Raise Your Rates 2019

Let’s jump right into it. We’re talking New York City, but it’s probably applicable to any chronically-depressed market. I haven’t been in the freelance game for five years. But I care a whole heck of a lot about it. Why? The health of the field is a lot like the health in your body. If you’ve got a powerful left leg, but your right leg is falling off, can you walk?

Let’s face some realities. Reporters are doing most of the work when it comes to reporting. We often give the agencies a lot of praise for marketing, production, and the logistics when work takes place somewhere that isn’t counsel’s office, and I’ll even go so far as to say agencies deserve that praise because it’s not insignificant work. But the reality is the reporter is doing the vast majority of the work on any individual transcript.

So what we’ve been seeing in New York is offers of hundreds of dollars in “bonuses,” which is basically an extra appearance fee. This is an indicator to me that agencies could stand to raise their appearance fees a bit. In my freelance life I had a pretty crazy range of appearance fee, from $15 to maybe $60. Honestly, it might not be such a bad idea for reporters to start asking for $100 or even $200, dependent on the client and work. It might not be such a bad idea for agencies to start offering that standard.

Everybody’s trying to get stuff covered. It’d be a huge incentive for reporters to take more depositions per year if that appearance was higher. Let’s say you get somebody who works like a madman and takes a job every weekday, about 260 weekdays by a nice appearance of 120, that’s $31,000 a year compared to the paltry 4K I would’ve made doing the same exact thing. You’re going to get people out of bed pretty consistently for an extra 20 or 25 thousand dollars a year.

Markets shift. When you see agencies whipping out bonuses of $400, $500, it’s a sign that you can all raise the floor on your rates so that they don’t have to bankrupt themselves covering individual jobs. And for the agencies who resist raising the rates, it’s a sign that they are ready to be defunct and you shouldn’t feel bad about taking a client or bringing a client over to an agency that treats you better.

October Occupations 2019

Before we get into this post I just want to say I updated the old Get A Job post to include the exams page of NYSUCS. I still say that every jobseeker in New York should be checking the pages linked there every 15 to 30 days to be safe. Share findings. Be committed to keeping everyone up to date. If everyone is talking about where the work is, nobody’s left in the dark.

Even though this page launches October 1, postings are only current as of September 30.

DANY is still hiring for their grand jury reporter position. It’s a great job. Definitely give it a shot.

Special Narcotics Prosecutor, as I recall, had a posting for one grand jury reporter. Now there’s a posting for two. I say that if you haven’t applied yet, it’s your lucky day, go for it.

The state court system is still accepting applications for the provisional court reporter job. If you didn’t take the test, it still might make sense to apply. If they didn’t get enough passes on the civil service exam, they’re going to need you.

Southern District, that’s federal court, is still looking for a reporter. Don’t let this great opportunity go to waste if you’ve got the certifications or skill necessary to work with SDNY.

There are over ten vacancies federally all around the country. If New York’s not where your heart is, no big deal, but you’re not allowed to leave (joke).

Plaza continues to keep a posting for court reporting and English instructors.

New Jersey has apparently started hiring for the first time in a long time. I had posted this on Facebook but not on Stenonymous. Hopefully the government has realized the inherent value of having someone personally responsible for making the record.

Freelancers, I know that there’s often not a lot of postings on here with regard to work for you. I will work on something that might help there. Until then, you’re free to check out my recent post on historic data and inflation, as it impacts every dollar we make every day we breathe. I have been getting emails from Magna claiming over $100 in bonus fees. Now that I think about it, this probably gives you a clue what’s actually being charged for appearance fees, and a peak into the law of supply and demand. You’re in demand. Your skills are in demand. Act accordingly, do great work, and make a great record.

Fun fact. In the editor this post has no bullet points. In the preview it does. Which version will everyone see? That is the question. If you’ve ever wondered why some posts seem to have bizarre formatting, I blame computers.

Keep Enemies Closer

I get a lot of anonymous emails. While I am grateful for every opinion and comment, it’s very difficult to write about each one. It would unfairly spam my subscribers, and that’s a no-go zone for me. That’s why we banned ads! That acknowledged, I received an e-mail from a reader with regard to when attorneys, our clients, use friendship as a tactic. This is a rare phenomenon that I’ve had more than one veteran reporter warn me about, but never had the misfortune of experiencing it myself. The warning goes something like this: Be a little tight lipped about what you’re making, doing, and your interactions with other reporters, because that same person who’s smiling at you and pretending to be your friend can take what you say and blow it out of proportion or cause you trouble. This can happen in any setting with any mix of people, so be mindful of the general principle of cautiousness.

Remember that part of being a professional is knowing where the boundaries lie. Lawyers deal with these kinds of difficult questions all the time; what is okay to share, what is off limits. If you’re not too sure whether something is “safe to share,” it’s best to not share in that moment and seek out a friend, advisory opinion, or mentor to get some perspective on the issue.

As a quick example, I saw this done to an interpreter years ago. He was ordered to do some kind of Sicilian dialect. Turns out that the witness was some other Sicilian dialect. Off the record, he tried his best to professionally explain the issue. And the more he did, the more the attorney prepared to go on the record and explain that the interpreter was “translating incorrectly.” This guy was doing everything right, and he was still about to get thrown under the bus because he was giving the information to someone who had made up their mind against him. Perhaps by divine intervention, the witness became ill, and we adjourned.

But we can’t count on divine intervention. What can we learn? We cannot go through our professional lives afraid that someone will twist the truth to hurt us. That’s no way to live. But the hard truth is that if you have any reservations about sharing a comment, it can only protect you to trust your gut and say nothing.

A brilliant attorney told me years ago: No one can complain if you’re silent. I have great reservations about demanding reporters, people already relegated to the silent role, be quiet. Most of the time we need to be out there educating our clients and being active in marketing ourselves and our profession. But new people need to know the pitfalls so that they can avoid them and have bigger, better, brighter careers. So do us all a favor. If you see a newbie oversharing, politely caution them so that they have a chance to take your advice. Regardless of whether they take the advice, it’s meant well, and it might just save them from having a bad day.

Forgiving Your Impostor Syndrome

There can be a culture shock for students who get out of reporting school and jump directly into the freelance world. One minute you’re in a t-shirt and jeans tapping away in a class of people with about the same skill level as you, and the next minute you find yourself at the head of the table, more or less alone, and in charge of making the legal record of deposition proceedings. Even worse, the people you’re working with don’t always cooperate. Even worse, you may not have ever seen a legal proceeding before.

There may be a feeling building that you are inadequate, or that you handled a particular situation poorly, or even that you made a mistake! Everyone makes mistakes. The reporter who tells you, “I never make mistakes,” makes mistakes. The reporter who tells you they’ve never had a complaint makes mistakes. The reporter who tells you mistakes were made, usually on your part, most definitely makes mistakes! That multimillion dollar corporation you work for? They make mistakes too.

The mistakes are not the problem. Being unwilling to learn is where many struggle. Be trainable. Be willing to question yourself and sometimes even your “superiors” to find the right answer. Be willing to reach out and ask a mentor how you could’ve handled something better. Be willing to talk to several mentors if a topic seems controversial. In a regular office or court environment, we have coworkers, union reps, and generally people to talk to about how to handle things that come up. As independent contractors we’re our own business, and navigating these things on the fly can be challenging.

Those feelings of inadequacy? Treat them like a bad dream. Forget them, go about your day, and forgive yourself. Learn what you can and move on. A lot of times I try to offer numbers and science to back up what I’m telling people. Today’s a lesson straight from the “been there, done that” camp of court reporting. Years of observation. You know what you’ll see very rarely? People wearing their mistakes. Nobody is sitting there saying, “yeah, I totally botched a job at the start of my career 10, 20, 30 years ago.” The truth isn’t that nobody has ever botched a job in the history of reporting, but that professionals learn from what happened and move forward into long and illustrious careers.

Your career can be long and illustrious. But if you suffer from feelings of inadequacy or frustration from difficult challenges, one of the first steps is going to be learning to let them go and do what you’ve trained to do. The next step? Training yourself to do better. Before long, you’ve got yourself a staircase, and hopefully that day you’ll turn around and help others build theirs.

Shortage Solutions 10: Contract or Employment

Can you believe this blog has covered 10 ideas for addressing the shortage? Time flies. Having given the whole court reporting shortage issue some more brainstorming, it’s worth bringing up for discussion the solutions that will follow. As always, happy to have comment on this issue. First, contractual agreements. In the field today, many reporters work under a verbal agreement, or a very informal email or rate sheet agreement. Even in places where independent contractors are required to have contracts, much of the business is contracted verbally or less formally.

Anecdotally, there’s something respectable about putting things in writing. People are more likely to live up to their word when there are clear terms of engagement. Need a freelancer to be on call to cover? Get it in writing. Throw them a little consideration (money) for their availability. Create easy-to-understand terms and expectations on availability. Create fair and realistic penalties for breach of contract on either side, or remedial terms that both sides can live with.

That lets me move on to another thought process. There is nothing in US law, to my knowledge, that prohibits a company from hiring employees and paying them a per-page commission or per diem rate. Pretty much no reporter makes less than minimum wage, so compliance with minimum wage laws is trivial. What is stopping a company from shifting its workforce from 1099 reporters to employees? Nothing. Nothing but a different set of paperwork and some accounting changes. Compliance with workers compensation laws may need a little creative insuring to allow reporters to transcribe from home if they choose to give employees that option. But this does not seem like an impossibility, merely a challenge for the entrepreneurial to overcome.

Why these solutions? Frankly, one of the issues with shortage boils down to the inconsistency of freelance reporting. If reporting firms nail down some availability, via employment contract or independently-contracted agreement, they can have a more realistic idea of how many reporters they have versus how many they need. Businesses survive and thrive off of mastering their staffing needs. Reporting businesses will be no different, and in the end will rise and fall based on their ability to meet demand. In this case, the demand being the service that so many stenographic reporters are ready, willing, and able to provide.

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.

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.

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.