$100 Off Kentley Insights Market Research Report for CRCW 2022!

To all my readers and followers, you can now use the coupon code STENONYMOUS to get the Kentley Insights Court Reporting & Stenotype Services 2022 market research report. Inside you’ll get information such as the size of the industry, the number of firms estimated to be in the field, and many other compiled stats.

Information is vital to this vibrant field. We are a field of nearly 30,000, and the vast majority of us are self-employed people. Share this discount code with anyone that might be interested in growing their businesses knowledge. $100 is a 33% discount from the $295 regular cost, and again, that discount is available for the next few weeks to anyone that uses the STENONYMOUS code.

In my view, Kentley Insights is acknowledging the importance of Court Reporting & Captioning Week 2022 by offering this discount starting this week. Calling all entrepreneurs, it’s time to take advantage!

Contracting with Public Entities: Diamond’s 2010 Renewal With City

I had written a recent article about competing for contracts, and in that article, I got into a pretty detailed description about how to access public records. Succinctly, I believe that the more we talk about how to compete, and the more we facilitate an environment where people feel they can compete, the more competition we will see. This competition has a decent chance at spilling over into the most important competition of all: Attracting talent.

Ultimately, market share allows companies to have more power in negotiations with their reporters. If reporters feel empowered to seek work elsewhere, or even grab some market share for themselves, there’ll be more of a push to treat people well and attract reporters who are in it for the long haul. So if you have not read my article on inflation or accessing public records, I suggest you do just for the knowledge and experience.

That all said, I’m going to get into why I’m writing today. This has become a place for information to be given out. This has become a place for people to spread ideas. This has become a place for me to post a little piece of history. In or around 2010, Diamond had renewed its contract with the City of New York, the Law Department, or Corporation Counsel, and sometime later, I got a copy of that renewal. I also, at around the same point in history, was doing research on other companies’ public contracts, though I do not have them to post today.

To be blunt, per my interpretation, in 2010: The appearance fee was set at $26, the regular Law Department delivery was $3.65 per page, $5.20 per page for a rush, $5.75 per page for an overnight, $78 for a bust fee, $5.20 for a disk or CD ROM of the transcript, $5.20 for a compressed transcript, $5.20 for an electronic transcript, $5.75 per page for realtime and regular delivery, $7.30 per page for realtime and rush delivery, $7.80 per page for realtime and overnight delivery, $1.60 per page of rough draft, $78 for obtaining clearance to a prison, $130 fee for appearing at a prison, $21 for a multi-file disk.

Plugged into an inflation calculator, these 2010 dollars would be worth the following in November 2018: Appearance fee, $30. Regular Law Department delivery $4.21 per page, $6.00 per page for a rush, $6.63 per page for an overnight, $90 bust fee, $6 for a disk or CD ROM, $6 for a compressed transcript, $6 for an electronic transcript. $6.63 per page for realtime and regular delivery, $8.42 per page for realtime and rush delivery, $9 per page for realtime and overnight delivery, $1.85 per page of rough draft, $90 for obtaining clearance to a prison, $150 fee for appearing at a prison, $24.33 for a multi-file disk.

To be clear: This is ostensibly a contract for a large amount of work. This says nothing of what could be charged in copy sales to private plaintiff attorneys. Remember that there is no limit on what may be charged by a company on copy sale. Some reporters that get sent on contracts lose companies money, and that’s compensated for from the reporters that do not know to ask for more. Take an interest in your business, getting clients, and staying stable.

Recently I was informed that Diamond may have increased its rates to attract talent. This is an important development, and if true, wonderful news, a great move, and definitely something that reporters should consider in their negotiations and in how they coach student reporters.

If you like this sort of public information spread, feel free to donate today, or donate copies of public information. Helps cover simple costs related to domain hosting and potentially upgrading this blog, and creates incentive to write similar articles.

To Our Agency Owners

My first message has to be to our big box, non-steno owners, nationwide, or electronic reporter owners. This blog can come off a little anti-corporate at times, and I often encourage stenographers to ask for more money because, let’s face it, some of them are getting a bad deal. That said, I do see the value in corporations, even very large ones. They can be a great marketing tool and power for the stenographic reporter.

I’ll even point out something good. Allegedly, when the court workers struck in California recently, Veritext reportedly said it would not cross that picket line and would not fill those jobs. Assuming true, that’s a damn good move and absolutely socially responsible. Love news like that, because it gives me some hope that we who are skeptical of your intentions can be wrong.

All that said, we are seeing some very troubling trends. We’re seeing US Legal pushing electronic recording. We’re seeing a lot of apathy when it comes to keeping steno strong. I get that in many ways we are seen as one service or labor, but we can type four or five times faster than your average typist. We can pump the work out faster, and there’s more infrastructure behind steno today. There are support networks and groups of thousands of stenographers, and rarely does any question go unanswered. We take care of each other to make sure the work goes out looking good.Per stenographic “employee,” the price for training is basically zero. Maybe you let some stenographers shadow every year. Maybe you spend a few days a year visiting our schools. The only imaginable reason to get into the record and transcribe business is the illusion that those people will be cheaper. In the long run, it will cost you business. It’ll make things less efficient. The turnover will be higher. The turnaround will be slower. And worse yet, you will incur the pushback of stenographers. We are mobilizing, we are sharing information faster than ever before, and we will shout you out, your work will go uncovered, and we will teach your new employees that they are being taken advantage of so that they unionize and ask for more, and when we’re done with all that, maybe the illusion that there is profit in pushing us out will be gone.

But there is another way! You can join the reliable but unremarkable stenographic legion! You can invest in advertisements to bring people to our steno schools. You can invest in a future where every single transcriber you’ve got is a stenographic reporter capable of printing out the work five times faster than the average typist. You can prove to all your competitors that the business strategy of treating workers well works. If your company released a single practice dictation a month publicly on YouTube or some other medium labeled practice dictation for stenographers, it would only be a couple of years before there were two dozen videos out in public saying that one little word we want everyone in the country to read: Stenographer. We want you to make money. We want your companies to succeed. But we also want this to remain a sustainable career, and this is just going to be a turning point where if you aren’t with us, you won’t succeed. Make a positive impact on the community, help us thrive.

Now I’ll address my stenographic owner, the person who’s trying to make it work, or steno allies in general. You’ve got to push for more market share. If you’re getting ready to leave the business, mentor someone to replace you, push for more people to be an entrepreneur like you are. Push for people to be informed. If the big boxes don’t hear me, then it’s down to you to make an impact and ensure a stenographic reporter is sitting at every dep. Perception matters. If lawyers start seeing a recorder at every job, then that’s what they’ll start using, if they see a stenographer and it’s always been a stenographer, then it’ll stay a stenographer. No matter your persuasion or philosophy, I understand how hard it is to run a business. I started a corporation myself years ago, and for many reasons, it flopped. We face a lot of unique challenges in reporting, and there’s really a lot to be said for the successful business. But the time has come that we addressed the elephant in the room: You’ve got to use the stenographic reporter. We’ve got to be the bronze, silver, gold standard, and if we aren’t, then we’ll build companies where we are.