Stenographers, NY Courts Want You! (2019)

Let this be the Stenonymous bulletin about the June 2019 official court reporter test. I’ll first say we have already had many prominent stenographers pass these links around Facebook, so let these be the guide to getting a dream job. There is no thank you big enough to those reporters that have spread the word and brought everyone another opportunity to achieve career goals. I thank you. I admire you. I’ll emulate you.

Now for potential test takers: You can generally find civil service exams for the courts posted on the exams page of the New York Courts website. That exams page has an announcement and an application. There is also an orientation guide and practice dictation. The orientation guide, among many other things, states that there will be legal and medical terminology on the test. The Official New York Courts Facebook is even encouraging people to come to take this test and spreading the word about court reporting as a career.

Let me say this: Do not delay in filing to take this exam. The filing ends May 2019, and a lot of people tell themselves they’ll do it later and they forget. Even if you decide not to show test day, file, it’ll give you the option of showing up and getting the job. Additionally, read the orientation guide. In the past, phenomenal court reporters have failed the test because they did not read the orientation guide.

On that note, NYSCRA has announced free test prep classes for members both online and live. Any and every test preparation course one can take is important and stenographers who have the time should look into every option seriously. A big thank you to NYSCRA for organizing these sessions and making them accessible to all members.

Notably, earlier in the month Oscar Garzon announced he would also be providing test prep classes at a Manhattan location. We’ll be looking out for updates here.

If anyone has more information, feel free to comment below and get the word out to all potential test takers!

Completely unrelated: In the coming days we are going to briefly revisit the Language study that came out of Philadelphia and touch on many other topics that have come up in the past weeks. If you want to stay informed, do not be afraid to go to the Stenonymous main page and subscribe via email.

March Madness 2019 Job Postings

We’re going to rattle off job postings on the blog so that they’re accessible and shareable. Links may go dead with time but steno lives strong:

Word of advice: For some jobs, but particularly private sector jobs, it is okay to apply even if you do not meet whatever requirements they’ve posted. For example, as of writing, eScribers says they want you to have an AAERT or NCRA certification. I’d bet money that if someone presented well and didn’t have a single certification, they’d work with them, because it’s about the money, and if you’re a producer, you’re a money maker. The only time it is bad to apply is if they want a service you cannot provide, like realtime.

And if you absolutely must leave New York, there are federal job openings in Kentucky, Florida, Vermont, South Carolina, and Puerto Rico. There’s also an electronic court reporting job in Massachusetts. Maybe someone more charming than me can convince the judges to use stenographers.

NYSCRA Bagels and Lox February 2019

Some will have seen an article authored after a little prodding and editing (AKA help!) from another reporter, Devora Hackner. Photo archive here. Obviously, I had overall positive impressions from the entire event. Got to meet Steno Joe in person! The food was absolutely amazing. There were literally three or four tables of food and everything from bagels to sushi. NYSCRA spared no expense and its sponsors did an amazing job. If you were a non-steno there to learn about steno, you walked away sated and happy. I do think it was an important showcase of our field, and there were over 100 seats, most full.

Unfortunately the structure of the event prohibited me from seeing the CaseCAT and Eclipse trainings, but I know both trainers are at the top of their game and I have personally attended Anthony Frisolone’s past webinars and a Local 1070 seminar, and it’s always been a wonderful experience. If you need CaseCAT help, Anthony is the man. His training is worth every dime. Quick note, the photography by Shmuel Amit was also amazing and is featured mostly along the bottom of the original article.

There are two major points that don’t get covered in the article because Stenonymous and that article have different audiences. Firstly, when Jane Sackheim got up to speak, it was an honest surprise. Hadn’t been on the agenda. It’s rumored Diamond put 1,500 or more down on the event though, so there’s no real issue with letting a sponsor like that get a few words in. If I had a sponsor that good, we’d be sponsoring stenographers to visit NYC high schools. Jane did say there would always be a need for court reporters. Given the current climate, I hope she meant stenographic court reporters, but given that she was funding a NYSCRA event along with ASSCR, we’ll assume it was stenographic court reporters! Then there was a talk about balance.

Jane said it was always a balance between paying what a reporter would accept and charging what a client would pay. That is an insightful thing to think about and consider. Not every single proceeding is worth $400 per page, and there is a certain point where clients just wouldn’t pay. That said, I have always been under the belief that we are incredibly underpaid in New York. When I was freelancing, many of my contemporaries and I were making in the ballpark of $3.25 per page and 0 to 50 cents on a copy. Back at that time (~2012) I met some freelancers out from Ohio who reported they made a dollar or two a page on copies. Different markets? Yes. Different jobs? How different can they possibly be? We had a hard time negotiating here in New York. We were told there were too many reporters and not enough work because that was a convenient thing to say to get us to accept low rates. Now there’s a reporter shortage but we shouldn’t ask for more because clients won’t pay it? All the respect in the world for a woman that built a business and ran it so well that Veritext decided to buy it out rather than compete with it. There’s power to the personality that runs the ship. But here is something I think every reporter should consider: We don’t know the truth until invoices start leaking. We don’t know if the copies are being charged at a buck a page or 4.85 a page. We have to question it for ourselves and decide how to build our own brands and reputations. We don’t know and therefore we can’t say with certainty today what the truth is, but it’s probably somewhere between clients won’t pay and reporters expect too much. We know there’s a serious profit margin in the business because almost every reporting firm has a main office and a satellite office in every borough of the city, and I would point to that each and every time someone says the agencies are hurting. Do business with these agencies, and do good work, but be open to the idea that sometimes you are told things that are subjective are objectively true. We did over 900 math calculations, and to not be working all the time, you either have to be a fast transcriber or making in the ballpark of $5.50 a page average. That’s a tall order, but I believe that if agencies and reporters continue to put down money and ideas to enhance the field and our professional organizations, we’ll be okay.

Without further delay let’s end this on a high note. Nonmembers who attended get $18 off their membership this year. Also, NYSCRA did something incredible. They asked for the following:

Seminar speakers you’d like to see.

CEU-approvable

Seminars or speeches you yourself would be willing to conduct.

So what’s left to do? Write NYSCRA today at nyscra@bowermanagementservices.com or head over to their site at NYSCRA, tell Tim he’s doing a GREAT job, and share your thoughts and ideas. They’re asking for them! Personally I’d love a few seminars for freelancers on how to be marketable to agencies and how to be marketable to attorneys directly. Hopefully in the coming weeks we’ll have an interview with Eve Barrett of the Expedite app to discuss exactly that. I think these things are perfectly attainable, but it’s time for members and potential members to ask for them.

NYSCRA Certs Waive Provisional Assessment for NY Courts

NYSCRA President Nancy Silberger announced on December 13, 2018 that holders of the NYSCRA (New York State Court Reporters Association) certs ACR (Association Certified Reporter) and RCR (Realtime Certified Reporter) will be able to skip the provisional assessment for the state court test. This happened thanks to the work of Debra Levinson. I had written in the past about the value of associations, and today I can honestly say that the value of a NYSCRA membership has increased.

To put it in plain language: Every one to four years there is a civil service examination for the court reporter title and a statewide civil service examination for the senior court reporter title in New York State Unified Court System. Senior court reporters work in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, which is the “highest” trial court in the state. Court reporters work for the other “lower” trial courts, criminal, civil, or family courts. Passing the civil service examination is what gets you a permanent position with the New York State Unified Court System. Sometimes, and as a matter of fact right now, there are provisional postings for titles where people may apply for and take an assessment test to work provisionally in a title. Working provisionally allows people to begin accruing vacation time, sick time, comp time, and I believe it also leads to time in the title and pension. Basically if you are waiting for a permanent position to open up, the provisional posting is your way in. What NYSCRA has done is made it possible for you to get the provisional position in the court reporter title without the assessment test. You already passed a test, so why take it again? So if you can pass NYSCRA’s NYACR or NYRCR, you don’t have to pass the provisional examination to get a job with the NYSUCS right now. What’s better than that?Join NYSCRA. Propose great ideas like this one, and watch the association work to make NY reporting better year after year.

The Unsubtle Policy of Open Gates

I’m an introvert at heart. That’s going to surprise a lot of people because I’m also the guy who’s always engaging on Facebook, the union, or whatever forum seems appropriate at the time.

I ignore my impulses to shut up. And I do that mostly because I’m convinced it’s what we should all do. I’d like to add to a movement where when a job comes out on the federal judiciary jobs page, or the state court’s page, or the city’s DCAS page, or the page of any of the five district attorneys in this city (New York, Special Narcotics, Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx), or anywhere at all, we all talk about it. I’d love for that movement to spread to every state and every place there’s jobs. I’ll focus on New York because I live here. I’ve seen some other great New Yorkers take up the idea and spread jobs on their pages. I’ve seen great people from other states do this same thing.

There’s a value, whether monetarily or as a boost to one’s rep/ego, to being the go-to person who people look to for advice. It feels much more rewarding to keep things personal and have people write in to get knowledge. But I’ve weighed the value of knowledge in my mind, and I really do feel like it’s more valuable when it’s accessible. The value of knowledge shared is greater than the value of good feelings.

So what I’ll ask of anyone who feels the same, set aside one morning a month to do a quick look around the common job spots of your state and let people know what’s available. Together we can create a kind of herd immunity where no one is left out of the job search or the quest for their dream job.

NYSCRA Offering Test Prep

Sharing Is Caring.

The New York State Court Reporter’s Association is offering some test prep for the Senior Court Reporter Exam. The test prep starts October 28, 2017. The test is going to be mid December 2017. I won’t bore the audience tonight, but I will share this handy e-mail from NYSCRA that absolutely everyone should send to their friends.

Click here for NYSCRA E-mail Goodness

Learn Stenography!

NCRA.

National Court Reporters Association is, as of writing, the powerhouse association for stenography in the United States. I came across this video today and I figure it’s worth sharing to all who might come across this blog. It will immediately direct you to a site with a little information about how to start getting involved. Having lent a piece of equipment to one of the A to Z programs they describe, I can honestly say I’m a big supporter of this stuff and people giving this profession a try. It’s worth it.

A very brief summary of what we do: We take down the spoken word and make it text. We type it faster than a regular keyboard because our keyboards (stenotypes) allow us to hit multiple letters at once, and those letters stand for various sounds, words, and sentences.

More Than A Job.

In our field we often point at the potential to make money for relatively little education, and I think that’s just fine, but I also realize that doesn’t motivate everybody. If you’re in the camp of not being a money-hungry person, then consider a few extra things. For those of us that work in court reporting, we provide hours upon hours of service to the community, logging and keeping safe thousands of pages of court or deposition records for the day they’re needed by lawyers, litigants, or the public. For those of us that work in captioning or CART, we provide access to the people who need it most. Voice-to-text access for the 15% of Americans who report trouble hearing, and the millions who cannot hear at all! Indeed, if you won’t do this thing for the money, do it for the people you will be helping just by sitting at a little machine and typing your heart out.

Stanographer.

Stanley Sakai gives a pretty upbeat and fast explanation of stenography here for those that want to know more about the concept of machine shorthand.

Stenoodie.

I came across this fascinating blog by someone who writes under the author name Stenoodie, and they have a short page describing steno/machine shorthand for those who like reading more than videos.