Could The National Court Reporters Association’s Tying of Membership and Credentials Be a Violation of Antitrust Laws?

Credentialed members are required by the NCRA to maintain their membership to keep their credentials.

This page talks about a class action that took place against the American Osteopathic Association. Motion to dismiss was denied and the case settled for millions of dollars. The bottom line is we don’t know for sure if it’s illegal yet.

But I think it’s about time to say it out loud: The National Court Reporters Association does so many things in the name of legal liability. They refused to speak out against the fraud nonprofit Speech-to-Text Institute. They refused to entertain a bylaws amendment I proposed in 2021. They rejected an ad I wanted to place in the Journal of Court Reporting in 2022. Anything with any sort of legal liability is taboo at NCRA and it’s a convenient excuse for the board and staff to strike down membership’s desired direction.

So what’s the deal, NCRA? You use legal liability as a crutch when it suits you, but when it lets you screw members out of money, you’re all good with taking on the legal risk? Maybe you really are in bed with the big box brigade. This smells.

I hope people sue. How will your insurance rates do when it becomes public knowledge that this was a totally foreseeable liability that you ran into head first? You want to tell us GC didn’t know about this risk? Maybe it’s time for a new GC. Maybe it’s time for a new board that doesn’t put our national association at extreme risk of being sued. Because I’ve got news for you: If American Osteopathic is settling, you are too!

Even better, this potential violation of law is written right into the bylaws.

Section 9 on the Constitution and Bylaws Page

I’ve reached out to a lawyer myself. I’ll see where it goes. But from my reading of everything, members would have much more standing than I would. Especially members who require certification to work in their state. Imagine getting back years or decades of dues that you were all paying that you never had to pay in the first place. Isn’t that worth getting together and giving it a shot? You decide.

Because we already know the NCRA’s stance. Pay, pay, pay, and don’t complain!

Do you hear us yet?

Capitol Weekly Opinion: “[Deleted Recordings…]…Could Have A Tragic Outcome”

Just have to share. This link is making its way around stenographer social media.

Her client was denied a restraining order after deletion of crucial information. Which is not good, obviously. My sympathies.

Melissa B. Buchman, we could use a mediator to liaise with the corporate fraudsters of court reporting. Make sure they pay well for the privilege.

Christopher Day admits this is the first time he’s read the term Collaborative Law.

Makes me think about all the people that couldn’t come to an agreement.

“Your choices are figure this out or spend $$ on lawyers.”

Uh, your Honor, I think we’ll figure it out.

But no. People want to fight. I knew a man that wanted to fight. Gave up what he loved most in the world because of his hatred of his ex. And the pain of thinking of this man I barely knew was enough that I said I would share this with others because it was so impactful.

My point is that the world needs people like you.

Peacemakers.

I know I have many reading.

Motion to Resign Keith Lemons Gathering Supporters After National Court Reporters Association Strong Committee Disbanded

It’s a holiday, so I’m not going to take up too much of your time. NCRA Members are being encouraged by former Strong members to stand up against what has been done. I’m in full support, so these materials have a home here. I regret no longer having my membership. But just let it be known that I’d be first to sign.

Spread ’em around to fellow NCRA members. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see how the institutional machinery attempts to wiggle out of this one.

Years ago I would’ve wept at the sight of such division. Now I consider it wholly necessary for the advancement of our interests as a community. NCRA needs to understand — and needs to communicate that it understands — that it exists to serve our interests. The mission in the bylaws is leadership and enlightenment. Real leaders don’t toss away their strongest supporters.

And those that do will answer for it.

Dropboxed.

Uploaded to Stenonymous:

Notification-of-Formal-Complaint Download

Images:

Bulletin: National Court Reporters Association Disbanding NCRA Strong…

The headline is more or less the post. It’s come to my attention that the National Court Reporters Association will be discontinuing the NCRA Strong task force, later known as the NCRA Strong committee.

NCRA Strong was working on a great many things including gathering information about digital and AI failures. And from my own time there, I can honestly say that we were hamstrung every single step of the way by NCRA’s administration and organization. There were always excuses as to why things couldn’t, wouldn’t, or shouldn’t be done. They mothballed our white paper up until I published that they had mothballed the white paper and then quietly discontinued the committee within a year or so after. What an outrageous thing to do.

This marks a turning point in NCRA’s ethos. We should leave it in the dust bin where it belongs and form a new national association. If you haven’t dropped your membership yet, here’s your sign.

Always remember that the association was able to address the lies promoted by the Speech-to-Text Institute. It instead let independent publishers and activists like myself hang in the wind. The Speech-to-Text Institute, after being accused of fraud, quietly shut down its website in 2023.

And what a coincidence that NCRA Strong members validated some of my work indirectly and they’re now being disbanded. Some will blame Keith Lemons. Some will blame Dave Wenhold. Whatever the case, the National Court Reporters Association has indelibly proven itself to be an entity that does more harm than good by giving volunteers the feeling that they are doing good while quietly snuffing out anything that actually does good. It’s a political play that I can see a mile away, and I’m hopeful my fellow court reporters do too. We are being sabotaged and the knives have finally come out.

There’s some rumor of a new replacement committee. What does that accomplish? Pushing the people that have been doing this for years out of the seat for people that can be coached and directed easier.

I have a message from someone close to my heart. Go rogue. Get shit done.

Bulletin: Hey Lawyers, Your New Guardians of the Record Get Paid 90% Less and You Get No Discount

Some time ago I came up with a pretty good formula for figuring out a court reporter’s hourly rate. It excludes appearance fees, but depending on the job, appearance fees can be pretty damn minimal and simply by adding a small amount to the hourly rate, you’d be adjusting for the lost appearance income.

Page rate * pages per hour = hourly rate.

Hourly rate * 0.33 = writing time rate

Hourly rate * 0.67 = transcription rate

Perhaps divide your appearance fee by 4 and add it to the hourly. This is a little more fair than the 4-hour blocks many in the industry use today.

From my experience, believe it or not, you can get a New York City deposition reporter for somewhere around $4.00 a page. And a court reporter gets somewhere between 40 and 60 pages per hour.

That gives us a range for a non-realtime reporter of $160 to $240 an hour. Seems high, but for every hour on the machine it can take up to 2 hours of transcription, and court reporters that can do it much faster are either cutting corners, really experienced, or really, really good.

According to my sources, digital court reporters make around $30. Just so everyone knows, a fraud nonprofit called the Speech-to-Text Institute was used by the larger corporations of the court reporting field to systematically soak the market in misinformation, confusing jobseekers and consumers. The aim was to expand digital court reporting, increase the supply of “court reporters” to create a market glut, and make corporations like Veritext look good on paper so they could be sold to the next sucker.

30/240 = 12.5%

And let me be clear, $4.00 per page is not exactly a rich life in court reporting NYC. There are many that make more than that, which means digital is an even smaller percentage.

Did your deposition discovery costs decrease 90%?

My sources say lawyer bills are higher than ever.

The secret is that charges that court reporters don’t share in are added to the bill while page rates are kept artificially low to keep you thinking you’re getting a great deal.

Do what you will with that information. Might I humbly suggest that if they’re going to use a digital court reporter, you demand that the bill be something like 20% of what it usually is.

Or let them milk you, and by extension, your clients. That’s cool too.

With stenographer jobs being systematically eliminated via fraud and deceit rather than by actual technological advancement, there’s really no reason for us not to expose what the companies are doing. After all, if they’re successful enough in reducing stenographic court reporter numbers, courts won’t be able to fill spots, and my job will likely be eliminated someday too, and with the disabilities I live with, I’m unsure about being able to do better than what I’ve got. Call me biased, sure. But your whole system of law is based off of two biased sides presenting their evidence, so if bias is a reason to disregard truth, you can just throw out the whole justice system today if you want to paint biased people as untrustworthy.

Just writing that for a fan of mine.

Side note, corporations that make millions of dollars let a respected 14-year member of our field publish openly about their fraud for almost 3 years now. They’re banking on you doing nothing. I suppose I am too.

Enjoy your day all.

P.S.

Waiting by the wayside…

…of an endless reverie…

…where all the things I run from…

…are sure enough to find me.

Endless Reverie by Azam Ali.

Addendum:

November 2024:

It occurs to me it might be best to come out and say that in terms of rates lawyers have a financial interest in prolonging this digital v steno thing. More suppliers in the market, more competition. This is juxtaposed against what the corporate schemers want, continued corporate consolidation of the field under people that can jack up prices a la tacit parallelism.

Lots of pressure for you to switch to digital. Now you know why. Do with it what you will.

Investors Beware, VIQ Solutions is Your Court Reporting Coal Mine Canary

Going to try to appeal to the big money crowd today.

You’re wasting your time and energy on trying to do away with us. I’ll concede that you could win on that front. Money means power. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Look no further than famous digital court recording company, VIQ Solutions.

VIQ Solutions loves digital court recording.

“Yeah, so what, Chris?”

It’s a money pit.

VIQ Solutions posts a September 2023 quarterly loss of $4 million.

It misses its targets by incredible amounts.

VIQ Solutions earnings per share missed expectations by 135%

As I see it, if there are any investors that don’t directly benefit from the private equity model of buying, holding, and selling companies, they’re going to get burned by digital pretty bad. It’s basically going to become a jobs program propped up by your money. I guess it could be worth it if you edge us out and get to raise prices on courts and attorneys in typical oligopoly fashion. It’s worked so far on the American public, and lawyers and insurance companies seem happy to let it be done to them too.

Of course, this also means that, in my view, whoever Leonard Green sells Veritext to is a sucker with a lot of money. I don’t know what checkboxes people look at to decide whether they will spend the money. But I’m going to assume that with the horribly fractured and sometimes fabricated information in, around, and about this field, it would be easy to trick people with a lot of money or the handlers they trust with investing the money using those checkboxes. If it looks good on paper, who cares about everything else, right?

But the real world doesn’t care about your papers. You have an example right in front of you of what digital court recording can do to your wallet. Do the logical thing, walk away, and leave all the big box holding companies of today to flail. It’ll let the real winners come up, and you can buy into those a lot cheaper.

At this point in history, the money being poured on digital is all that’s propping it up. Take that away, and surprise, you realize you’re jacked up on hopium while riding hype trains. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.

If you’re looking for a place to park millions of dollars, how about that Stenonymous guy? I hear his writing has shifted real-world industries. Seems like the kind of person that would work tirelessly to make sure you saw a return on your money, if only he had a suitable salary and staff.

Or you can trust the corporate types.

More than anyone, I know the comfortable lie beats the cold, uncaring truth.

But what if one could master both?

February 2024 NYC Deposition Reporter Unionization Report

In my “Chaotic Good” post I floated the idea of unionization for “freelancers.” I also provided a form that people could sign up if they were interested in the idea, which I urge my fellow New Yorkers to share and sign on for.

After my post, someone I love very much urged me to seek guidance from a lawyer on this issue. If you want your name here, just let me know.

Another court reporter insisted that my “Chaotic Good” post was filled with supposition and put together by hope and duct tape. I have now spoken to a lawyer whose life mission is worker organization. Let’s just say my supposition, hope, and duct tape is more like the concrete foundation on which we build a better tomorrow for you and your families. Take it or leave it.

As it turns out, much of what I wrote in the aforementioned post is true. As told to me by the attorney:

There are many factors balanced or viewed by a fact finder when deciding if someone is an independent contractor or misclassified employee. What the parties call the relationship does not matter. So, for example, Lexitas’s Independent Contractor Agreement means jack shit. I wonder who could have predicted that.
There are two tracks reporters could take to push the issue. The first would be some kind of class action that could be pushed all the way to the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court. The second would be finding enough reporters from a specific New York City office and filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
No matter what track is selected, the organizing workers would have to decide whether to form a new organization or form under an existing organization. It is probably better to go with an established union.
Misclassification class action track. This option would take years and quite a lot of money in legal fees. Given the facts I expressed to the attorney, he commented that the misclassification route would probably be better.
NLRB track. This option would be quicker and is more attractive in that sense. In the event of an NLRB petition, the employer will likely say that the petitioners are independent contractors and not employees. the NLRB will hold a hearing to decide the issue. The NLRB is more favorable to workers than many courts, including New York’s courts. The company being unionized may attempt to withhold work from the petitioners, but if it’s found that petitioners are employees (and there are good reasons to believe they would), such action would be illegal union busting, and those retaliated against could be compensated for it. The NLRB track would require dedicated campaigners. This would be smarter to do at a smaller agency first, because it requires a majority of workers at the agency.
Digital court reporters and voice writers. Where agencies use a mix of court reporters, it would make sense to unionize all together. After unionization, a contract could be put in place that sets ratios of reporters, and that contract would have to be followed by law.
Contracts generally. Anything that can be put inside an enforceable contract is fair game. So, again, the right to work from home and refuse jobs, some kind of system could be put in place to allow for that. Many of the “benefits” court reporters enjoy from being “freelancers” can be secured contractually. The lawyer noted something like “it sounds like you are all getting all the drawbacks of being an independent contractor with none of the benefits.” Meaning we take on the self-employment taxes and so forth, but we have little to no customer control or independent branding, and are generally not allowed to subcontract our jobs to others as we would be if we were true independent contractors.
This will take a lot of perseverance no matter what. It may also take a lot of time. Organizers and campaigners must be ready for a fight.

I want to stop and pick on point 6 a little, because court reporters are probably like “no, no, no, no, no.” Let me give you reality. Veritext has been advertising for digital court reporters every day for years. The larger companies of our field are, without any doubt whatsoever, slowly siphoning us out for digital court reporters. If you do have any doubts about this, feel free to reach out to Jackie Mentecky and ask her how things are going in Florida. To summarize: Stenographers cannot get work and are having trouble affording their bills because digital court reporters are being sent on the jobs they would have had. I have personally corresponded with people that are having trouble paying their bills because of agency mistreatment. So if you do nothing, you will be replaced. And even if you are not replaced, the constant influx of court reporters from both our stenographic recruitment drive and Veritext’s cash-dump strategy will create a worker glut that will reduce or freeze your rates. To understand why this is, you have to look at supply and demand. Demand for court reporters is forecasted to pretty much remain the same, with 3% job growth currently forecasted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So if the demand is remaining the same, and the supply is going up, eventually our gentle shortage will become a deluge of workers who will all be competing to get the same jobs. This is why New York City is 30 years behind inflation. And that was with stenographers competing with each other, not with a combined workforce.

And if stenographers do not do this, then digital court reporters might do it after our numbers thin out a little more. Who do you think gets to set the ratio if that happens?

Special note to the rest of the country: What’s happening in New York City and Florida is just an accelerated version of what’s coming for you. I know you don’t like to read that, but this is the nature of corporate consolidation of the country. MEDICAL DOCTORS are having difficulty and pay disparity is causing massive worker shortages in pretty much every field. How long do you think your licenses are going to protect you? They barely do now.

I am taking steps to obtain records from the defunct Federation of Shorthand. If obtained, they will likely be shared with the lawyer, and may be shared with this audience. If anyone would like to assist me in this endeavor, please reach out to contact@stenonymous.com. It seems that either we will need to pay for reproduction of the records OR visit in person at 70 Washington Square South.

Real talk. I got mine. You can look my salary up online. I don’t need to help you. I don’t need to care about you. I don’t need to spend time writing blogs or publishing information for you. I didn’t need to save your job from the Speech-to-Text Institute propaganda machine. I didn’t need to make a forum where you could discuss rates freely. You can spend your days whining on Facebook about how the agency won’t pay your rates or you can unionize and lock them into a contract where they have to pay your rates from now until the end of time.

On one end, you have a guy who uses a considerable amount of his free time to help people he’ll never know. On the other end, you have corporations that are factually doing everything they can to create market conditions that reduce your income. I don’t think this is a difficult decision, but I’ve been wrong before.

The Speech-to-Text Institute is an organization that was accused of fraud and illegal anticompetitive conduct, was subsequently sued, and shut down its website in 2023.

Conclusion

Unionization for New York City deposition reporters is possible but will require action on the part of court reporters. You can use me as a shield to organize by filling out that form I linked at the top.

ADD-ONS

A union is not the only course of action that can be taken. We can also push for a New York City or New York State price transparency bill where companies would be required to tell court reporters what the consumer is being billed and tell the consumer what the court reporter is being paid. A second option, suggested by another lawyer, is creating something of a cooperative agency that competes directly with the big box brigade. All of these options are preferable to doing nothing. All of these options require organization, so quite frankly, if you’re interested in 1/3, you should still sign up on my link.

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell

California CSR Board: We’re Going to Violate the Law and Sweep It Under the Rug. You Cool With That?

Came to my attention that under 2422 California test takers were allowed to review their dictation licensing test. At least one source has stated that since 2020, CSR candidates have not been entitled to review their test.

Since the CA CSR Board has been violating the law for at least four years, they’ve decided to correct that by changing the rules so that they simply won’t allow people to review their test. Ana Fatima Costa is spearheading some activism related to this. Allowing our students to review errors can only improve pass rates. If you want to help, go take a look now. This is really something that you want all your state legislators and the people on Ana’s list to be looking at, because it’s a good example of how government should not be doing its business. It’s shady. I’ll demonstrate how:

Word on the street is that this is about preventing cheating. Oh, I’m glad that we’re worried about cheating suddenly after all these decades and not the alleged shortage of doom that allegedly requires the wholesale replacement of stenographic court reporters with digital court reporters. It’s not our fault you only have 20 tests in the vault and can’t be bothered to periodically write more. Sounds like you manufactured a problem to get a desired result, at least to anyone that thinks about it for more than five seconds.

The CA CSR Board is the poster child for my corruption arguments. Let’s put it this way: If the Board is 100% uncorrupted, they’ve done everything in their power to look as dirty as possible. The CA CSR Board is known for failing to protect consumers and crushing working people. If you’re using all of your regulatory power, authority, and trust to make it harder for us to license actual court reporters, laying down the law on solo practitioners, and hurriedly looking away when the multiverse of corporate America breaks the law by using digital, then you are effectively handicapping our side of the market and the motivations for that become fair game for discussion. Yeah, I get it, it’s pretty lucrative for the government to ignore these things, let these businesses spend some money trying their luck at taking that work off the plates of California CSRs using the companies’ illegal business models, and take a slice every time a dollar gets spent in that competition while simultaneously milking the CSRs for their dues. Does that make it right? Does that mean that we should treat corporations better than people wherever it’s economically convenient?

First Amendment was made for issues like ours.

P.S.

Excerpt from a letter detailing the experience of a California CSR candidate submitted by a Stenonymous source.

I know digital court reporters can’t be court reporters in California. I use the verbiage I do for the standardization of language and so that when people find out digital court reporting is a scam, they don’t get confused! It also picks up better in search engines. It’s like the typing/writing thing. We can’t force the whole world to use the language we want them to use. We can, however, stand up and speak out against state-sanctioned lawbreaking. We can share why we prefer the language we prefer.

I’ve been told a participant in a public hearing was muted because they asked when survey results from a survey done by the board would be published. I sure wish I could use my government-granted powers to silence people that ask questions I don’t like. That’s the American dream, baby.

If any of you have lawyer friends, maybe it’s time for us to crowdfund some writs, or lobbying, or whatever makes us enough of a headache that the games and obvious deflections end. I guarantee you that your success is directly related to how many people you can get to take action.

You cool with that?

AI Will Revolutionize Court Reporting, You’ll See!*

*This is a creative writing exercise meant to make the reader think. While it will talk about real world things, it does so in a way that is meant to be funny-ish, dark humor. One of my readers mentioned these joke posts can be unpleasant because the reveal comes at the end. We’re going to try doing it at the beginning now.**

AI has been used as a buzzword to milk investors for years now. It’s only natural that the tiny court reporting industry follow suit. After all, AI has never killed anyone or gotten them raped in jail. What could go wrong when we’re dealing with the accuracy of court records and the strength of meritorious appeals? After all, all trials result in a perfect verdict all the time. The system never goofs.

Look at how AI improved medical transcription. It made sure your doctor’s eyes are on that transcription during your appointment. What? You want them to examine YOU? Quality care is not part of the Leonard Green model of looting hospitals for poor people. Similarly, Leonard Green asset, Veritext, continues its push to lower quality wherever profitable.

From 95% in 2016 to 25% in 2020, technology is exponential, so there’s nothing you can do, just give us your jobs. Actually, no, just come work for us for less. Digital reporting is the future. You can just take less money to clean up our ASR. And that’s progress because then your money is in our wallet.

Look, even if you think there may be some quality issues with the AI stuff, it’s inevitable. These folks have more money than us. There’s definitely no world where court reporters make so much noise about digital reporting that the cost of advertising for digitals outweighs the cost of not being a scheming dickhead. No, that could never happen.

Give up and do nothing. That is the way of the “virtuous person.”

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

**So that whole private equity thing where the companies buy, hold, and sell other companies, it’s a cool way to make money. But as it turns out, my blog has been increasing investor knowledge too. Big box might not be able to sucker another firm into buying their company. This might become one of so many leads that turns into a big nothing burger, but stay tuned.

Addendum:

Following this post, a valued reader sent me this, showing the Florida Bar seems to be aware of AI pitfalls, and this, indicating that the FTC is looking at the potential power of the “Big AI” cartel.

Another valued reader pointed out the Taylor Swift AI controversy.

Bulletin: Lawyers, This is How Some Court Reporting Companies Overcharge You

I’ve been on the consumer awareness game for a long time. But I realize my site’s hard to navigate for some. I’ll just put this on the front page. Hopefully it sums it up nicely.

The first game is that while companies grind down on the page rates — the primary income of the court reporter you’re working with — they come up with fees that most of us wouldn’t dream of charging. This has the effect of making what you’re actually paying more than what you would with a small business or sole proprietor while making it look like you’re getting a lower “price per unit.”

The second game is that they’ll send bills with no itemization so that you don’t even know what you’re paying for and have to interact with them to get it. This is a frustrating experience, so some of you will just pay it.

The third game is that they lie and bait and switch you, sending digital court reporters when you order stenographers and telling you stenographers aren’t available while telling stenographers their rates are too high or there’s not enough work. The nonprofit Protect Your Record Project was formed, in part, to educate about this one.

But to understand all this, you previously had to navigate my site and find articles like the ones I’m about to link. Now you can just read this. Hooray.

While court reporters in New York City are working for anything from $3.25 to $4.50 a page, here’s what’s happening around the country:

Page Padding

Lawyer effectively charged $10 a page.

Veritext effectively charged ~$11.47.

Companies may charge original rates for copy.

Word index rates same as transcribed pages.

Imagine effectively charges $9.44.

Paying for blatant inferior quality.

Huseby’s webconferencing charge rivals transcript.

Huseby effectively charges $8 a page.

Attorney says $4.20 charge unreasonable.

Published rates sole proprietors can beat.

Veritext effectively charged $37 a page.

FTR is paid $450 for a “deficit product.”

Satire about the government shirking its regulatory responsibilities when it comes to court reporting.

Basically the trust you have in us as guardians of the record and our whole “ethics culture” has been abused by some in the community taking you all for suckers.

And if you should happen to come across things on this site that make you question my mental state or personality, just remember that a large portion of it is a performative media style where I use propaganda techniques to tell the truth and educate people on those same techniques. I chose that because I detected that propaganda techniques and the Empty City Strategy were being used to bamboozle the women of court reporting and their clients — you. I did most of the zany stuff because it runs in stark contrast to the cottage industry of court reporting, where everything was (is?) molded to be our own mini-distortion of your ostensibly more conservative and “slow-to-change” legal world.

I played my part. It got people talking.

Now all of you have a choice. Share this with your fellow attorneys and play a part in shaping a more ethical world, or close me out and forget we had this moment together.

Just know that whatever you choose, I wish you the best.

KRORPS K- SHAEUR TAO FPLT

Addendum:

A reader felt my use of “women of court reporting” was cringe because there are many men in the field. This is true. No offense meant to anybody. I used the term because we’re 88% women and I thought some of my readers would appreciate it. If that’s not the case, I’m quite happy to not use it again.