AI Adventures: The Documented Hallucinations of Christopher Day, Court Stenographer

With regard to these posts or media pages where I reveal discussions with technology, I think it is worth making something clear: I have done somewhat extensive reading and hands-on learning of these technologies. I am aware of the inherent hallucination flaw. I use AI as a literary device because it is, on the whole, useful for bringing to life, preserving, and explaining concepts that otherwise seem to be lost to time and memory.

An interesting thing to note, Google often glitches out on my phone when I want to copy the link to a search chat like this. The button simply never copies the link, meaning screenshots it is.

Spot the hallucinations:

P.S.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing about modern society is that the entire industry and every journalist I have spoken to over the last 8 years or whatever it’s been has simply omitted any mention of any of this from their public statements and reporting despite these being issues that directly impact tens of thousands of people and indirectly impact many court systems and their users.

Look how much press the shortage of the California court system got versus the press that that shortage was in part manufactured, designed, or mismanaged into existence. That’s what we’re dealing with on a fascinating scale. Nearly a decade of misleading the public across the country in the relatively low risk, small stakes business of court reporting. And no one will ever know because it is not profitable to push awareness.

I cannot imagine how bad it must be in other industries and how many decisions we make based on clever lies and decisions by industry executives. Reminds me of the whole recycling public relations push by big oil. An entire society transformed into believing recycling is helping, in a meaningful way, the scientific problems faced by mankind. Meanwhile in actuality we’re just fucking wasting our time throwing different trash into a different bin because it makes us feel like we’re doing our part while in reality all we fucking succeeded in doing is letting big oil executives control more of the world over the half century that followed. And even with that public knowledge we continue wasting our time because now we’re too invested and changing direction would simply be too politically costly.

Well we too are a society transformed. The legal record in many thousands of cases is now effectively controlled by large corporations run by the same corporate psychology that would actively inconvenience and lie to an entire country just to keep the money flowing. Luckily for us, we had a large national organization paying some guy $300,000 a year to watch the fucking ship capsize in real time, so he will be able to afford to jump ship, unlike the rest of us. Don’t be alarmed, it’s all part of the strategic plan.

Perhaps most humorous is that at the end of the day you will still trust him to solve your problems and distrust the guy jumping up and down yelling “danger, danger!” And there’s not really much to be done because the reasons are largely psychological and related to social acceptance and group dynamics.

For the record, that’s also the reason the Republican Congress is watching your Republican President rob you and your children and pretending nothing is wrong. It’s a lot easier to let him rob you than risk another mob invading the capitol building or disrupting their political careers by losing them through political action. And if you should face some misfortune because they desired to keep up appearances instead of following the law or doing the right thing, too bad, so sad for you.

A beautiful week in the world. Another literary legend is born. I end with a social media post I made with regard to a Staten Island Politics Facebook group post:

“The reason MAGA call liberals names is because we show facts they can’t handle.” – Staten Island Politics Poster

To which I could only reply:

The reason we call each other names is we are being propagandized to fight each other while mega wealthy corporations rob our country for all it’s worth under the guise of patriotism and law.

Look how conveniently the tariffs worked out. Corporations got to raise prices. Then they got reimbursed. I no longer believe this to be coincidence, considering it is confirmed that at least one Supreme Court Justice is taking lavish gifts and there are no consequences. Certainly the others now know there are no consequences and our country is for sale.

I have lived here in Staten Island my whole life and I know that if you guys knew and understood what was being done you would be pretty goddamn angry because they are basically putting the government that your kids will live under, under massive debt, no matter who the politicians are, so that that government will spend less on the well-being of your kids and their kids, and more on servicing the debt of the United States of America.

If there are people among us who would vote for starving kids and stunted disabled children, I respect your freedom, but you see that things can get pretty bad even with all the resources we pour into kids and families as a society. What do you think happens to our society when we start cutting those resources off?

You are in danger, but the TV does not tell you that, so you do not perceive danger. And the people putting you in danger will mostly not be here in 10 or 20 years to see how it shakes out.

Addendum:

I later got the link to work.

Palazzi & Jenkins v National Court Reporters Association Update July 2026

To those in the know, my PACER account was disabled. But we’re in business now and I looked to see if there were any updates on the antitrust lawsuit against the National Court Reporters Association.

Not really.

Here is a PDF of all the filings in the case as of about 6:00 a.m. this morning.

NCRA LAWSUIT FILINGS AS OF July 6 2025 Download

To those that don’t understand lawsuits, basically they start with pleadings, usually a complaint and an answer. Sometimes before an answer is filed, a motion to dismiss is made. That’s where we are now. An amended complaint was filed in April 2025. A motion to dismiss was filed by the National Court Reporters Association (defendant) in June 2025. A brief in opposition to the motion was filed by the plaintiffs in July 2025. A reply was filed by the defendant on August 11, 2025. There have been no filings since, presumably waiting for the motion to be decided.

In full disclosure, I have not had time to digest the documents I am about to share to give an accurate picture where we’re at legally. I do know that federal pleading standards were tightened via the Twombly or Iqbal cases years back, so it’s not as easy to make it past the pleading stage as it once was. If the case survives the motion to dismiss, in all likelihood, the National Court Reporters Association will be forced to either settle or answer the complaint and proceed to discovery where the facts of the case come out.

Before I share these documents, I would just like to note this is not or does not seem to be incredibly uncommon in our federal judiciary. I have seen cases in the past where people die before they see justice because of situations like this, where it’s almost a year since the last filing in the case and the court just hasn’t made a decision yet. The benefit for the court of people dying before they see justice is, of course, that they never have to bother with deciding the actual case. Not alleging that this is intentional, but it is a consequence of the way our system is set up, and anyone that cannot acknowledge that has perhaps not considered the math of cramming like 250,000 cases a year more or less through 900 judges and their referees, staff, etc., with some of those judges taking a disproportionate number of the cases. Even if everything was split evenly, we’re talking about a situation where a judge could research and write one opinion every business day, all day, for eternity, and still never actually get to every case. Perhaps knowing that it is astonishing that things are working as well as they are.

The amended complaint:

Amended Complaint 28 Download

The amended complaint with redlining:

Amended Complaint with Redlines 28-1 Download

The motion to dismiss by the defendant, the National Court Reporters Association:

Defendant Brief Moving to Dismiss 33 Download

Attached to that brief was a proposed order to dismiss the case, which I choose not to waste server space on.

The plaintiffs’ reply to the motion to dismiss:

PLAINTIFF BRIEF IN OPPOSITION TO NOTICE TO DISMISS – 119122805767 Download

Defendant’s reply to plaintiffs’ opposition:

REPLY TO PLAINTIFF-S BRIEF IN OPPOSITION – 119122922930 Download

Honorable mention, one of the plaintiff attorneys died during the case and therefore had to withdraw from the filing system. Rest in peace Mr. Lindsey Taylor.

WITHDRAWAL 119122827858 Download

Good luck, litigants and litigators. Have a wonderful day.

P.S.

PACER case search revealed only four federal lawsuits against the National Court Reporters Association, with the most recent one prior to this being over two decades ago.

Isn’t it interesting that all these multimillion dollar business operations hide everything behind their paywalls and we rely on either thousands of people paying $15 to the federal government to inform themselves like I did or some jackass with a website to post the information for free also like I did?

Actually, this is a really powerful case study in human psychology. It is completely public information that stenographers pay a nonprofit $3 million a year to lie to them and make them feel like everything will be okay. And we are not dumb people. We’re just people.

How many humans in history do you think figured that shit out and decided “I’m gonna go work in the association management business?”

PACER Case Search revealed four federal lawsuits against the National Court Reporters Association

Addendum July 2026:

I have actually read that the averages for deciding a motion to dismiss are shorter than a year. My deepest apologies to all the judges on all the cases where the timeline is much tighter. Unfortunately it would appear absent further information that I fell into one of those psychological pitfalls I often write of and educate on.

For what it is worth I provide the AI take of this situation. I offer it with all the usual disclaimers that must be given when you are trusting a hallucinating talking rock to summarize documents for you.

National Court Reporters Association AI Position Statement

The National Court Reporters Association has released the following.

Statement from the National Court Reporters Association President regarding the organization’s AI Position Statement

While I commend the organization for such an uplifting message, I can’t help but point out that it sidesteps some very important issues.

Veritext and the big money brigade have all heavily invested in digital reporting. This will lead to the loss of stenographer seats in the private sector and exacerbate shortages in the public sector. As our number dwindles, so too does our bargaining power on the market. And with the digital brigade proclaiming that digital is realtime, it’s foreseeable that realtime rates will go down. The only unknown is time scale. Meanwhile, as corporate consolidation continues, corporate ability to set rates will strengthen. Game, set, match.

Let’s not forget Tyler Technologies’s recent acquisition of FTR. They’ve got a hell of a lot more money than Veritext and it’s pretty clear they intend to push AI. And NCRA as an organization purged the association of volunteers that were most concerned with AI and digital inadequacy. So what is the organization going to actually do to catch the ears of legislators and court officials and ensure they’re not fooled by flashy demos and sweet-talking salesmen? These are nice words. But there is no apparent plan. That means fewer jobs going to stenographers and fewer members for NCRA. That means that eventually NCRA may someday have to open up its membership to voice and digital to survive or die. Or it’ll become a corporate puppet if it’s not already a corporate puppet. After all, the organization lied to its members with regard to the legality of discussing rates for decades, and that helped agency owners, not working reporters.

I can’t help but feel our whole guardian of the record thing is a facade. We stress about nonsensical, almost meaningless moments like the placement of a comma, but we never developed as a group the skills required to communicate to the country our value. Sometimes I’m dumbstruck thinking about how many millions of dollars were flushed down the toilet over the years. Dollars that could’ve gone to preserving your jobs and enhancing leadership skills across the board.

I look back at past endeavors wondering if it was all for nothing. Maybe the rank and file working reporter doesn’t need to learn such skills. But our leaders and institutions spent their time trying to dissuade the corporate scumbags from being corporate scumbags with the anti-gifting, anti-contracting, and the realtime is the future push. Guardians? We weren’t even a speed bump. We said to them, and still say today, “take it all, take the whole market, because you have the money, so you dictate the terms.” These are entities that have asked reporters to change transcripts for their clients. These are entities that allegedly steal from their own employees. The record is in danger. We are currently losing and it doesn’t have to be that way. I proved that half a decade ago.

This all to explain why it became clear to me that the NCRA is not equipped to handle the challenges of our time. The willpower isn’t there. It’s never been. It never will be. The truth might be too stressful for some of us, and that’s okay. For the rest of us, forming something that pushes back independent of NCRA is imperative.

Maybe a publication that rivals the Journal of Court Reporting and draws eyes from outside the profession. Just a thought I had some time ago.

Stenonymous readership statistics released February 27, 2026

Bulletin: Court Reporting & Captioning Week 2026

National Court Reporters Association Loses Approximately 1000 Members in 3 Years.

Posting the corruption article the other day inspired me to review some of the information in it.

I realized I had posted the NCRA stats that were posted as of August 2023, which were stats from December 2022.

I compared that to the most updated stats on its website.

National Court Reporters Association statistics posted as of January 23, 2026

From 11,946 to 11,009 is a loss of 937 overall members.

The loss of court reporter members from 8,980 to 8,113 is a loss of 867.

Some of this is no doubt attributable to the shortage. People are retiring out. That was never in dispute. But even by the bleakest of statistics published by the Speech-to-Text Institute before it was accused of fraud and shut down its website, there are a couple hundred new reporters entering the workforce each year. Where are they in this equation?

Either they lack the knowledge of NCRA, or lack the motivation to join. And in either case, the NCRA should probably be studying why that is.

But this is the organizational issue with NCRA, and a big reason I left. The organization lacks introspection. It is ever focused on blaming the outsider, the other, the people like me that dare criticize the direction we’re headed. In such a culture and environment, it is nearly impossible to examine and ask, “is it something we’re doing wrong? Are we the bad guys?”

And to a degree, this is shouting to the void, hoping the words carry and the winds change. Because it’s not just retirees that left. There’s an entire network of people just like me that gave up their certification and said “goodbye, old friend.” We lost the belief in the organization, and we took our money and effort with us. Not just so-called “checkbook members”, but people willing to donate serious time to the organization, and in some cases, fundraise for it.

I will say in NCRA’s defense that, over 3 or 4 years, a loss of about 200 a year, is far less bleeding than the Speech-to-Text Institute’s forecasting, which was something like a loss of 700 reporters a year in exactly this time frame. So at least there’s that.

“Am I the bad guy?”

National Court Reporters Association 2024 990 Filing Now Available

2024 snapshot:

NCRA 990 – 2024 Download

In the past I’ve written about how easy it might be to bribe our leaders.

I’ve also noted that, even where there’s no proof of corruption, the current Executive Director of the National Court Reporters Association, Dave Wenhold, either personally or through his management company, runs lots of associations. So many that some might say it could impact the amount of time spent on our national association’s issues.

And so I’ll add today that it’s sort of comical that, at least in 2024, expenses went over revenue by almost exactly what Wenhold’s salary / pay is. 4.93M expenses. 4.6M revenue. And Wenhold’s payment? 0.3M.

And yeah, I get the whole song and dance that this is the guy who can run an association of this size. But, you know, so was Jim Cudahy at one point, and we all saw how that turned out with the Speech-to-Text Institute.

I stand by what I said in the corruption article. We should send our own people to association management training and have one of us steering the ship. The consolidation of too much power in one person is a dangerous thing. We had the good sense to write term limits into NCRA’s constitution and bylaws. Why, then, do we consolidate, year after year, one man’s power over the organization? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we need to flip the seat every year. But after half a decade of frozen/falling revenue and a fairly stagnant membership count, and a man that’s been involved with the court reporting profession for 17 years or more, isn’t it time to try a new approach?

Critical thinking demands the question at least pass through the minds of the Board of Directors.

National Court Reporters Association Files Reply In Support of Motion to Dismiss Antitrust Complaint

The official music track for this post is here.

Some time ago I consulted with a law firm about the tying of the National Court Reporters Association’s certifications to its membership, possibly in violation of antitrust laws. I’m not privy to what happened afterwards except that they apparently found plaintiffs and are attempting to move forward with a class action. I got my hands on NCRA’s reply in support of the motion to dismiss and I’ve decided to share it.

Having only read a sliver of it, I must say it’s comical that they call the membership and certification inseparable. Anybody with a few brain cells can see that it’d be easy to separate out the testing and CEUs from the membership. The NCRA simply doesn’t want to because it would cost them money. I’m hopeful that the court sees through such a ruse and the lawsuit survives the pleading stage, because at that point they’ve boxed themselves into a corner of “yes, our membership is tied to certification [in violation of antitrust law.]”

I have no reservations about where I stand. In the question of institutional loyalty versus loyalty to my fellow court reporters, I choose my fellow court reporters. And I’ll clip a comment from Facebook that lays out some of what I think of when I think of NCRA.

This refers to Jim Cudahy leaving NCRA to return under the Speech-to-Text Institute years later, the fact that Dave Wenhold manages probably a dozen organizations and therefore by definition cannot be invested in court reporting in the way we need him to be at this critical moment, the decline of court jobs on NCRA’s watch, and the decades-old lie that court reporters cannot discuss rates.

There is a certain cult-like thinking in court reporting where we believe in people and organizations that are clearly failing us. This is due in large part to propaganda. Being something of a propaganda expert that has used propaganda to tell the truth and raise consumer awareness, I must point out that if we do not break free from this de facto mind control, we will collectively walk off a cliff that there’s no climbing back from.

I must point out that with the kind of funding court reporters pour into the NCRA and Dave Wenhold’s pocket, Stenonymous could disrupt corporate propaganda dragging down your incomes, and has proven that in the past through the annihilation of the Speech-to-Text Institute, a venture that was backed by all the biggest names in the business including Stenograph and Veritext — and a direct threat to the prevalence of machine shorthand reporting.

I must point out that you can make a donation today on the front page of Stenonymous.com.

If change from within is not forthcoming, change from without is the only path forward.

P.S. Trey, if you happen to be reading, I know I still owe you a post. Life got in the way. I’ll be working on it sometime soon.

National Court Reporters Association to Exclude Non-Members From NCRA Social Media Groups

Court reporting has a huge Facebook presence. The National Court Reporters Association is acutely aware of this and has lots of different Facebook groups catering to the different types of reporters.

(Sorry to all the CART writers that don’t like being lumped into the reporter umbrella.)

Some of the NCRA social media groups are pictured

There’s no secret that the National Court Reporters Association has, overall, been bleeding members, with more expected losses forecasted to about 2030 thanks to the retirement cliff and the expansion of digital reporting by the larger corporations. This is in addition to people burned by the organization in one way or another who leave voluntarily, like yours truly.

So imagine my surprise when it was announced they’d be culling non-members from their groups.

An announcement by NCRA in the CART group

An announcement by NCRA in the scopists and proofreaders group

This selective inclusivity is precisely what’s killing the organization. If you want people to be excited about membership, excited about the organization, excited about joining and making a difference, you engage with them. You can’t engage with people you exclude. Why in the world would we exclude non-members from these spaces if there’s nothing nefarious going on?

Who knows? Maybe there is something nefarious going on. The NCRA does have that antitrust suit filed against it after all.

For better or worse, I’ve always allowed open engagement in my Stenonymous group and on this website. I take the time to answer and like almost every comment. You can trust my brand to be open and honest. Why can’t you trust your national association to be the same?

To be honest, if you ever wanted a place to spend the $300 wasted on membership dues, Stenonymous would be a good bet. I engage with news reporters to spread information about the field. I report accurately, openly, and faithfully on industry news, concepts, ideas. It wouldn’t really be all that hard to get some lobbying going if I had significant buy-in from the community. And then what does NCRA provide besides the certifications? And it probably wouldn’t be all that hard to get a certification program going under a slimmer organization with bylaws that don’t violate the antitrust laws. After all, I have good relations with people that have instituted the New York State Court Reporters Association certification program. Yes, I would have to give up the blogging and the wild man approach to politics, but I’d make it work.

You ever want a new association dedicated to stenographers, I’m your guy. But I can’t do it for free. I would need enough reserve cash to safely leave my job and do what really quite honestly needs to be done in this field — NCRA needs stiff competition. (Stenograph too!)

To all the NCRA members reading, don’t let your leaders lead you off a cliff. Don’t watch them burn your dues with their poor decisions. Demand inclusivity or get out of the club before it crumbles. Imagine the possibilities. Take control of your destiny.

Sometimes the path of least resistance isn’t the smartest choice. Sometimes the way forward is through.

Interview of Trey Perez by Cheri Marks

( ADDENDUM: The plain text version is showing up crazy on my website. Give me some time to figure it out. )

(Unedited PDF):

Trey Perez Interview (1)Download

“Are we working together, or are we working against each other?”
Cheri Marks speaks to Trey Perez

CM
Would you mind starting by giving me a little background about yourself, where you’re from, and how you initially came to be involved with court reporting issues?
TP
My name is Trey Perez, and I’m a videographer from Texas and Central Texas. I have an
associate’s degree in video technology. I want to make movies, but I got into the legal video business, and did that for 25 years. In 2019, I noticed there was a shortage of court reporters because of jobs that would be canceled.
CM
Could I back you up a little bit? How exactly does legal videography work?
TP
Sure. Back then it was separate. The attorneys would call the videographer, and then they would also call in a court reporter. The court reporting firms didn’t really handle a video then. They were strictly stenography. So in 2019 I got the idea to work on an app that would lay down the foundation of the transcript.
CM
Was there a defining moment that propelled you to design the stenography app? Or were you just watching the relationship between stenographers and videographers and sensing that it was inefficient?
TP
There’s a couple of different factors. One was the shortage of stenographers, and videographers losing jobs because of that. Then these companies, when there wasn’t a court reporter available, would hire us to go do video only depositions. One company in particular, Veritext, had a login which they wanted you to write down the times and objections etc. And so you would have this extra work to do. And I’m not very good at keeping notes. And so I had this friend of mine working on a website. He’s a very talented developer. And I told him about this situation and he developed the app for me. That’s why I created it, so that I could just take notes. By pressing a button, the speaker would change, it would designate who’s who. And that’s just how it started off.
CM
Do you think they initially were trying to cut corners and save money by having you do both the work of videographer and stenographer?
TP
No, I think there was a shortage. My understanding of the way it worked back then, was that the app would help the court reporter with her job, so that she could go back afterwards and listen to the audio, and know exactly where to go when listening for objections. They wanted us to take hand-written notes! The idea of having some sort of app that could simplify the process of finding objections seemed that it would just make the whole thing easier.
CM
Can you tell me how you got involved in the related antitrust lawsuits? How did you become aware of the criminality, and what were your first moves?
TP
The first thing was having a grievance filed against me by the president of the Court Reporters Texas Court Reporters Association. She’d sent me an email. And I was already getting little cryptic messages and things and telling me I was doing illegal things–
CM
By developing your app or by paying attention to–?
TP
By developing an app. That pissed off the court, big time. And so a grievance was filed against me.
CM
And what was the basis for the grievance?
TP
They said that I was trying to do court reporting.
CM
But isn’t that what they’d essentially asked you to do?
TP
When I came up with my app, I could produce a transcript easier and cheaper than the court reporters, but that wasn’t my intent. My intent was to offer it to them, and I did offer it to them. But no one would do business with me. It didn’t hurt the court reporting firms that the court reporters were upset with me. But still, they used the roar of the court reporters to shut me down. It was a tool to help the court reporters. And all the evidence will show that. It did change for me at one point, when there was no work left and my business was destroyed. By then I was just trying to make a living. But I did say that people could take a deposition without a court reporter, because everyone else was doing it! I never did this on my own. I never once built out a video-only deposition without a reporter unless the court reporting firm asked me to. So how can that be illegal?
CM
Right. And can you tell me then how it moved from you having a grievance filed against you to you being involved in that antitrust lawsuit from one to the next?
TP
For the grievance, I represented myself and it was dismissed. And then they appealed that dismissal and I got to speak again and they dismissed it again for the second time. And that’s their own body that governs the court reporting firms and the court reporters. But at that point, my business was devastated. There was so much evidence because the court reporters would taunt me on social media. They would post pictures or taunting videos along with my name, or make snide, thinly-veiled insults in my direction. So that pissed me off. Just the audacity: that I can’t even work now because I was developing a tool.
CM
It seems tragic, because presumably you and the stenographers shouldn’t even be the ones fighting. It seems like you both have a common enemy, which is these huge corporations that don’t have working people’s interests in mind.
TP
I tried to work with the court reporters here in Austin. I contacted a few, individual court reporters and asked them: what’s more important, your family or your career? Because it’s going to be a 20 billion dollar industry soon, and no one will be able to compete with that. I was trying to get the court reporters to come on board, and every time I talked to them, I said, we weren’t trying to replace court reporters. We were just trying to help out with the situation. They can deny it, but here in Texas, court reporters were getting 500 bonuses to up and leave a job they were supposed to do, if they got a better offer that same day.
CM
Geez. Do you feel like your reputation was smeared a bit unfairly?
TP
Oh, yeah, Most definitely. There’s a lot of rumors. It’s been difficult because when you don’t have any money, it’s hard to get representation.
CM
Are you still embroiled in the lawsuit, or are you past it at this point?
TP
I’m still involved. We’ve had really bad rulings, let’s put it that way. The name of my company was called Depo Notes, the notes of the deposition. And so the judge ruled that, in my case,
that in my hands, that it was illegal. Check this out. So when I couldn’t find work, I started doing landscaping and mowing grass. And I would go into different neighborhoods to do this. So then when I’m cutting grass, there’s these certain people who keep coming around, riding their bikes around me and, like, making racialized judgements about me. I could just sense that, you know, with the political climate here in Texas, all this talk about “getting rid of illegal people” – and then here I have a judge telling me that I can’t use my tool, my app that I developed, and it’s illegal in my hands. Then when I go out to cut grass, I have this person wondering if I’m illegal or not.
CM
Oh my God. That’s awful, I’m sorry. I feel like this is important, and I’m curious now– do you think there was institutional racism involved in your initial vilification?
TP
No, I think that the industry is 85% white, though. Here’s the thing, though. Why would a judge even be bringing up that AI could hurt minorities? I even wrote that in when my attorney wanted to leave. I wrote an objection to him leaving. I put that in there. That from the beginning this has been biased. And judges, I know they have court reporters that have been with them for many years. But for him to rule the way he’s ruled–it’s odd. What’s funny is that people that believe in the law, they say, yeah, the Constitution, the Constitution. But yet when their man tries to overthrow our government, they forget about the Constitution then.
CM
Absolutely.
TP
In my case, the judge said that for me to have this app was illegal because every deposition in Texas must be taken by a stenographic court reporter. But one of the biggest plaintiffs firms in Texas just put out an ad, and he does 98% of his job without a court reporter. And how do I know? Because I did some. And he came out with an ad saying that in the past four years, he’s given away $1 billion to his clients. He didn’t advertise that, of course, that he did it all without a court reporter.
CM
Do you feel like you were too primed for success and they wanted to quash you and take your ideas?
TP
No, it was because the firms themselves were worried. They were threatened by the app. But the court reporters are just worried about their jobs. Why didn’t they get on the court reporting firms that were hiring me asking me to do this? That’s who they should have been after.
CM
It’s easier to punch down than to punch up, right?
TP
Right. And I think that they thought I was just gonna go away, you know, and I’m not. Because
it’s hard to argue that the rules and laws apply to only me in this case. I don’t think they should be able to win.
CM
So when you win, you could very well be setting a legal precedent, perhaps, for this kind of case.
TP
That’s what I feel is going to happen.
CM
Is there an end in sight? Or is it one of those kind of entrenched legal things where it’s hard to
know when it’s going to end?
TP
It’s hard to know. And right now, I don’t have counsel. My attorney withdrew, and I don’t even
know why– “irreconcilable differences” he wrote. The real “differences” were that he wasn’t
willing to fight for me. We had even agreed that these rulings were wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it. It’s about the truth. That’s what we do is we take testimony down. And, you know, I know it’s a talent to be able to type fast, and that’s a skill and it’s worth some money. It has value. And. But when you don’t have that– because not every court reporter is the same– you could be greatly assisted by using this type of technology.
CM
What do you think about, the claims that AI has an inherent racism to it because of the people
that are building it and the speed at which it’s being kind of put into the world before being read
by an ethics committee, for example, or do you have any opinion on that?
TP
I think that a human being, at the end of the day, is the one that signs off. AI is not going to be
certifying itself. You would have someone reading [post trial, in this case] it and cleaning it up,
and we could be improving the performance of the tool in this way.
CM
You can check accuracy against AI instead of just giving over all the responsibility.
So at this point, have they shuttered your business and have they told you you’re not allowed to
reopen it, because it’s illegal?
TP
No. Once money stops coming in and work stops coming in for a couple years, your developer
gets pissed and, you know, those relationships don’t last. So development stops and then, you
know, then everything stops.
CM
I’m so sorry. Do you feel like you’ll have the drive at some point to develop a new app? Or are
you kind of done with it?
TP
I’m done with it, yeah. So this will be, understandably, my last fight. And that is to change the
way that I’ve asked this question on social media, on LinkedIn: can a deposition be taken in
Texas without a court reporter? Yes or no.
CM
Why are they afraid to say?
TP
Because if they say yes, then that helps my case. But if they say no, they’re lying, because
they’re doing it already.
CM
So, they’ve put you and court reporters between a rock and a hard place just to benefit this huge
Speech to Text Institute and these corporations that are developing the same software.
TP
When they filed a grievance against me, I spoke anyway. So the reporters are commenting on
this thread and they say: “He spoke at the meetings. He says he can’t find work. Says he’s basically been blackballed or boycotted”. And then the next person chimes “Hell yes, we did!” And another one writes “He bit the hand that fed him. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
Maybe if he would have stayed in his lane”…that kind of thing
CM
It’s really a shame. I wanted to ask you how you felt about Stenonymous’s previous coverage of
your lawsuits– and if you felt it was too focused on the speech to Tech Institute involvement.
TP
No, I just think that he’s biased and he’s on the side of the court reporters.
I haven’t done anything illegal. There is no evidence stating I did anything wrong. We were
never reprimanded for developing a tool, a tool that they’re actually using now.
CM
It seems like you’re just being bullied.
If that were to stop, could you see any opportunity for collaboration with court reporters
happening in the future, for example with sympathetic figures or outlets like Stenonymous?
TP
I don’t see it because it’s just been too much. You know, last time I went into the deposition, I got kicked out. So, I just don’t see it. You know, I’d walk in a room and I’d get this just look of
disdain. And then the court reporters got racist, too. You know, saying I was jealous of them. One lady, and her husband represents some of the court reporters that are defendants in this case, even went as low to repeat the racist stereotype, “most Hispanic men are short and have ego issues”
CM
That’s really awful, I’m sorry.
TP
So, they talk about how AI can be biased. But that lady just proved that a court reporter can be
biased as well. The court reporter is taking live deposition, and she’s biased right there in your
face.
CM
So what’s your best case scenario, both with the legal case and your own future and career?
TP
My end goal is to set a precedent here in Texas, and that’ll be my legacy. The testimony in
Texas will be able to be taken down by other means, not just stenographically. And it’ll be clear,
you know, because apparently there’s currently this gray area. I want it to be clear because
litigants should have a choice. That’s why I feel like I have a case. I’m gonna appeal. So they can be happy all they want, but it’s not over. It got personal.
CM
I look forward to hearing about your success with this case, and you setting the precedent.
TP
Did you hear about the case that was filed by the court reporters against the NCRA? It was on
Stenonymous– the court reporters filed a lawsuit against their association, antitrust as well.
Okay. So that brought up another topic: that videographers record the court. And the court could want our audio. And under the NCRA, if you’re a certified legal video specialist, you have to give it to them, that’s just courtesy. But the thing is, they’re suing the NCRA, the court reporters, because in order to become certified, and stay certified, a court reporter has to take these continuing education courses. And in order to do that, they have to have a membership with the NCRA. And so that’s why they’re saying that there’s an antitrust lawsuit there. They don’t have any competitors. And then the videographer would just have to give away his work product. And that’s a thing that I have an issue with now, because here I was getting blackballed. And then I’d go to a job and the court reporter would want my audio for free. And I’d be like, damn, are we working together or are we working against each other? They would say that we’re working together, but it didn’t seem that way…
CM
It seems like there’s a lot of elements at play here. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me
today. I wish you the best.
TP
Thank you

NVRA President: NCRA STRONG and Stenographic Writers Can Join Us for Real Institutional Support!

From National Verbatim Reporters Association President Patrick Stephens:

Hello, reporting community!

For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Patrick Stephens. I have the pleasure of serving as the current president of the National Verbatim Reporters Association – no, the V is not for voice! The association strives to cater to the needs and wants of voice writers and machine writers alike.

In the past few months, I’ve become aware of some concerns machine writers have regarding a committee they’ve poured a lot of their time, energy and hearts into, the STRONG Committee. I wanted to write a piece to let you know that your concerns did not fall on deaf ears at the NVRA. First, presidents in most societies have the right to disassemble and rearrange committees that are NOT standing committees of a society. Removing a standing committee, though, requires the voice of the members, as it would constitute a Bylaws amendment, and, in a lot of instances, an amendment to an association’s Articles of Incorporation. Because of this, it is my belief that the NVRA’s Legislative Issues Committee would be the perfect place to work toward addressing these complicated and critical issues, as the committee reports to the entire NVRA Board of Directors and is not subject to removal on the wishes of one person.

“AI lacks the capacity for contextualization that humans possess.”

NCRA White Paper, 2023.

Who would understand this more so than the voice writer? While voice writers use Dragon Professional software, it is a tool, just like steno theory is a tool to produce the words. With these tools, there is always a human in control discerning and making sure that speech is transcribed correctly. Speakers, homonyms, dialects, parentheticals and punctuation must be transcribed correctly, and nothing replaces the human mind as the only proven method that can do so. With a human, the transcript certification has been a single point of quality assurance, as the reporter swears that the transcript is a truly verbatim record. Even if AI could certify a transcript, can we as humans truly trust it? AI systems are owned by corporations; individual reporters are not. Most certifications tell the reader that court reporters are not financially tied to the parties involved in the case. Furthermore, court reporters have an ethical obligation to tell parties if the deponent or parties in the case are related to them or if there is a conflict of interest. AI will have none of these responsibilities.

Voice writers use voice codes, which are comparable to brief strokes and pen-writing. It is the same thing as a human being having control of steno strokes, which is a theory and a program just as a voice writer’s theory uses Dragon Professional, sometimes referred to as “oral stenography”. Additionally, computer-aided transcription (CAT) software we all use aid the theory/method that we use. For machine steno, CAT software utilizes the theory to make words; for voice, the CAT software utilizes Dragon’s speech recognition engine to make words.

In steno, a stroke is written, the stroke goes to the theory and looks for that specific stroke and selects the correct word; voice writers say a word, it goes to the speech recognition engine (Dragon) and makes an educated guess of what was said. *

If a machine writer makes the correct stroke, the right word will appear. Because voice writers dictate to Dragon’s speech recognition engine, which is an imperfect AI, if a mistake is made, the voice writer can correct it in real-time and the correct word will appear.

“The leading speech recognition tools misunderstand Black speakers twice as often as white speakers,” wrote the research team. “To close the gap, we must create more linguistically diverse and inclusive datasets.”

NCRA White Paper, 2023.

I would argue that you should just use a court reporter. Accents and dialects are converted by the court reporter continuously and daily. The voice writer’s input in this context is critical for the AI to run effectively, given these differences in accents and dialects. Any speech recognition engine is simply a program that will take sounds, run it through its vocabulary base and make an educated guess at the words you said.

“Court reporters, whether practicing machine or voice stenography, have the opportunity to work together to protect the profession we love so much. Our ability to be the person to certify the record – not a transcriber from a far-off land or a computer algorithm – is one of our strongest selling points, not to mention real-time and read-backs! We have a duty to the record; we have certifications and ethical obligations we must meet to protect the record. Working together toward a common goal can build bridges and increase momentum toward greater understanding of what we do and why we love our profession.”

Tori Pittman, (Machine/Voice Writer – NVRA Education Committee & Director)

Of note is that only the machine writer and the voice writer pass certification exams at the same speeds, scores and test durations, with both national exams being validated by credentialing entities, and many states use these certifications as an entry requirement for licensure, what we’ve all come to know as reciprocity. It’s time to combine our efforts in hopes for a better future for the students and working professionals we’ve come to know and support!

In conclusion, voice and machine writers all know the ubiquity of artificial intelligence in this modern age. Voice and machine writers work around the flaws in automated speech recognition every day and are uniquely positioned to speak out on its pros and cons.

NVRA’s Legislative Issues Committee, a standing committee that cannot be disbanded by incoming presidents, is being given a new mission: Court reporters of both modalities will come together to investigate and recommend legislative action that will ensure that technology is working for the communities we serve under the supervision and direction of certified court reporters only. We will work to build a coalition with other professionals concerned with the application of AI in their own fields, and together, make our voices heard.

Let this be a call to those ready to make a difference in the future of our profession. The National Verbatim Reporters Association is prepared to give its committee and general members the institutional support needed to make changes to ensure that reporters reap the benefits of technology and that its harm is eliminated.

For more details and information regarding this committee of NVRA, feel free to E-mail us at legislation@nvra.org. If you’re interested in membership, please visit us at NVRA.org. Please note that if you’re an RPR seeking to join the NVRA, the deadline to submit your application for RPR reciprocity with the NVRA’s CVR needs to be received by December 31st, 2024. Please E-mail nvramembership@nvra.org to begin this process.

From Christopher Day, Stenonymous.com:

I think this is a clear sign that everyone in the industry knows what was done to NCRA STRONG was wrong. I think the NVRA is willing to get behind its reporters, give an actual budget, and not mothball important initiatives. To my allies over at the National Court Reporters Association, consider picking up an NVRA membership today and getting involved. I see a real chance for change and an organization that’s willing to do what must be done to grow and create a healthy, enduring profession. This is also an opportunity to join a committee that cannot be easily disbanded, like Mr. Stephens made clear.