Tag: future

Artificial Intelligence in Court Reporting: An October 2025 White Paper Generated By Artificial Intelligence

Thanks to a demonstration by a dear friend (Shoutout to Noah Collin!) I was recently turned on to trying out artificial intelligence, AI.

Best I can say, modern AI is not actually intelligent. It’s a highly sophisticated word guesser based on an immense amount of training data.

But, my God, it’s good at what it does. For example, I wanted to start by introducing the different types of AI for readers that may not be aware. And I let AI do it for me.

Here are the key differences among these AI types:

ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition)

  • Converts spoken language into written text
  • Focuses specifically on audio processing and transcription
  • Examples: voice-to-text features, voice assistants like Siri or Alexa

NLP (Natural Language Processing)

  • Broad field covering any AI that understands or generates human language
  • Includes tasks like translation, sentiment analysis, text classification, and chatbots
  • Can work with both text and speech (through ASR)

LLM (Large Language Model)

  • A specific type of NLP system trained on massive amounts of text data
  • Generates human-like text and understands context across long conversations
  • Examples: ChatGPT, Claude, GPT-4
  • More advanced than traditional NLP, capable of reasoning, creative writing, and complex tasks

In short: ASR deals with speech-to-text, NLP is the umbrella term for language AI, and LLMs are powerful modern NLP systems that can handle sophisticated language tasks.

Okay. Back to Chris Day speaking. Typing? Bloviating? (Special thanks to my biggest fan.)

So I got curious and I asked the AI to make a white paper on the pros and cons of AI in court reporting. And what it created was pretty damn good. Accurate. And perhaps an accurate portrayal of where the big-money types believe this field is going.

And, in my own way, where I suspect it’s going based on all I know today. Big money’s pushing its agenda and we just can’t seem to unite and fight back, so sooner or later it’ll get its way.

Now, when I write something so bold, I would say change is happening much more gradually than the big-money types thought it would. Stenography, particularly for highly accurate writers, is likely here to stay strong(ish) for at least a decade or so, depending a little bit on what state you’re in. From old forecasts, the best states are going to be California, Illinois, Texas, and New York.

To explain a little bit about why I think what I do, imagine a sort of pyramid where you have all the potential legal transcription work on Earth, with the top being the highest-paying jobs on top and the lowest-paying jobs at the bottom.

(And despite what I’m about to write, all legal transcription is important. I am not belittling the needs of people participating in the legal process. Access to justice is important to me, and it makes me sick to my stomach that I am hearing again and again that big box agencies are not dealing with pro se individuals.)

Back to that pyramid:

So on the low end you have your transcription of exhibits and/or recordings. Stuff that, 9 times out of 10, we don’t want to do anyway. It’s punted to the legal transcribers and AI outfits.

Then maybe you have your “crappy” depositions. The interpreter jobs that have fewer transcribed words per hour, the insurance EUOs that can be done in 15 minutes.

Then you have your good-pay deps. Think longer, typically fast work that keeps the word counts high.

At the tippy top, you got realtime reporting. The money in realtime is unimaginable to those that have not experienced it.

Somewhere along the line we convinced ourselves that it was okay to give up most of the pyramid. Well now what do our students take? Well, our students can’t get jobs. If our students can’t get jobs, schools have lower demand, they shut down or sell off, and the person they sell off to might just decide the court reporting program isn’t worth it. Taking this to its logical conclusion, eventually all you have is the realtime. So either people lie and say they’re realtime, and realtime becomes saturated such that the rates drop, or there becomes too limited a demand for schools and we’re siphoned out by attrition. Since big boxes are already calling digital realtime, it’s hard not to see the truth.

This has happened. This is likely to continue happening barring some amazing action on the part of court reporters. This is a peek at the future.

This is not much different from The Record XChange’s Long Tail, something that’s almost a decade old.

For anyone that doesn’t get what I’m saying, I consulted my magic stenography crystal. Trust me, bro.

With all that being said I’d love to introduce the new Stenonymous.com October 2025 White Paper:

Artificial Intelligence in Court Reporting

AI_Court_Reporting_White_PaperDownload

P.S.

I’d also love to introduce what happened when I asked “how can one unionize a decentralized workforce?”

Unionizing a decentralized workforce presents unique challenges, but it’s definitely possible. Here are the key strategies:

Build Digital Community

  • Use online platforms (Slack, Discord, WhatsApp groups) to connect workers who may never meet in person
  • Create virtual meeting spaces for organizing conversations
  • Leverage social media to build solidarity and share information

Focus on Shared Issues

  • Identify common concerns across locations (pay rates, benefits, algorithmic management, lack of transparency)
  • Document patterns of unfair treatment that affect workers regardless of location
  • Emphasize that geographic separation doesn’t mean workers lack common interests

Adapt Traditional Organizing Tactics

  • Use virtual card-signing campaigns instead of in-person meetings
  • Conduct one-on-one conversations via video calls or messaging
  • Organize digital petitions and collective actions

Legal Considerations

  • Understand whether workers are classified as employees or independent contractors (this affects union rights)
  • Research which labor laws apply – some gig/remote workers may have limited protections
  • Consider forming worker cooperatives or associations if traditional unionization faces legal barriers

Leverage Technology

  • Use encrypted communications to protect organizers
  • Create databases to track worker contacts and organizing progress
  • Coordinate actions across time zones and locations

Build Coalition Support

  • Partner with existing unions that have experience with remote workers
  • Connect with worker advocacy groups and labor organizations
  • Seek public support to pressure companies

The success stories include gig workers (Uber, Instacart drivers), remote tech workers, and distributed customer service teams who’ve organized despite being scattered geographically.

“What percentage of court reporters are misclassified employees?”

I don’t have specific data on what percentage of court reporters are misclassified as independent contractors when they should be classified as employees. This is a fairly niche labor classification issue that would require recent research or surveys to answer accurately.

However, I can tell you that misclassification is a known concern in the court reporting field, as many court reporters work as independent contractors for agencies or courts, which can sometimes lead to disputes about proper classification under labor laws.

The determination typically depends on factors like:

  • Level of control the hiring entity has over work performance
  • Whether the reporter provides services to multiple clients
  • Who provides equipment and sets schedules
  • The permanency of the relationship

Would you like me to search for current statistics or recent studies on court reporter misclassification rates?

“Yes, search.”

Based on my search, I wasn’t able to find specific statistics on what percentage of court reporters are misclassified. However, I did find some relevant information about court reporter misclassification:

General research indicates that between 10% to 30% of employers across various industries misclassify workers as independent contractors, but this is not specific to court reporting.

What I found specifically about court reporters:

Court Reporter Misclassification Issues:

  • Court reporting is described as a field that “remains largely in the independent contractor space” with ongoing concerns about misclassification
  • The 2018 Dynamex case in California established new ABC test standards that required court reporting firms and freelance reporters to re-examine their business relationships to determine proper classification
  • When court reporters are misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees, they face challenges like lack of Department of Labor protection for unpaid wages, making it expensive to pursue legal remedies

The lack of specific court reporter misclassification statistics suggests this may be an under-researched area, despite being recognized as a concern within the industry. The fact that California’s Dynamex ruling specifically raised questions about court reporter classification indicates it’s a genuine issue, but without comprehensive studies, we don’t have reliable percentage data for this profession specifically.

“Do unionized workers make more on average?”

Yes, unionized workers do make significantly more on average than non-union workers. Let me search for the most current data on this:Yes, unionized workers make significantly more on average than non-union workers. Here are the key findings:

Current Wage Premium: In 2024, full-time union members had median weekly earnings of $1,337, while non-union workers earned $1,138 — a difference of about 17.5%.

The Union Wage Premium Breakdown: Research analyzing Canadian data found that unionized workers earn approximately 11% more than non-union workers, with about 60% of this premium coming from unions’ ability to negotiate higher wages and 40% from unionized firms being more productive.

Looking at 50 years of U.S. data, the adjusted hourly union wage premium has varied between 10% and 20% for most of that period, though it dipped below 10% during COVID. The weekly wage premium has been even larger, remaining between 20% and 26% from the early 1990s until COVID, and was still 16% in 2023.

Recent Wage Increases: Union contracts negotiated in 2023 achieved record-high average first-year wage increases of 6.6%, or 7.3% when including signing bonuses — the highest since Bloomberg Law began tracking in 1988.

So yes, the data clearly shows that unionized workers earn substantially more than their non-union counterparts, with the premium typically ranging from 10-20% or higher depending on how it’s measured.

“Did Einstein write in 1949 that the time had come where the rich controlled the means of communication, making it impossible for people to make informed decisions?”

Let me search for information about what Einstein wrote in 1949 regarding media control and informed decision-making:

Not quite. Einstein did write about this issue in 1949, but with an important distinction: he wasn’t warning about something that would happen in the future — he was describing what he believed was already happening at that time.

In his essay “Why Socialism?” published in the inaugural May 1949 issue of Monthly Review, Einstein wrote: “Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”

The popular social media paraphrases suggest Einstein warned this would happen in the future, but he was actually commenting on conditions he observed in 1949. He argued that private capital concentration had already resulted in an oligarchy whose power couldn’t be effectively checked, and that private capitalists already controlled the main sources of information.

So while Einstein did make this argument about wealthy elites controlling communication and making informed decisions nearly impossible, he was describing the present situation of 1949, not predicting a future scenario.

If you read this far, I’d ask you to consider donating on the front page of Stenonymous.com.

Addendum:

I have factors supporting my decision making that I do not include here, such as BLS predicting no job growth for us and there being fewer jobs in 2022 than 2020.

10/27/25:

Kensie Benoit posted this article. It supports much of my past arguments that we may be headed toward an AI winter or an AI bubble collapse. Be that as it may, the damage has been done to our field, and short of some decisive action on our part, we’ll be siphoned out over the next few decades. Again, not irreversible as the STTI claimed, but now much more likely.

To E Court Reporters and Transcribers

I’m writing to you today because chances are high we aren’t that different. Maybe we both like law, or depositions, or working with lawyers. Maybe we both heard this was a great career with lots of potential. Maybe we will both face the same hurdles and challenges. Maybe you’ll cruise around my little blog here and find articles that pertain to you.

For the longest time, the deposition was the space of the stenographic reporter. Depending on where you’re at, we were making a lot of money and still have great careers today. Now what’s happened is the companies that previously used stenographers are trying to move towards transcription. They’re using you all to record and transcribe what we take down and transcribe. And I’m here today to make two points for your benefit:

  1. Try stenography. It’s easy to learn, it’s hard to do fast, and our community is in the process of building free resources for you to try it out.
  2. There’s a constant and unending thing at play called the market.

Stick with me, because I’m going to offer solutions. We all know that there are buyers and sellers of goods and services, and they are always, through one way or another, negotiating. If Law Office A doesn’t like Reporting Company B’s style or service, they can always use Reporting Company C. That’s the market at work. But there’s an unspoken side of the market, the labor force. Stenographers, voice writers, electronic reporters, transcribers, are all players in the market, and our actions can dictate our future.

Succinctly, when I was a deposition stenographer I was making only about $3.50 to $4.00 a page, and 25 cents to 50 cents a copy. That’s on a regular 14-day turnaround. There were also services where we’d rush the transcript for more than 6 bucks a page. To put that in perspective, let’s say that a fast-talking lawyer can do at least 60 pages an hour. 240 an hour. But for every hour at a deposition it would take me about an hour of transcription, 120 an hour. Sounds high, right? But I was an independent contractor and had to factor in the days where I made $0.00.

So now let’s take you, the valuable, amazing person they’re now pitching $20 an hour at, or $40 an hour at. Let’s say that you’re also doing the transcription work, and let’s assume it takes you much longer so you’re getting more hours transcribing. $40 at the 1 hour deposition, then four hours of transcription. $200. It takes you 5 to 10 hours of work to make pretty much the same $200 I was getting in two hours. Don’t forget, you’re doing pretty much the same work, it’s just taking you longer and making your life harder.

So what are the solutions? I’ve got 3:

  1. Try stenography. It’s going to make your life easier. You’re going to command higher rates and pump out work fast. Has someone told you it’s dead? Consider whether they have a financial interest in telling you that.
  2. Negotiate for more. Just like I’ve told stenographers for the last 4 years we are what we ask for. The work you’re doing is hard, and it is valuable. They can afford to pay you more and they know it, and I know it, and now you know it too. They’re not passing the savings of using you off to the lawyer, they’re pocketing it. And as capitalism teaches us, the money is always better off in our wallet.
  3. Unionize. I’m not even kidding. As freelancers we deposition reporters would’ve had an uphill struggle to unionize. Unions are a dirty word now but let’s look at what they’re entitled to by law: Good-faith negotiations. Ultimately the union gets a peek at company finances and the company and union negotiate on what would be a fairer market rate for the services being provided. Where direct pay isn’t available, a union could negotiate for job security, better workplace rules, and medical or other benefits. There are even already legal workers unions in NYC.

If you found this helpful, spread the knowledge. Empower your colleagues. Fight because this is a fight worth winning. If you found this strange, consider that the rules in life are too. The longer you play by the rules dictated to you by others, the more you are set to lose. Take control. Be polite, be professional, be the best, but go forward with the understanding that you are a market force, and your actions dictate the future.