must put a zero before single-digit numbers because otherwise the computer will not sort them correctly when you sort by name. This is idiot-proof. I know that because I am an idiot.
I am revealing where I was in 2018 so that time travelers can find me.
Your Ability To Stop Fooling With Tooling:
I think I’ve made my case for all the tools that can help you become better at time management. But to echo the work of Euan Williams, beware of busywork. The more time you spend trying to find the perfect tool, develop the perfect routine, or think about how you will manage your time, the more you will watch time slip away without accomplishing much of anything. Your ability to stop fooling with tooling combined with your ability to identify and use the tools at your disposal will find you the time you need to succeed and get to the things that matter most.
Most of you probably thought I meant something important like a kid, spouse, or life event. Nope. I spend all the time I save by being productive on Mount & Blade Warband.
