Words Warp the World — You Can Too!

Obligatory mention, we’ve had guest writers Chris DeGrazio & Deneé Vadell, as well as Cassandra Caldarella, over the last week. This is more or less why I built Stenonymous. A sharing platform. A blog for all our collective knowledge and ideas uninhibited by the politics of the field. If you have something to share, reach out to me about getting connected as a contributor or republishing your event information. I may ask for edits or more information if something is particularly likely to get me sued, but otherwise, you’ve got an ally to help spread your message. This includes corporations, associations, and all of you reading.

This is all written keeping in mind that the people that contribute to this platform with information, money, or time are an integral part of the success and “blueprint” discussed.

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Many speak through me as “Stenonymous sources,” and this helps us communicate ideas that could be used against individuals. The corporate climbers of the profession routinely copy and paste messages to their buddies in agencies so that agencies can retaliate against freelancers. This is not unlike what the cowards at Naegeli tried on me and other court reporters. Companies know they have a great deal of power over “solo practitioners,” and they’ll put their knee on the neck of any one individual whenever it’s convenient. And this is horrifying for freelancers. There are like 5 national companies in the United States. Despite the disgusting state of statistics on our field, Veritext reportedly has 16% of the revenue in this field and is the largest, so let’s just assume the others have carved out at least 4% each. 16 + 4 * 4 = 32. You don’t like big boxes? You could be locked out of 32% of the field’s revenue. Think about that next time you tell someone not to work for them. Think about what would happen if roughly 30% of the field tried to scramble to all the other agencies for work. Think about how difficult it would be to gain the cooperation of around 30% of reporters to even do that (accepting that that percentage may be, in actuality, higher or lower. My bet? Higher.) Our brains love easy solutions. Reality does not. There is no easy solution to “5 ‘people’ control a third of the industry that is my livelihood.”

But through me, Stenonymous sources are able to talk to you.

Insight shared from a Stenonymous source on the east coast of the United States.

Sometimes people want to be credited, or partially credited.

Insight shared with Stenonymous by Ashley, a Steno Student

Then, of course, I share my own insights, based on the very many interviews, conversations, and analyses I’ve had over the years.

Christopher Day’s musing on the Milgram experiment as it relates to modern leadership

Christopher Day’s musing on the confidence of people who are wrong.

When I was a young man, there was this debate of talk v. action. More or less it boiled down to “what you write or say online means nothing. It’s what you do that matters.” For a long time, this put me in a box of not speaking out and accepting whatever was done to me by others in the profession, rightly or wrongly. Because talking about it didn’t matter. It was only my actions that mattered. Right? After all, those older and wiser than me believed it. I’ve come to learn that talking matters a lot. Talking is the first step to action. We combine with likeminded people and come up with new information, solutions, and things that enhance our lives.

If nothing else, words change the framing of things we see and experience, thereby changing the way we think about those things, and consequently changing our actions. I’ve seen shared reality talked about in the sense of close relationships. Now imagine that in a wider, professional sense. When we shared the “reality” that the shortage was impossible to solve, things felt very hopeless. What was the point in recruiting? It wasn’t until well after I published my findings that the STTI Bloc had intentionally framed the issue to look as bleak as possible so that stenographers would give up that the National Court Reporters Association admitted Ducker’s report was outdated through STRONG and an NCRA president called it debunked. It wasn’t until after I called out the NCRA for its behavior that it released the white paper I had contributed to. It wasn’t until after I documented the Speech-to-Text Institute’s anticompetitive behavior that it got sued and shut down its website. It wasn’t until after I started publishing about the rates in New York that copy rates started to go from $0.25 to $1.00 and beyond. It wasn’t until after I spoke out against the shoddy reporting of Victoria Hudgins that the hit pieces stopped. Yeah, you can throw shade on me and say my writing and work didn’t do any of that. And you’ll even find people that agree with you.

Stenonymous.com shares a text demonstrating spitballer mentality.

But at a certain point it’s just denialism by the doomers of our profession that crave being right. “The golden age of court reporting is over.” “Tipping points are hard.” “Digital isn’t going away.” Repeated over and over by people that don’t know what they’re talking about, warping the world closer and closer to hopelessness and apathy. Perhaps we can learn something by examining the time that ChatGPT made up fake case law for a lawyer who foolishly relied on it. It’s trained off of our printed ideas, realities, and beliefs, and it can be a great asset. It can also confidently spout nonsense. At 33, I truly believe that this is a part of what makes us human. We mostly all have the capacity to be confidently wrong or unsurely correct. It’s no wonder that tools that study us pick up our same habits.

This is also very much why I take such a hard stance against propaganda meant to mislead people. It inspires them to be compliant rather than be their own people with their own ideas. What if I had simply complied with the groupthink of belief in the stenographer shortage and the futility of it all? My bet is that our median pay would fall faster. Who would that benefit? All the “people” telling you that your job is obsolete. All the “people” telling others that your job is obsolete:

Digital reporter reaches out to Stenonymous about becoming a stenographer.

NOTE: People is in quotes because “corporations are people.” This makes some sense in theory because groups of people should not lose their rights simply because they form a corporation, but in practice it’s twisted to offer more rights to corporations than people through their consolidated power (money). Succinctly, I accept the reality of the law we live under, but I strongly disagree with its everyday application.

Words are a game changer. And I genuinely feel I’ve proven that for anyone willing to explore what I’ve done. But what I’ve done is also a blueprint that tells you exactly how powerful you are. It doesn’t have to be related to court reporting. Any issue that is important to you can be given life if you are brave enough to talk about it and find others who will assist. That is a message I want to share with the world because my whole life has been dominated by people going on and on about how nothing can ever change because things have always been done a certain way, then followed by things being changed by those daring enough to change them, for better or worse. Political, family, social, and professional issues all silenced by “well, what can you do?” (🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️) In many situations in life, there is someone that stands to gain from your apathy. As we learned from Star Wars, they win by making you think you’re alone. They win by making you believe they hold all the cards. These are concepts that have existed for at least a thousand years wielded against you, often by people with money or power.

“I may be only one person, but I can be one person who makes a difference.” Vadra Francene, Age 10, Seen at a Disney World attraction

And to those that would make my fellow reporters feel they are alone, just know that your power over them has an expiration date. It turns out that reminding people again and again that they are powerful and that their thoughts and feelings are valid is terrifyingly effective at countering your power play. It turns out that when you tell people straight up “I will use my influence to make things better for all of you,” people start paying attention and contributing. It turns out that as soon as people realize that my neurodiversity apparently predisposes me to being more honest than neurotypical people, their natural, understandable bias against me being “weird” fades and they begin to trust.

Stenonymous statistics as of December 10, 2023.

STAR called for unity. Funny how the digital reporters are realizing that I’m all about unity, and they’re ready to make their voices heard too:

Digital Reporter Shares Field Insights with Stenonymous

Digital Reporter Shares Field Insights with Stenonymous – Verification Pending As of Publication.

We are everyday people. As James McAllister said the other day: We Are Power!

And this platform continues to thrive thanks to your…

Addendum:

12/14/23, a reporter mentioned to me that it’s possible the “digital reporter,” that passed me the information in the ending sequence is actually a bot. Upon review of the profile, it’s possible this is the truth, as it contains very little public information and seems to be a newer profile. I’m uncertain why a bot would come into my network to talk about issues with digital court reporting. But if I’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that anything is possible.

I subsequently re-examined my private messages with this person and if it is a bot it is incredibly convincing. There were concerns about anonymity among other things.

Court Reporter Breaks Silence, Advises Defendant: “Kid, Take the Deal…”*

On Monday morning in the Wyoming Court of Great Big Palatial Justice, Sal Nuturile stood beside his lawyer as the prosecution put a plea offer on the record.

According to several eyewitnesses, when the prosecutor, Dan Fielding, explained that the top count would be dismissed after the plea and the defendant would be able to plead only to the E felony and receive 1 year instead of the 2 and a half to 7 he might have otherwise received, Mr. Nuturile seemed discontent with the offer. The official court reporter, Buddy Rydell, began coughing loudly before locking eyes with Nuturile. “Kid, take the deal.” Audible gasps filled the room. Court reporters, known for their silence and relative neutrality, are not known for interjecting themselves into proceedings and advising defendants in open court. “What? Look, I’ve been doing this a long time.” Suddenly he bellowed “IT’S THE BEST HE’S GONNA GET!”

Pointing accusingly at the defendant’s lawyer, Atticus Finch, Rydell got louder. “You! Did you finish law school? Because your client’s about to lose the best deal he’s gonna get! They’re only keeping the offer open for today! Chop, chop, pal. Is this Legal Aid or Legal Malpractice?”

Mr. Finch reportedly requested that the Court go back on the record and return to the proceeding, and suggested a second call to discuss the offer with his client. The court reporter’s antics continued without pause. “What is there to discuss? Is your case load not heavy enough? Are you really going to miss a chance to plead out on a sweetheart deal?”

By then court officers had assisted Rydell to his feet and began escorting him out. According to a source speaking on the condition of anonymity, the reporter has been checked into a psychiatric facility where they will pretend to treat him until insurance can no longer be billed.

We reached out to the chambers of Judge Chamberlain Haller for comment but received no response. The Office of Obtuse and Obstructive Court Managerial Paperwork released a statement that the court is bringing in digital court reporters because, quote, “stenography appears to drive people insane. It’s definitely not the fact that we certify them at 225 words per minute with 95% accuracy and then expect them to take down spurts of 250 words per minute testimony at around 99% accuracy. It can’t be that society cycles back and forth between telling them their job is obsolete and super important, and has been doing that for literally half a century. If they don’t like the fact that their job is dependent on people speaking clearly enough to be understood word-for-word, and that nobody involved, including lawyers, witnesses, etc, wants to cooperate with that process, then they should just get a different job and eat the loss of schooling and equipment. Then we can do like the California Court CEOs and claim shortage while we use the money earmarked by the legislature for attracting court reporters for hookers and blackjack.”

Check back for more updates.

*None of this is real. It’s another creative writing exercise based off a rumor I heard a long time ago. Feel free to republish, adapt, and so on and so forth. It can also be used as a thought exercise for our actions in court and how they may be perceived by others, but most of us are fairly aware of that.

Anybody in the audience that would be interested in a creative writing contest? When I was in the NYSCRA board we had a poetry contest with blind judges to avoid favoritism. We also allowed contestants to choose whether their work would be published and whether they would be credited or anonymous. I could easily set up the same here. If I get at least 10 comments below with interest in such a thing I will look into doing something within the next few months.

Thanks again. Have a wonderful week all.

Local Court Reporter Takes His Own Arraignment*

On Thursday the Onondaga Criminal Court arraignments had a surprise visit from the embattled z-list court reporting personality, X, formerly known as George Santos. Santos, having been charged with being too compliant with police officers, was discovered to be a stenographer just shortly into the proceeding.

Stenonymous publishes “real” court transcript for creative writing exercise.

After the reveal, Mr. Santos was asked by the Court to relieve the official court reporter taking the proceedings. Mr. Santos allegedly turned to her, smiled, and said, “don’t worry, I got this. I’m the NCRA Fastest Fingers Award Winner of 2023. Elon Musk is going to buy you a horse for your trouble.”

Once Santos was behind the keys of the stenotype, the rest of it went well for him. In the transcript obtained by Court Tee Vee, an unprecedented situation unfolded.

THE COURT: Well, Mr. Santos, it seems there’s been a mistake. Your lawyer, Mr. Richards, has pointed out that the accusatory instrument has a fatal defect. The case is dismissed and sealed.

THE PROSECUTOR: Oh, Mr. Santos, we are so, so sorry for our malicious prosecution. Please don’t use the transcript of this proceeding to sue us.

MR. RICHARDS: My client is a benevolent and understanding person. In addition to being the first man to the moon and the only person to single handedly save an entire school bus of children with his left pinky, he donated enough to charity to end world hunger and eliminated unemployment worldwide. There’s no reason for him to sue you, and your apology is humbly accepted.

THE COURT: By the way, Mr. Santos, thank you for ending the court reporter shortage fraud by creating a controversy so obnoxious that there isn’t a single person that hasn’t heard of stenography. That was a bold move, and it really paid off for your profession, they should be proud.

THE DEFENDANT: Your Honor, it was no trouble. The court reporters living here and working every day to make this county shine, they’re the real heroes.

(Whereupon, court officers and court clerks all broke into tears as the sun shone through an open window and a beam of light cast a spotlight on X, formerly known as George Santos. As he exited the courtroom, a flock of doves carrying the mice from Cinderella fluttered through the window and dropped their furry friends, and everyone left the courtroom while singing We All Lift Together from the worldwide critically acclaimed MMORPG Warframe. Yes, including the mice and doves.)

Critics question the parenthetical at the end. Court officers, known for their professionalism, helpfulness, and dedication to the safety of courthouses, and clerks, also known for their professionalism and dedication to the just and fair operation of courthouses, simply don’t do that kind of thing. A source speaking on the condition of anonymity stated that in reality, the relieved stenographer was actually 1,567% more qualified than Santos, so we’re not really sure what occurred that day.

Breaking news. Check back for more updates.

*None of this is real. It’s part of Stenonymous Whatever I Want Weekends, a thing I just made up for when I want to do something different like this parody of so many flavors. According to a source that wishes to remain anonymous, in the incident this was based on, the erroneously-charged case was dismissed and sealed 14 days after arraignment. The source believes that a small percentage of our field does not understand the gravity of our work and how it can impact people’s lives, and that by making this excerpt and attached writing exercise public, we can all be reminded that anyone can be charged with anything, and that treating all lawyers, litigants, and the public equally is imperative. “It could be any of us one day,” he said.

Thanks again, Anonymous. I share these beliefs, but even if I didn’t, I’d probably have published anyway for the literary and conceptual value.

From Anonymous and myself, thank you for making this profession shine every day with your hard work and dedication.

Veritext: Our Digital Reporters Provide Realtime…

The statement source link is found here.

We were all told realtime is the future, realtime is valuable, realtime is job security. Manufacturers, agencies, associations — everybody knew realtime was king. There were only fringe idiots like that Christopher Day guy who pointed out that if you trade away all the non-realtime work to the digital folks then the realtime reporters become more easily replaceable by virtue of having no political or pushback power. Everyone pointed and laughed at his stupid ideas and that was the end of that.

Well now I’m showing you in print that they intend to equalize you with digital court reporting. Stenograph had also made public statements that indicated as much.

I read up on enough law, science, and business to put these allegations in print and make it easy to Google the court reporter shortage fraud / Veritext fraud. The corporate fraudsters didn’t really have an answer for it. They got caught with their pants down, gave up on Speech-to-Text Institute, and ran over to STAR.

My position is growing stronger with time. My current understanding of defamation law is that pretty much anything in my state published over a year ago can never be challenged. That significantly diminishes my formerly overblown fear of a BS lawsuit. These companies have allowed publication of things that describe their fraud and lies to the public for over two years.

Which also means we’ve entered a period in court reporting history where the largest court reporting firm in the country was accused of fraud and didn’t care enough about its reputation among stenographers enough to do or say anything about it in the middle of what it outwardly professed as a massive shortage. Doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? I wonder who could have seen this coming…

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Addendum:

A Stenonymous reader gave me permission to repost their social media post.

– – –

After this post was launched, a person claiming to work in Veritext sales wrote to me, in pertinent part,

“Hi Christopher. I work for Veritext in sales. Good morning. In re your most recent post about DRs providing real-time, I can assure you of the following:

Veritext’s technology, since our DR software/hardware implementation is proprietary, as of today is not capable of providing real-time.
As someone who works in sales, I can assure that I nor any of my colleagues are telling attorneys that DRs can provide real-time. First, it’s not true and second the attorneys who want real-time also tend to want stenographers.

I cannot speak to why the website says that, but I’d imagine it was either put together by someone high up on totem pole who knows very little about the industry, or a third-party who knows even less.

Overall, your concerns about real-time being possible via DRs are real—it’s just the nature of technology. However, as of today, it’s not possible nor are we actively selling a service that can’t be provided.”

Trey Perez Lawsuit Dismissed Against TCRA, et al. November 2023

53 – Order granting in part and denying in part Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.pdf Download

Trey Perez’s lawsuit against many defendants has been partially dismissed. Notably, it seems that plaintiff Depo Notes lacked standing because it was not complying with the law. For many of the defendants, insufficient facts were pled to allege group boycott or illegal anticompetitive behavior.

The case against the Texas Court Reporters Association is done.

The case was also ended against Kennedy Reporting Service and Lorrie Schnoor; Sonia Trevino and Sherri Fisher; Shelly Tucker; Court Reporters Clearinghouse.

Lexitas and Southwest are still stuck defending against claims.

I want to note that the study I always mention, Racial Disparities in Automatic Speech Recognition, was also mentioned in the order.

Texas Federal Court acknowledges the Racial Disparities in Automatic Speech Recognition (Western District)

I see no mention of the Speech-to-Text Institute, so I’ll have to check PACER, but as of my last update, they were still in the case and hadn’t made a proper motion to dismiss, instead opting to send a “response to civil action.” I may not be a lawyer, but I previously believed that a response to civil action was an “answer” or a “motion to dismiss.”

I can’t help but continue to strongly believe that non-digital providers might be able to make a claim stick against Speech-to-Text Institute and many of the corporations that were represented on it, including Veritext and US Legal Support. Think about it.

STTI Bloc 1) Engaged in a conspiracy to manipulate the market toward digital reporting. This is all but assured considering they’ve been unable to write an effective cease-and-desist letter, or any letter, or even make a comment stating these allegations are untrue, for over two years of me publishing about it. 2) This inherently restrains trade. If you’re collectively using your considerable market power (Veritext alone may be more than 16% of the market’s revenue) to push out non-digital providers and then using your considerable market influence (there are only like five “nationals”) to convince consumers those non-digital providers don’t exist, what can it be called but a restraint of trade? You’re trying to destroy those non-digital businesses or force them to buy digital tech from your buddy, fellow STTI conspirator, Stenograph. 3) in a particular market. Well, court reporting.

And that’s just looking at those elements for group boycott. I’m quite sure if I went through all the law in the United States, I’d find other things that make it illegal to get together, publish substantial lies about a market, and mislead consumers, jobseekers, and other small businesses. Maybe there are laws against deceptive business practices and false advertising. Maybe. Who knows?

(NOTE: Facetious. Those laws exist.)

And the best part is that to claim they didn’t know the information they were publishing was wrong, the multimillion dollar corporations have to go under oath and say they never did the math on the statistics they published and it didn’t seem odd that they were projecting a shortage constituting a third of the field by 2023 with likely less than five percent of their business going uncovered, a number that existed before the 2018 “tipping point.”

Maybe this is a runaway train at this point. Maybe some stenographic and other non-digital providers are going to realize they have standing and take a crack at STTI and the corporations that were represented on its board. I reached out to Lex Ferenda a long time ago and they basically said that if we could find an appropriate claimant and lawyer, they’d consider funding the litigation. At the very least, perhaps people that have suffered damage will reach out to the FTC and their state attorney general and let them know to Google the court reporter shortage fraud and that this fraud has hurt their business, or how it has hurt their business.

If you’re reading, Trey, good luck against Lexitas and STTI. If you’re able to get to discovery, you may very well uncover the things that I was hoping to uncover through my media publishing strategy and get a nice fat settlement when their lawyers realize they don’t want that stuff to be public. And if they broke the law… why not?

NOTE: Some dismissals are without prejudice, so the complaint could conceivably be amended to allege facts satisfactory to sustain a claim against some of these defendants. I’ll continue to check the case on PACER periodically for documents.

California Court Reporters Board: U.S. Legal Violated the Board’s Practice Act…

A Stenonymous source has given me access to a letter from the California Court Reporters Board.

A letter from the California Court Reporters Board stating that the CCRB determined a violation of the board’s practice act by U.S. Legal Support

Quite frankly, I think this is great. We’ve had a real problem with licensing authorities shirking their responsibilities generally in the field of court reporting. And in fact, when I wrote to the Attorney General of California about some suspicious activity, they replied more or less that they wouldn’t be investigating because they’re tasked with defending the board. So it was kind of this bizarre world where, theoretically, if the people on the board were directly taking money from a big box, nobody would investigate anyway. LOL.

That was pretty distressing to me that something could be set up that stupidly and that none of the players in the game have the self-awareness to look at it and say “gee, that’s a stupid design. It makes corruption unassailable if the thing meant to investigate crimes won’t investigate crimes because it defends the thing handing out the licenses. Just bribe the thing handing out the licenses and it’ll never be found out by operation of the way this is designed.” Better yet, the players in the game would probably defend the stupidity of the design by insisting there haven’t been problems so far. But the bright side is that if the licensing board is doing its job now, my talking points from other blog posts about possible corruption in our field generally are moot. Sort of? I guess?

Special thanks to the CCRB for realizing that we’re not laying down on these important issues until we’re all retired, which was 2033 by Ducker’s best (outdated) estimate. Odd that the companies started the celebration a decade and a half earlier, all unanimously agreeing that digital was the only way forward. If only we paid dues to a large national organization that had the ability to read the report that that national organization itself commissioned and let everyone know that what some companies were saying about the shortage was untrue based on that organization’s own recruitment efforts. It would be a shame if a hobbyist blogger got around to doing all that before the multiple multimillion-dollar entities and net worths in the field of court reporting.

Anyone from Protect Your Record Project or California in the audience? What are your thoughts?

P.S.

For non-court reporter readers and my extremely slow-growing revolution of anti-corporate activists bewildered by my capitalist leanings, we do have a national organization. My jokes don’t always land, especially via text, but I try. Oh, my God, do I try.

Deep thanks to my Stenonymous source. I don’t say it enough, but without you and people like you, I’d have nothing. No information. No artistic/autistic vision of how to get from point A to point B. No brand. This is my bond with everybody, the more support I get, the more I’ll use it to do the right thing. The more we can speak out against and call for the redesign of stupid systems.

Happy Halloween!

Yes, Companies Are Advertising Digital

I had an exchange the other day where someone asked whether Veritext was advertising digital, and it caught me by surprise. I’ve been pretty active on social media and this site sharing my stuff. Did I fail to publish about this? Can’t remember. So here it is.

As best I can tell, Veritext has been publishing about digital pretty much every day for about a year. Thanks to my algorithm, I see their ads often. At one point in December of last year I started to write down when I saw digital and when I saw steno to try to check my confirmation bias and see if what I believed was true — I believed the digital ads were coming up more.

I recorded somewhere around 1 steno ad for every 10 digital ads. I discontinued recording what I saw after that, but I still see digital ads frequently, albeit less so.

Now, this result is not 100% reliable. There are many, many, factors that can impact this.

But the ultimate thing I want to get across in sharing these is that yes, for anyone that missed it, companies are advertising for digital. And I want people to think about how companies were telling people “there’s nothing they can do.” And I want people to think about how at least two of those companies had reps in the Speech-to-Text Institute, an organization that fraudulently stated the stenographer shortage was impossible to solve and distributed materials meant to manipulate our market and mislead consumers, court administrators, court reporters, students, and the public. So while companies were busy telling all of you there was nothing they could do, they were actually doing quite a lot, it was just working against you, court reporters, so they couldn’t tell you out loud. But that’s okay. “It’s just business,” they say, as they do everything in their power to create a market glut of reporters and push your incomes lower.

Well, it’s just business. And my business is information. If you like that? Donate on the front page of Stenonymous.com. It’s one of those weird jackpot type situations where either I get a little money to supplement my media activities or I get super lucky and retire into doing this advocacy stuff. If you don’t like that, the blog is on sale for $6 million. You can tear the whole thing down and destroy half a decade of my work for cheap. Serious inquiries only.

Ad log from Veritext with a U.S. Legal Support Ad on the bottom.

Digital Court Reporters, Beware of Vipers Calling For Unity

Don’t know much about STAR, never needed to in my 14-year career, because it’s irrelevant. But I just wanted to put this out there for the digital court reporters that read my stuff. These folks are heavily influenced by, if not directly controlled by, Stenograph. Ask me how I know.

Stenograph, as we all know, is the company that spent at least a decade, maybe two, telling stenographers stenographic realtime reporting was the future and then quietly pivoted to calling digital reporting technologies realtime. Just for a quick recap, support times took a nosedive while they worked on the digital stuff, they encouraged the loss of stenographic jobs in Illinois, and Stenograph has a company president that calls citizen journalists that report things about his company intellectually challenged. Personally, I’m willing to completely forgive that they were part of a propaganda outfit meant to push agencies, students, lawyers, and even stenographers toward digital, but there’s that too.

The point I’m trying to drive home here is the company used us up and threw us away. We were treated as just another resource. That’s what you are to them, a resource to be used for as long as it’s convenient and profitable. They’ll put nice faces on it and use nice words because they know nobody wants to feel like a resource. But a call for unity is just transfer propaganda. You get good feelings from the word unity, but it doesn’t mean anything and is not a guarantee of anything. To many corporations and organizations, our emotions are merely tools used to extract more wealth from us.

You want unity? Start unionizing agency offices. Start talking to each other. Heck, start talking to us stenographers. We’ve got Digital Court Reporter Helpline open for such a purpose. I can admit that there’s some xenophobia among stenographers, but it’s mostly because our jobs are under constant threat by the tech bros that actively lie about the status of their technology in order to sell it and the multimillion dollar corporations using you guys to push us out. It’s not your fault for existing. I’m ready to acknowledge that. I believe most of the people that follow me are too.

And if you think I’m full of crap, that’s fine. But I’ve got a track record of treating you all like human beings. I wrote out hourly conversions at the bottom of my New York Shortage Squeeze article to make sure it was public info how bad digitals, transcribers — really court reporters as a whole — are getting screwed. I’ve tried to bring digital court reporters and transcribers to steno so they can benefit from the increased purchasing power and vast professional network. So hopefully you’ll see that I’m a straight shooter and take it to heart when I tell you don’t pet the snakes.

The Court: Are You Not A Stenographer, Ms. Solomon (phonetic)?

A Stenonymous source passed me some transcript excerpt.

Digital court reporting threatens the accuracy of the record across America.

I think this shows that it’s becoming more and more understood that digital is an issue. Particularly looking at the Testifying While Black study, where we learned stenographers were twice as good at the AAVE dialect as laypeople. Who are the corps recruiting the transcribers from? It shows our training methods are better for equality. And given enough funding, we could close that 20% gap that we have.

The agencies face a pressing problem of brain drain. If all the smart potential digitals are jumping to stenography, voice writing, or avoiding the field entirely, those remaining will sink the business model and earn it its deserved reputation for harming court record accuracy.

Don’t these folks have a fiduciary responsibility to make the shareholders’ shares worth more and not potentially collapse the whole thing by making a wild bet against the current market conditions? I suppose it doesn’t make a difference to private equity flippers if what they’re doing looks good on paper. But eventually paper meets reality, and the reality is digital court reporting is bad for business.

Addendum:

A reader asked for the certification page and I was able to procure it. I was once told by a digital that they were trained to obfuscate. That’s kind of how I feel on this one. It says it’s a true record of her notes. But if it’s digital, aren’t the notes mere annotations?

Please don’t let anything I’ve written communicate an opinion about Dalia Solomon. Don’t know her. Assume the best. But the concerns about digital use in general still stand.

Jackie Mentecky: Attorneys, You May Be A Victim of Digital Court Reporting

Link to post.

Jackie Mentecky shares error-prone digital court reporter transcript excerpt

Jackie Mentecky shares blank-prone digital court reporter transcript excerpt

I’m pretty sure all this speaks for itself, but I’ll point out that court reporters across the country are doing their part to educate attorneys on the actual status of the field. It’s not just New York, California, Illinois, and Texas. Every state has their leaders and activists, and as more of us stand up and say “this is wrong,” it will become an untenable situation for the organizations that lied to the public about the overall availability of stenographers, such as Veritext, US Legal, and Planet Depos, all of which were represented on the Speech-to-Text Institute board, the vehicle they used to lie to the public and make localized shortages out to be impossible-to-solve national ones. They used a simple trick. Knowing attorneys want stenographers, they told them we were unavailable to get them using digital court reporters.

Leadership of the Speech-to-Text Institute, an organization that took down its website after being sued by Pascal Perez for anticompetitive acts.

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