September Submissions 2019

There’s a nice little blurb after the list of jobs. Also, if you’re feeling generous, reach out to a new person and tell them to save all the links in my Get A Real Job post.

I’ve neglected to mention CSR Nation in the past but it is a great place to look for work. There’s a Facebook job board too.

The Special Narcotics Prosecutor is hiring a grand jury reporter. Every once in a blue moon these temporary jobs become permanent, so don’t let the word temporary stop you from doing something new.

New York courts want court reporters. Even if you didn’t take the civil service exam, you may be able to grab a provisional position with the state. Also, if you are a senior court reporter, you have an opportunity to become a principal court reporter. Qualified? Go for it!

Southern District of New York, United States District Courts, has an opening for a court reporter posted. Also, by my count, the federal judiciary job search has 11 potential court reporter positions open nationwide.

Plaza continues to advertise that it has positions for court reporting instructors.

I do not have a link, but it is my understanding Bloomfield College in New Jersey is seeking a reporting instructor for theory.

That’s all I’ve got for jobs. Now about superpowers:

NCRA President Max Curry sent out an email blast not too long ago, and in it was the line, “Superman is not coming.” The main theme, in my words, is that there is no one person, idea, or even organization that will solve all the problems. We can do well united, but nobody has all of the answers. Everyone reading this has different strengths and superpowers. Everyone has a chance to make a difference.

Achieve Your Dream Salary Using Retrograde Extrapolation

Sorry in advance to anyone wanting to learn about the science and math behind actual retrograde extrapolation. Just to skim over it, it’s when a person is accused of drunk driving and they only have the alcohol level the person was caught and tested with, often under the legal limit. Using common absorption rates and facts, they work backwards from the number they have in order to surmise and prove the amount of alcohol the person had in their system while driving. Pro tip, if you begin court reporting in criminal matters, you will probably hear this term someday and can get it in your dictionary.

That aside, we should all be cognizant of the fact that we, as freelancers, can extrapolate what we need to do to get where we want to be. I’ll be keeping a spreadsheet that people can put their dream salary into, and it will go on to calculate their ostensible hourly rate, approximate hours of transcription, approximate hours of on-record time, and a suggestible page rate based on the mathematical formula I’m about to give. If you hate math, skip all that and go to the spreadsheet linked above. Remember that this kind of thinking doesn’t have to be all about money. Envision any goal in your mind and work backwards to see the steps you might take to get there. (DROPBOX)

Just keep in mind that if you’re using this tool in the future, there is a concept called inflation where the buying power of money decreases over time. Inflation is more or less inevitable unless the government begins a massive money-destruction program, so the dream salary you put in today will probably be different 5, 10, 20 years down the road. The numbers will all be the same, but the value of every dollar will be less.

The math:

As a freelancer, you’re a business person. Running a successful business does not require great math skills, but they cannot hurt you. Here is some helpful math.

There are certain givens about time and the world. There are 365 days in a year, but only 260 workdays (52 weeks a year * 5 days a week). So let’s say your target is 100,000 a year. That’s about 1,924 a week. That’s about 385 a workday. That’s about 55 per hour for a 7-hour workday. Believe it or not, at a fair pace of about 40 pages an hour, that’s about $1.40 a page. KEEP READING.

Now let’s evaluate some more truths. It takes an average of 2 to 3 hours of transcription for every hour of testimony, in my experience. That mean that to have some semblance of a normal life without an awesome scopist, you would work something more like three days and leave two for transcription. 156 on-record workdays a year. Let’s go back. 1,924 a week divided by three days is 642 a workday. About 92 an hour for a 7-hour workday on the record, but remember that you’re actually working 14 to 21 hours, so it’s actually more like 46 an hour. That’s only $2.30 per page! KEEP READING.

All of this math assumes you have an absolute guarantee of three 7-hour workdays every week for a year. It doesn’t factor in sick days, scheduling issues, or any of the risk that comes with being a self-employed person. Capturing that risk is a difficult task to put into numbers. Let’s try. A quick glance at some Googled numbers for sick days a year says 7 sick days a year is not a horrible number. Let’s take it. You’re your own boss and you’re going to give yourself sick days, right? Further, let’s assume that some percentage of jobs ARE NOT 7-hour writing days. In an informal poll, respondents averaged about 70 percent of their jobs weren’t 7-hour writing days.

Guess what? I just screwed up our whole calculation. So now we have 149 on-record workdays a year. Remember, you still want 100,000, so that’s 672 a workday, 96 an hour on record, $2.40 a page, plus a 70 percent “I am a smart business owner by anticipating risk” upcharge of $1.68. That’s $4.08 a page. You know what kills me? At least one respondent said only five percent of their jobs were 7-hour workdays, which means if we take my very simple assertion that that’s a good way to calculate risk as true, that’s a suggestible rate of 95 percent upcharge, That’s 2.4 + 2.38. That’s almost $4.70 a page. Do you think that’s too high? Consider that retailers often use a rule of 50% markup to set their prices. If we do that in this calculation? $4.80 per page.

Notably, this is all assuming my data is 100% accurate. Surprise, it isn’t. Surprise, business leaders need to make decisions on incomplete data all the time. Working reporters should take note how familiar some of these numbers are starting to sound. I hope you will all take the time to contribute new formulas and ways that people can calculate the cost of doing business. Newbies who have never done this before, take note of how you can use your end goal to work backwards and know exactly what you need to succeed. You want the copy jobs. You want the jobs with good rates. You want expedite, daily, technical, realtime. You want these things because it’s going to bounce your rate up and close the distance between you and your annual salary desires.

The Resurgence

It was looking pretty bad for steno for a while. Schools were closing. Courts were pushing stenographers out. Easy example, a few decades ago, stenographers started getting pushed out of New Jersey courts. The wheels of progress and the winds of change are slow, but I was fortunate enough to see this spot for a stenographic reporter pop up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. This is evidence to me that we can recover lost ground.

And there is certainly ground to recover. The Workers Compensation Board of New York moved to recording and having their stenographers transcribe. Our NYSCRA and others pushed to have the legislature mandate use of stenographic reporting, and the bill to do so was passed by the assembly and senate, but vetoed by Governor Cuomo. Needless to say, whenever New York decides to elect a new governor, it will be time for us to try again.

But seeing such a push by stenographers everywhere to educate the public and continue training each other to provide the best quality records possible, there’s no doubt in my mind that we can continue to take back any areas of the market that were lost.

I’ve gone over the math many times. There are more of us and so many ways to spread the message that stenography is still relevant and superior in this modern world. Old keyboard, new tricks. The best part of it is that as the push continues, people and companies are rising up to start new education programs. Just this year, by my own count, we’ve had something like a half a dozen programs open up and enrolling future stenographers.

The sweeter irony is that digital reporting very well may face the same shortage it tried to use against us. As word about stenography spreads, many transcribers are realizing that stenography can save them time and money in their transcription work, or that they can use stenography as a springboard into a career that is, on average, about double the pay. I’ve seen at least two social media posts in the last seven days about transcribers and digitals switching to steno. Let’s face it, anyone saying stenography is equal is running on intel that’s six years old. At that rate, they’ll catch on and get back on the wagon sometime in the next sixty. We can’t wait for them.

The truth is that from independent people like myself or Mirabai Knight, to major stenographic organizations like ASSCR or NCRA, to all the many consumers, judges, lawyers, stenographic court reporting has a lot of allies. It’s not going away. The New York State Court System said as much. We know the truth. All that’s left is to get out there, tell it, train our students to be the best they can be, and see the resurgence of stenography spread across the country.

Guarding the Record Against Misinformation

Came across some commentary that I’ll call a smooth sales pitch by Steve Townsend, co-founder of AAERT. He correctly points out that the steno shortage has been widely reported, but goes on to draw a number of inferences and conclusions that I find remarkably questionable. There is the claim that steno schools are closing, graduation numbers are dropping, and interest in the career is very low. You can trust him, because he backs that up by saying this is all true.

Well, maybe a few years ago, we could’ve agreed. But this was written August 6, 2019, when stenography is headed back into a steep incline. Programs are picking up stenography. Established programs like Plaza College are creating more awareness through newsworthy events like the court reporting symposium. Several stenographic initiatives have drummed up support and interest for this wonderful field. Just to name a few, NCRA’s A to Z program, Open Steno, Stenotrain, and Project Steno. There are stenographers all around the country asking their local college programs to consider beginning a stenographic course, and interest in the field is ramping up.

Court reporting firms across the country are sticking with steno wherever and whenever it’s available. It’s no surprise that stenography is the desired method because we are four to five times more efficient than the average typist, and have some heavyweight software companies on our team. From advanced note analytics, like CaseCAT’s steno x-ray, to Eclipse’s translation magic, a single modern stenographer has the tools and capability to match the production of multiple transcribers. It was true back in 1972 when stenographers performed with a higher degree of accuracy when tested against audio, and that hasn’t changed. The FJC had all this data back then, and has had the data through the present, and yet somehow the district courts still use many stenographers. Reality tells us we are the superior choice when it comes to quality and cost. Townsend’s great argument, that years ago they said that they could record the court with appropriate management, is a far cry from providing the very best service available to the legal community. If there was a modicum of honesty, Townsend would tell lawyers looking for stenographers to go look in the NCRA Sourcebook. If the shortage is so severe that “soon” there won’t be stenographers, that’s no threat to his business.

There’s just nothing to match the institutional knowledge and commitment we have with regard to preserving the record. AAERT’s fabled Best Practices Guide hides behind a paywall. In stark contrast, our NCRA, the National Court Reporters Association, has publicly maintained its advisory opinions and continues to foster transparency and consumer awareness. It’s entirely open to public scrutiny. Who benefits? The consumer. The lawyers, litigants, and judges we serve every day.

Some easy math will tell you we are a ways off from not seeing stenographers at depositions. The Ducker Report told us about 70 percent of the court reporting field was freelance. That means that you’ll stop seeing stenographers in court long before you’ll see an end to them at depositions — and that’s assuming all the steno projects and programs I mentioned in the beginning fail. That’s assuming that every recruitment effort we’ll make as an industry in the next decade does nothing.

Now add on top of that the fact that if we’re inputting words at 225 wpm and the average typist is getting 40 or 50, you need 5 of them to replace every one of us. Even an exceptional typist at 100 words per minute — and having thousands of such exceptional typists — would mean requiring two transcribers for every single stenographer today. If anybody thinks there’s a problem getting transcripts today, just wait for the future promulgated by AAERT, millions of cases with no one to transcribe. As long as they can sell their equipment, they’re good. The transcript and the legal process is, at best, an afterthought.

I’ve reached out to Legal Tech News about possibly writing a commentary on why stenography is the best tech to protect the record. We’ll see if that pans out. But let this serve as a reminder not to let these folks demoralize you. They have a lot of money riding on most of us staying quiet and letting their voice dictate what is accurate. In reality, the gentlest glance at their arguments reveals a fragile facade. This is all true.

August 12, 2019 Update:

Eric Allen, ASSCR President, got his own commentary published on Law.com. This is precisely what I meant in terms of us actively participating in the conversation.

The vTestify Lie

I’ve often worried we too often buy into hype from voice recognition sellers. Dragon represents itself as being 99 percent accurate, but only has about a 3-star rating. Opened up to scrutiny, VR and digital recording companies don’t make the cut.

So we had a company mentioned on Facebook called vTestify. They brag about all the money they can save people on depositions. Just knowing what I’ve reported in the past, other voice recognition companies have raised a lot of money. Verbit raised $20 million. Trint raised something like $160 million. As far as I can tell, vTestify raised $3 million. Either they’re 50 times more efficient than everybody else or they’re woefully underfunded and their investors are set to lose while the company lurches along burning capital. Let that sink in for the next time somebody is trying to sell you the future, investors!

I would’ve left it there, but then another reporter brought up that they have a calculator. The claims there are laughable. They claim that they can save attorneys $3,198 per deposition. I don’t know what reporters in North Carolina are charging, but I know here in New York I could get somewhere around $4.00 a page, and maybe on a great day a $100 appearance fee. A pretty thick day is about 200 pages, only ever getting to that 300 or 400 page count occasionally. So take 200 pages multiplied by 4. 800. Add on that sweet appearance fee, and maybe it comes to 900 bucks. Even real-time reporters only charge a buck or two a hookup, so even with 6 hookups, we’re still only talking maybe a $2,000 day. We can all acknowledge that these glamorous multi-thousand dollar days exist, but the bottom line is that’s not the norm and vTestify isn’t actually saving anybody a dime. Their calculator doesn’t even make any sense. When I added the numbers they gave, I got $3,646. Somehow their calculator comes up with $4,329.

It gets better — or worse — you decide! Then we have this snippet about the court reporter shortage. Using their numbers and assuming it’s totally true, they say there are 23,000 reporters to cover 3 million depositions. What a crisis! Except when you take three million and divide that by 23,000, you get 130 and change. If every reporter took 131 depositions a year, using vTestify’s own numbers, we’d be just fine. There are about 260 weekdays in a year. Succinctly, if every reporter worked half the weekdays in a year, by vTestify’s own argument, there’d be no shortage. Let’s not forget all of the steno-centric initiatives like Open Steno, A to Z, Stenotrain, and Project Steno, that have taken place since the Ducker Report to bring people into this field. Are we really expected to believe there was zero impact and things went exactly as predicted? I don’t, and you shouldn’t either. Let’s put this another way. If the median salary of a reporter is about 57,000, reporters are only taking home, on average, 5,000 a month gross. So how can vTestify be saving anyone 3k or 4k per deposition when the average reporter is only grossing 5k per month? They can’t. But that doesn’t stop them from saying they can.

We have one decision to make in this field. Are we going to get out there and educate the consumer, or are we going to lay down and let these irresponsible companies fake it until they make it? There’s zero compunction with lying to make a buck, and customers need to know. Smart purchasers have already seen through this BS and stuck with stenographers through thick and thin, and they’ve done better for it. Tried, tested, efficient; stenographic reporters are the way to go. Maybe vTestify will figure that out and make the switch themselves!

Remember all this next time you see somebody peddling a similar product. And next time you’re making a sales pitch, ask your buyer what their monthly budget for depositions looks like. If it’s more than $5,000 a month, I have a few numbers above that say they can save a whole lot by switching to stenography.

August Applications 2019

I’ve turned this into a fun monthly post for job postings I know about. I encourage others to like, comment, and share any postings you have.

In the court system we only have the court reporter and citywide supervising court reporter positions open. Good luck to every applicant looking to join NYSUCS!

Against all odds, the Bronx DA is still looking for a grand jury stenographer.

Southern District, which is federal court, wants a court reporter. This is the first federal NY job to open up in the last few months, so if you’re looking to take that career path, take the shot. Even if they don’t take you, they’ll probably tell you what will better your chances next time. There are potentially up to eight other federal positions available nationwide.

Plaza College is seeking court reporting instructors. Start teaching the future of court reporting today!

Esquire continues to make efforts to advertise for freelance court reporters on sites like Glassdoor. If they don’t meet your rates, your best shot is opening the discussion and asking them to. It’s clear they need qualified people. Why not you?

If none of these are for you, it’s time to hit the pavement and start looking for opportunities. They’re out there, but it’s a careful mix of effort and networking that’ll bring them to you — or you to them!

Can’t Outspend? Outsell.

When many of us were in school we were given a line, steno sells itself. Many of us can probably relate to that. Most steno companies, upon hearing you’re a professional stenographer, will give you a shot. Many of us in New York came out during a big slump (2010) where steno wasn’t selling itself, but even then, it was trivial to get work. All we had to do was say we’d been working three months, and “they’d” go from sorry no work for you to “oh, here are the keys to the kingdom.” Not all of us knew it, but that’s how it was. Agency owners are good at reading confidence, and what we’re offered is often linked directly to our confidence level.

Of course, the following may be an incorrect assumption on my part, but bear with me: We have entered an era where steno is not selling itself. Company owners are being pulled into the mindset that the voice recognition is “good enough,” and some of the major players, like Veritext, have been pushing recording.

I should note, in full disclosure, that I have not been able to corroborate what I’m about to say with documents or pictures as I usually do. It’s pulled from the social media sphere, so consider it anecdotal for now, and do not be surprised if agencies start railing against social media. Even as some claim that Veritext sent an email stating they were not using recording in states like New Jersey, others have come forward across social media to say yes, this is being done behind our backs. Many of us are reportedly asking lawyers what they’re seeing, and they are seeing digital getting peddled to them relentlessly.

So what do we do when we have major players putting their resources into our replacement? Who here thinks they have more money that Veritext or their owners? Hopeless, some would say. But there is something that many reporters are realizing: This alleged shortage is a great time get private clients and begin new businesses. If Veritext or some entity swears they can’t get a stenographer, some lawyers have allegedly called their insurers and gotten authorization to use a local stenographer or stenographic firm. All their marketing moves and salespeople count for nothing if a stenographer finds themselves in the right place at the right time.

We’re the boots on the ground. We have more contact with law office staff and employees. We have the keys to the kingdom. But the people at the top have made it very clear that they’ll do whatever is convenient for them. It’s time we do the same for the survival of our industry. We don’t work for them? Try it. It might just give us access to their clients. We work for them? Guess who already has access.

Even if we don’t want to handle private clients, we could always network with an existing firm owner out there and get them clients in exchange for the work or a share. If we’re even moderately successful, big companies will be offering to buy back their business from us in a few years, and the field will be a lot healthier once the market share is spread out. Our actions determine the future. The conversation today is steno or digital. Tomorrow it just might be stay steno or slam sand.

Practice, Finger Drill, WKT, Dictation Marker Update

I don’t have a lot of volunteers helping me test the things I put out, and I had inadvertently put out the wrong link to my three programs. I have updated the links at the top of all of these pages to go to a .zip download. You unzip the folder, double click the .exe inside, and it will run the program without installation. Note that most computers will pop up with something saying this program may harm your computer. The code to these programs is public, you can read it for yourself and ask your computer people, it will not harm your computer.

Transcript Marker – This will take a .txt transcript and mark it for speed. Note that it has been updated so that it will not count Q., A., COURT:, or WITNESS: as a word.

Finger Drill Generator – This program can create finger drills for you. You can also save and load custom lists of words. Note that if you share your saved lists with me, I can include them with future versions. Also note that you should not ask the generator to make files larger than 500 WPM for 300 minutes. That’s 150,000 words. It’s more than enough. I am cautioning you because if you tell it to do 1 million words for 1 million minutes, it’ll happily sit there and generate a text file that large, take a long time to do that, and possibly eat all the space on your computer.

WKT Randomizer – Creates a random written knowledge test. Note that there are small errors in this program and additions that will be made when I finish the Stenonymous Suite.

Also know that I am continuing to try to provide quality dictation on my Youtube. The QA Mario dictation is a little slower than the marked speed because of a previous error where the program counted the Q and A as a word. All future dictations should not have this problem. If you’d like to contribute dictation, I am budgeting about $5 to $10 a month to pay for guest dictators right now, and we should talk. Think along the lines of $5 for a five-minute take.

July Jobs Jubilee (2019)

One of our anonymous Stenonymous fans asked if this month’s job post was going to be the July Jobs Report. Obviously, we’ve got a lot more creativity than that. We’re bringing you the July Jobs Jubilee at the end of JUNE.

There are still a number of state court positions posted statewide. The court reporter application is up, and test takers will be going for the exam to obtain permanent positions Saturday. Bronx Supreme still has a principal court reporter opening, filing ends July 12. New York County is seeking a supervising court reporter, filing ends July 17.

The Bronx Grand Jury Reporter position remains posted. As of writing, there are no other positions posted in NYC to my knowledge, with the understanding that the Queens DA site is down. Perhaps they’re remaking the website?

There is no federal New York slot open to my knowledge, but there are federal job opportunities across the country. Southern District Reporters seem to take resumes on a continuous basis, because they’re just that awesome.

Esquire continues its quest to attract freelancers.

Plaza college continues to seek court reporting instructors as it does its part to keep the field shining and new talent coming in.

That’s all the information I’ve got on New York positions. Feel free to comment with more jobs info.

June 28, 2019 Edit:

A link was previously given for Manhattan. Upon clicking in more, the job does not exist as of writing. See Get A Real Job for my take on finding grand jury work.

Shortage Solutions 6: Pay the Piper

Everybody knows the story about the Pied Piper. A town has a terrible vermin problem and the Pied Piper comes, promising to do away with the problem. The Piper uses his or her flute, pipe, or whatever musical instrument the story calls for, and plays a magical tune that lets him or her lead all the rats to the river to be drowned. Upon the Piper making good on their promise, the town refuses to pay the Piper, and the Piper uses that magical tune to lead all the children away. The moral of the story is pay your debts — or else!

When I was a newbie, people had no trouble telling me I needed to pay my dues, accept whatever an agency was willing to toss me, and move forward. Those people were right. In the beginning, one needs to be hungry and establish themselves. So it’s with some amusement that I get to say now to all of you: Make sure after that initial starter period that the Piper is paid. Court reporters, you are the Piper. The agency is not the Piper. The agency went through the trouble of marketing and receiving work to dish out to you, but if any one particular agency didn’t exist, the depositions would still be occurring, the demand is more or less fixed.

In the face of fixed demand and a fairly specialized skill set of deposition or stenographic reporting, it makes sense that as the supply of court reporters goes down, the price must rise. Here in New York we were pretty depressed on rates. Agencies were offering $3.25 a page and 25 cents on a copy, if that. Things were bad. Now the shoe is literally on the other foot, and it’s time for reporters to demand to be paid, and for agencies to pay them before the reporters take your children away.

I have to say, one starter company that seems to get this shifting paradigm is NexDep. It looks like they want to pay Reporters 4 a page and 2 a copy. 2 dollars, just so you know, not two cents. I reached out to Daniel Perelman, ostensibly NexDep’s founder, just to get a little more insight on what they’re doing or things they’d like reporters to know about their company.

My very first question was whether they had a referral program like many of the success stories out there, and he confirmed that NexDep does have a referral program where a percentage of every job from the referred client would go to the referrer.

Next I asked about wait time, and Mr. Perelman explained they don’t currently bill for wait time, but also stated he was open to it and understood the need to bill for wait time in the event a reporter was sitting and waiting for hours on their time. He did also mention to me that the reporter’s full-day appearance fee is always given, even if the deposition is a half hour long.

Asked about RFPs and whether NexDep was taking a step into any of that territory, Mr. Perelman stated that they were open to any business opportunity, but also noted that his experience with RFP contracts tended to result in low pay for reporters. My takeaway was that if it wasn’t getting his reporters paid, he wasn’t going to take it.

Finally, asked if he had anything he wanted to tell reporters or the field about his company, he wrote, “Nexdep is the first to market on-demand court reporting platform. We’re popular not because of our low rates, but because we make scheduling incredibly fast and simple on the client end, while also making the accepting of jobs fair and easy on the reporter end. We’ve made freelance court reporting a truly freelance career again.” Honestly, I first met Mr. Perelman at the Plaza College Court Reporting Symposium, and he was honest and upfront about not being a reporter, but his company policies tell me he knows who we are and the value we bring to the table.

Now all this said, I have definitely had some anecdotes from reporters who said “I signed up for NexDep and haven’t gotten anything yet.” So that indicates to me that there’s definitely a larger market share for NexDep to go out there and grab — but maybe this is an opportunity for all the other agencies and all reporters to figure out that one sure route to retain reporting professionals is to make sure they’re getting paid for doing the lion’s share of the work.