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 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.

Jackie Mentecky: It’s Deception. It’s A Bait and Switch…

(CDA stands for Christopher Day Annotation in this text.)

“We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment lawyer.”

Cheri Marks speaks to FL stenographer Jackie Mentecky

ME: Where are you from and are you currently working as a stenographer? And how did you get started in that field?

JM: I’m originally from England, but I grew up in the states, I lived in Pittsburgh for a long time. I moved down to Florida 28 years ago, and I’ve been reporting for since 1998. My entire career has been in Florida.

ME: How has the work been going recently? And can you tell me about when and how you started working with the reporters in Florida?

JM: I’ve always worked for the big boxes, but it was more recently I started asking myself, ‘what’s going on with our career?’ And I started nose diving and down rabbit holes, pulling up lawsuits, pulling up billing. And it was when I saw the writing on the wall that I decided to open my own agency.

ME: Could you give me some examples of things you were finding, what the bad practices entailed? I’m also curious where you seek out news, sources and information about abuses in the field of stenography. Is there good communication within the field?

JM: I can tell you this. Going into a job, attorneys were very vocal in asking, ‘why is my bill so high? What is going on?” And I would talk to my girlfriends, and again– more and more attorneys are complaining about their invoices. I’m like, ‘sir, I haven’t seen a bill since 2006. I don’t know what they’re billing you’.

We never got a copy of the bill. We never knew what they were billing. Attorneys, law firms, whatever it was, everything was kept in the dark, hush hush. Nothing. Nothing. We used to get copies of the bills that went out to the law firms–

ME: The bills were coming from who?

JM: The big boxes. So we used to get copies of the bills when they invoiced their clients, but then they stopped. Looking back, that’s kind of when things started going south.

Everything was hidden behind a back door, don’t ask questions, you know? And it was very, you could sense it. You knew it. You would bring it up once in a while, but, God, you were so busy! You just kept working, right? We were busy. You knew something wasn’t right, but you think, well, I’m still making good money, so leave it alone.

ME: Don’t make waves.

JM: And then you’d forget about it, until somebody else would bring it up..

JM: About six years ago, my son started having really bad seizures. And I stopped going out on live jobs, so I was working from home. I was working for a big box, already either appearing by phone or transcribing audios, before it was even cool.

So the first year of COVID I ended up going back to one of the big boxes because Zoom was now popular. It was a lot easier for me to go back to being a stenographer that was doing hearings and trials and depositions. We were having, oh, gosh, two, three jobs a day during COVID when people finally learned how to use Zoom, and we were slammed. Like, even if you tried to get a day off, they were blowing up our phones:

“Open job”, “do this”, “we need that”, “we need help”, “help. I understand you’re off tomorrow, but can you please take this job?”

I mean, we were slammed. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t so slammed anymore.

But attorneys were like, oh, my God. We’re still on backlog, we’re busy, busy, busy, busy. We gotta go to trial. And the court stenographers were saying, ‘what’s going on?’ Our two jobs a day are now, if we’re lucky we got two or three a week.

So, what is going on?

Covid was the perfect opportunity for these firms to do this to us, because we weren’t in the office together. We weren’t seeing each other all the time. Everybody was working by zoom now. So this was their big chance to cry ‘shortage’ and hire digitals, get them trained, and then try to get rid of the court stenographers. For them to say, we’re too slow, and then come to find out that they have digital reporters in Texas taking Florida work.

I started doing some research. I knew something was up. I knew that this had got to be over profits. I mean, they’re paying these typists $20 an hour. I did legal transcription for over 20 years at a big box firm. I know what AI software they’re using, and how much they’re paying their typist, everything.

Because that’s what it is. They get these digital court reporters, they’re paying them $20 an hour, but they’re still billing the law firms as if a professional stenographer showed up. And then they bless them with this title, ‘court reporter’.

ME: No way!

JM: It’s deception. It’s bait and switch, you know? You hear ‘court reporter’, you’re thinking, court stenographer. And there’s someone sitting there with a machine just pressing ‘record’. And then they input it into a system.

ME: Geez. Is there a Stenography Union?

JM: Well, Florida’s not big on unions. We have the Florida Court Reporters Association. And I always thought it was funny that the big box companies always had people on the board, right? The same people that have tried to strip us of our profession were on the board making decisions on whether we should get legislation to protect our careers. Weird, right?

ME: Yeah.

JM: And it’s so funny because they were all on the FCRA, and they would be big sponsors for conventions and stuff. Then Covid comes and they’re no longer doing that. They’re part of the AAERT, which is the electronic 8th-grade-comparable test to become a court reporter.

(CDA: In full disclosure, I’ve actually read AAERT’s best practices manual, and I believe if best practices were followed all the time, decent transcripts could be made. Best practices are not followed all the time and some of the transcripts I’ve seen over the years have been atrocious. But I suppose that’s not entirely unlike our own field, where some of us do not join into the “excellence culture.”)

ME: Wow.

JM: They were on the board, but they’ve been playing this for years. Covid was the best thing that ever happened to them.

ME: Right. Do you feel like there’s potential for individual court reporters to unionize as a way to push back against this? I don’t know If there’s much conversation between states, or if you’ve done any kind of organizing?

JM: Well, it’s still getting out. At all the agencies, all the managers would always tell us, ‘your job’s protected. We wouldn’t be an agency without the court stenographers’. But behind our backs, they were training digitals. I don’t know how much you know about Veritext, but they buy out to small agencies. They have a school to pump out digitals.

(CDA: BlueLedge.)

ME: Wow.

JM: And then especially, with Zoom, they’re able to get away with using a digital, and they’re billing clients as if a professional stenographer showed up.

I don’t know how New York does it, but down in Florida, we have an appearance rate, which is just us showing up, as an hourly rate. So, I’ll give you an example of a trial. For a court reporter to show up, let’s just say $1,100 for the day. The court reporting agencies would pay the court stenographer anywhere between 65% to 70%. So you’re looking at, you know, $650-700

So they made, like, you know, what, 400, $500 up, sending the court stenographer there.

‘Shortage. Shortage. Let’s send it digital!’. And we’re gonna pay the digital $20 an hour to hit ‘record’.

And then when I started doing the deep dives and the rabbit holes, and I’m seeing how much they’re telling us ($5 a page), versus how much they’re charging them, ($60!) I was going into courthouses and looking up lawsuits. Agencies were suing attorneys for non-payment, and they have to attach the bills– they’re charging them for litigation packages and storage fees and reads. And, you know, this poor court reporter probably only made a third of that bill.

So when I came across Chris and https://stenonymous.com/ I reached out to him. But a lot of the reporters just didn’t believe us.

ME: Really?

JM: Because the agencies kept saying, oh, no, your job is secure. They didn’t want to believe it. It’s denial. I’ve talked to Chris a couple of times. We should really unionize and try to get this going, but it’s also true that the perpetrators have a lot of money.

(CDA: I have spoken to an attorney and have extensive knowledge on this. Unionization, especially unionization alongside digitals with contractual ratios would change the game forever in our favor.)

ME: Yeah.

JM: And they have big dollar investors, millions and millions and millions of dollars. And if you even type ‘court reporter’ into Google search, all you see are the big box names. They bought up so much advertising.

You have to sort through so much to really find out really what’s going on. Though, the law firms are beginning to become educated. They’re like, what do you mean, ‘there’s a digital’? What’s a ‘digital’? They don’t know. The companies think the law firms don’t care, but they do care.

(CDA: Some care, some don’t.)

ME: Maybe if there were some kind of team effort between the stenographers and the law offices? Maybe my next interview should be with a lawyer, to see what their take on this is…

What’s the state of your work now?

JM: Well, now I’m busy. I’m making more money now than I ever have. But I hustle and I work for a couple small firms that take good care of me, and I have my own clients.

I keep telling every single court reporter, leave the big boxes. Go back to the boutiques, they have great clients. In that way, I’m doing well. But it makes me angry when I find out my friends aren’t busy. I’m like, you’re a real time reporter. How are you not paying your rent?

ME: Have you thought of starting a class action lawsuit or anything?

JM: I mean, they monopolized our market.

I started going on LinkedIn, and I started following some of the big law firms and other court stenographers, and I started posting the truth about what’s going on. And it was shocking, to find out how many lawyers did not know that a digital reporter doesn’t actually type the transcript or ever look at it, that they just make the audio.

They tell the lawyers, ‘this is a digital court reporter who’s making a recording, it’s transcribed by stenographic means’. But it’s not!

They don’t tell them that it’s going through AI. They don’t tell them that if it’s a 100 page transcript. There could be five typists that go through it. That’s why it’s all messed up.

I’ve consulted with a few lawyers in a small court reporting agency. She called me and said that she needed a stenographer. She had called to the big boxes, and they’d said, oh, yeah, we have a stenographer. Well, they end up sending a digital. And it was expedited. It was an all day export. And when they got the transcript back– 150 pages were duplicated!

ME: Oh, my God.

JM: And the transcript was trash. She called me up, and I explained to her exactly what happened. And what to say to the big box agency that did it, and what to say to the judge.

And they won!

So, I think we need to educate the lawyers about what’s really happening with the digitals and what the agencies are doing with their audios– how they’re being charged to expedite. They’re getting charged $16 a page, but they’re paying somebody $2 to do it. And then saying, ‘it’s because there’s a shortage, and we were trying to save money’.

So, when a court reporter shows up, in Florida, they don’t have to order. They can say, I don’t need that yet, so they don’t order it. But if they order it, that’s where the money is. But it depends how many attorneys are there. So usually it’s like two attorneys, plaintiff and defense.

But you could have two attorneys or you could have ten attorneys. You can see on the notice how many parties are on a lawsuit.

So when a court reporting agency goes, ‘Oh, look at this lawsuit. There’s one plaintiff and five defendants. That’s six copy sales right there. Yeah, let’s send the digital– because we’re gonna make a ton off the per diem. We only have to pay somebody $2 a page to do the audio and fill in the gaps’ (which are wrong, by the way).

And then they have five copy sales. And in Florida, a copy sale can range anywhere between $4-6. Up to $30 to 100 page transcript. That’s 100% profit margin to them. If there was a court stenographer, a real professional court stenographer that showed up, it’d be 70% of the entire amount that went to the court stenographer.

ME:Yeah.

JM: Digital is 100% profit margin. It’s not a shortage. It’s corporate greed, and profit margins.

ME: Totally.

JM: And then, once again, they don’t even tell the lawyers.

ME: It’s like, they’re taking advantage of this complex exchange. They’re exploiting it for profit. And it’s subtle.

JM: Yea. I want to say it was 2017 that Veritext, US Legal, and Esquire all got bought out by private equity firms. Like, within three months, all the big boxes got bought out. And it was so weird, too, that I was also finding newspaper articles and stories stating there’s a shortage of court stenographers.

(CDA: My memory differs here. I believe at least Veritext was already owned by private equity. It may have changed hands around that time period though. I have no memory of the status of U.S. Legal Support or Esquire.)

Isn’t that weird? All these articles started popping up, right when all these biggest private equity firms were buying up the big box companies for millions and millions and millions of dollars. Why would a private equity firm buy a company when they were crying shortage?

(CDA: I remember this being more like 2019 when all the articles were popping up. But it hardly matters. It was happening.)

And then I found Veritext’s patent, their big AI software and recording devices, and that the plan was to just get rid of stenographers altogether.

It went through during COVID last year, and I posted it. And I thought, is it just me, or does it seem like Veritext is really trying to make us all quit?

They’re really rude to us on the phone. They’re starving us. And then the work that we do get, it’s paltry, and there’s no write ups. It’s like they’re purposely giving us the jobs that they know aren’t going to write up, and we’re just getting a bad per diem.

And then, we started talking on Facebook, posting stuff. And then people were like, yeah, me too. And I’d preciously had stenographers reaching out to me at Facebook, I would take overflow for them. I would call them and ask, what’s going on? And they’d say ‘We’re fully staffed. We don’t need you anymore’.

We need antitrust monopoly. We need an employment contract lawyer.

ME: Yes.

JM: Because in 2011, Veritext, US legal, and Esquire all got sued. There was a class action. Did you know about this in Florida?

ME: No.

JM: There was a class action lawsuit because attorneys were very upset that the word indices at the end of their [transcripts]. They were getting charged per page, like it was a regular transcript from the court reporter.

And the word index is all at the end of the transcript. If you said the word ‘the’ 100 times, it’ll tell you every time in that transcript where you said the word, ‘the’.

So, you know, it could be a hundred page transcript, but it could be a 30 page word index. And they were getting charged page rates, and they were fighting it. So they filed a class action lawsuit saying this is unethical. This isn’t part of the transcripts, it’s not part of the record.

And they ended up losing.

ME: What?!

JM: Because the court reporting agencies went in, and they said, this word index is part of the court reporters word product. It’s part of the transcript.

(CDA: In actuality, it’s more like tying a product under the antitrust laws. You can, and court reporters absolutely do, create transcripts without word indices.)

And that’s how they lost. Now, it’s funny because when that lawsuit came out, it’s running rampant in the office. We were all hearing about it. But, the court reporting agencies were like, don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about the clients. It’s an ongoing litigation. And then we just never heard about it again.

ME: Right.

JM: So when I started doing my deep dives and I was trying to find out what’s going on and what are the real rates, I happened to ask my friend, ‘whatever happened with that?’

ME: That lawsuit?

JM: Yeah. So I googled it, and I read the order when it was dismissed, and I was like, oh, my God. It got dismissed because they’re saying it’s part of our work product. It’s part of our official transcript. And she was like, wow. So why aren’t they paying us for it?

We have never gotten one penny for a word index. Yeah. I think somebody owes us a lot of money.

ME: Yeah!

JM: So, I was just finding out so much. So I called a lawyer. And I asked, was this dismissed because they were saying the word index is part of the court reporter’s work product? And he said yes. And when I told we never got paid for that, he said are you serious? I almost had a heart attack.

ME: Wow

JM: What a mess. Yeah. It’s so shady. I do believe there’s handholding. I do believe these agencies are in it. There’s no doubt. I believe there’s handholding because the AAERT, the two biggest big boxes are on the Association’s membership boards.

I mean, come on.

ME: What are your next moves? What are your hopes for the future of this community and for communications across the board?

JM: Definitely to get more information out. I think what’s going to save us is educating the lawyers. They need to know that if they want to protect their record, they need to have a stenographer.

ME: Yeah.

JM: If they’re gonna go with the digital, then you get what you pay for. When you’re paying for a professional, you should demand a professional.

ME: Yeah.

JM: You know? It’s very overwhelming. Chris and I were sending stuff back and forth all the time. I got very busy with work. I’m hoping we can get back on it. I would love to get a Florida court stenographer association up, and a campaign to educate the law firms and lawyers and really just bring everything to light.

ME: That sounds like a good path forward.

JM: Here’s my favorite example: this is from a trial transcript and appeal transcript out of Broward county, which is in Fort Lauderdale.

I live 20 minutes north of there. And the guy was charged with “lewd and lascivious molestation”.

The digital transcript says he was guilty of “ruining the gas”. The city’s gas station.

The transcript is on my LinkedIn page.

ME: Oh my god, so wild. Okay, I’m gonna end your interview with that amazing quote. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

JM: Bye.

Los Angeles County Reporters Push Back on Court Reporter Shortage Narrative

The only question I had upon reading a recent article about LA was whether David Slayton, Los Angeles county executive/clerk of court for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County is ignorant or a talented liar.

It’s not too farfetched, at this point in history, to believe that maybe some people in official positions are ignoring the reality of the court reporter shortage fraud and the indelible fact that private money was used to exaggerate and exacerbate the stenographer shortage. Arizona officials more or less ignored us. Officials from New York and the FTC have ignored us. The attorney general of California ignored us. Texas and California both ignore their own licensing laws in favor of screwing the working reporter. Everyone in government seems to believe that if a fact is ignored it becomes less factual.

And in fact, that’s what the sham of a journalist, Makenna Sievertson, seems to believe as well, with her headline that pretends that court officials really are doing everything in their power to help the shortage. I have no problem, at this point in history, putting it out there that any journalist or outlet that ignores the court reporter shortage fraud in favor of the shortage narrative is a corporate shill unfit to publish fiction, let alone news. Many of my contemporaries would cringe at me making an enemy of media. But I have news for you: Media has been our enemy for years. I’ve spoken to several journalists and they either don’t run the story (understandable), publish about the shortage and omit the fraud claims (questionable), or engage in “journalistic equalizing” at the expense of the truth (unforgivable). I’m fed up. I’m done playing games. Any journalist that fails to mention the fraud that the whole world can Google will find themselves deservedly on the receiving end of my ire. (Google: Veritext fraud, court reporter shortage fraud, digital court reporting scam, or Speech-to-Text Institute.)

This isn’t particularly hard. The government doesn’t have to broadcast that there was a fraud perpetrated. All they have to do is look at the cold, hard truth. A shortage was forecasted over a decade ago. Several large corporations got together behind the Speech-to-Text Institute about 5 years ago and republished modern materials about the shortage forecast without adjusting for all the things we’ve done since to address the shortage, such as the A to Z program, Project Steno, and Open Steno. Then, after being publicly accused of fraud, their frontman Jim Cudahy jumped ship, the organization was sued, their website was shut down, and Stenograph’s then-president publicly distanced himself from the organization. Conveniently documented in real time by yours truly.

And so, to David Slayton and all of the other sand spiders with their fingers in their ears, how about you spend a little less time running to the media about how bad the shortage is, which is obviously a bid to push us out for your beloved audio recorders, pick up the damn phone, and use your office to get some attention on the obvious fraud committed that’s making your recruitment efforts so hard? I’m sure you’ll concede that there ARE executive agencies meant to deal with such things. I’m sure you’ll concede that those agencies DO give more weight to complaints from people like YOU than people like me. And unless you have a financial interest in those recording companies, there’s no real reason for you not to step in and do the right thing other than your own cowardice.

I’m not alone. There are people like me, like Protect Your Record Project in California, Jackie Mentecky in Florida, and all of their supporters, who have raised concerns about the validity of the shortage claims as they were presented to the public by these private equity corporations I blog about.

Let me make something clear. People like me — that is to say, average working people and their families — have the power to take on organizations with millions of dollars. You deny the truth at your own peril. At the end of the day, people are not stupid, and they will see through your shallow words about people’s families for the fact that you’ve done precious little to make a difference for those same families. And when they see through that, perhaps you should not be allowed to keep your position, and be replaced by someone with the mettle required to do right and be good.

And to the court reporters and average people that want to get serious about engaging with professional liars in government and beyond, consider a donation to Stenonymous today via the donation box on the front page, Venmo @Stenonymous, or PayPal / Zelle at ChristopherDay227@gmail.com. At the end of the day, my effectiveness is linked to your financial support, information you share, and the sharing of my work. American journalism and media is very much pay to play, and I think it’s about time we get in the game and win. If not for ourselves, then for the many millions of people whose views are not represented by corporate media. What we are writing is a blueprint for many to follow. Where that will lead?

I aim to find out.

Voice Writing: A Game Changer For Court Reporting

NOTE: This blog is, in part, a platform for its readers who send essays and materials in to be republished. I have had some comments made about previous posts with regard to voice writing. I’ve made several calls for content from the community. If it’s voice writers and voice writing proponents that answer those calls, guess who gets published?

Without further delay, please join me in enjoying this piece by Marilissa Cram and Ana Fatima Costa!

Voice Writing: A Game Changer for Court Reporting

Shorthand was invented by Sumerian scribes, who captured speech by writing logo-syllabic cuneiform on clay tablets with a reed stylus. Since then, shorthand methods have evolved into writing with pen on paper; steno machine; and speaking into a steno mask.

On September 27, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill No. 156 (AB-156)(*1) into law, allowing voice writers to take the rigorous Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) exam and to work in this state.

What is “Voice” Writing?

In the early 1940s, Horace Webb, a shorthand pen writer(*2), invented a method of capturing the record where stenographers repeat verbatim every word into a stenomask in a way that their voices are inaudible to participants and do not disrupt court or deposition proceedings.

AB-156 defines voice writing “… as a verbatim record of a proceeding using a closed microphone voice dictation silencer, steno mask, or similar device using oral shorthand and voice notes made by a Certified Shorthand Reporter.“

How does Voice Writing Differ from Steno Machine Writing?

There are more similarities than differences between these two methods.

Similarities

Complete rigorous education, training, and certification requirements
Use brief forms of complex words and phrases to shorten their writing (i.e., shorthand)
Identify every speaker and format and punctuate transcripts on the fly
Utilize Computer-Aided Transcription (CAT) systems to produce verbatim transcripts
Provide realtime(*3) text of proceedings instantaneously
Adhere to the same high standards of professionalism, impartiality, confidentiality, ethics, accountability, and local, state, and federal rules, statutes, and laws.

Differences

Steno machine writers	Voice writers
Write what they hear by precise finger placement of thousands of memorized shorthand word / phrase combinations and steno briefs, using technologically advanced, specialized, chorded steno machines which are connected to their CAT software	Dictate in English what they hear into specialized masks connected to two software programs. Their word / phrase combinations and voice briefs are simultaneously translated into text using advanced speech recognition such as Dragon and their CAT software
Learn the stenographic alphabet (theory)(*4) and how to write on a steno machine keyboard beginning at zero words per minute (wpm). May spend years building speed before taking the CSR certification exam at 200 wpm.	Begin learning voice theory in English at 120-140 wpm and build speed. May reach 200 wpm and take the CSR certification exam in as little as a year because they do not need to learn a foreign language.

(*4) Infographic of complex stenographic alphabet / keyboard by steno machine student Stefanie Bugosh

Impact on Court Reporting

Since the adoption of voice writing in 2022, court reporting schools throughout California have experienced an upsurge of enrollment. Voice writing students (many of whom switched from steno machine writing) have been passing the state’s difficult Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) exam(*5) at a high rate. As a result, voice writers have been helping to meet the demand for court reporters by filling empty seats in courtrooms throughout the state(*6).

Challenges and Considerations

Although voice writers(*7) have worked for over 80 years in the military, abroad, and now in 46 states(*8), most California judges, lawyers, their staff, and consumers are unfamiliar with this method of capturing the legal record. Integrating voice writing into traditional court systems, deposition conference rooms, and in remote proceedings will require some adjustments to educate the legal community and public.

(*7) Photo of Jennifer Franklin, CVR, at SFTLA’s 2023 annual mock trial competition at San Francisco Superior Court, with Hon. Terence Bruiniers (Ret.) presiding. After passing the CSR, Jennifer became the court’s first voice writing official court reporter.

(*8) Map of states allowing voice writing, National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA)

The National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA)(*9) offers entry-level and advanced certification exams to both steno machine and voice writers. To earn the Certified Verbatim Reporter (CVR) certificate, examinees must pass a written knowledge exam at 70% and three 5-minute dictations with one to two speakers at a 95% accuracy transcription rate.

California’s CSR exam requires a higher standard. To earn their license, steno machine and voice writing candidates must pass two written exams (English and Professional Practices) graded on the Angoff criterion-referenced method and a 13-minute dictation exam with four speakers at a 97.5% degree of accuracy.

Conclusion

California legal professionals are assured that licensed voice writers entering the field are well equipped to provide equally high standards of performance and verbatim transcripts as traditional steno machine writers. Voice writers are poised to join their steno colleagues as cornerstones of judicial proceedings who capture and protect the record to meet the needs of consumers and help eradicate the shortage.

SAVE THE DATE: Learn more about voice writing at BASF’s Paralegal Conference on October 18, 2024!

~Author bios~

Marilissa Cram, CVR, is a West Valley College of Court Reporting and Captioning (WVC) student and plans to take the California CSR exam in July 2024.

Ana Fatima Costa, retired California CSR, is a WVC instructor and a founding member of BASF Paralegal Section’s Executive Committee.

This article was originally published by the Bar Association of San Francisco

(*1) 2022-09-28 Cal. Leg., Legislative Counsel’s Digest. Part of this law provides title protection to ensure only licensed Certified Shorthand Reporters (CSRs) are legally entitled to identify themselves as “stenographer,” “reporter,” “court reporter,” or “deposition reporter.“

(*2) History: The Horace Webb Story National Verbatim Reporters Association

(*3) Realtime is the instant transcription of reporters’ stenographic or voice notes into English, visible online or in person on viewers’ computers, tablets, or smartphones.

(*5) California Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) examination requirements (steno and voice)

(*6) Fact Sheet: Shortage of Certified Shorthand Reporters in California, Judicial Council of California, June 2024

(*9) National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA) exam certification requirements (voice and steno)

Special thanks to our authors for submitting this for publication on Stenonymous, the industry’s largest alternative publication for court reporting news & opinion.

Chris DeGrazio: Join These Louisville Events and Miscellaneous Practice Sessions! 2024

Chris Day: To be forthright, my issues with the National Court Reporters Association are well documented.

That said, I follow a “doctrine” of fairness and freedom. I support the people that reach out to me with news of their events, and I support Chris DeGrazio. So here it is.

Below is information for 3 Louisville events — that’s the National Court Reporters Association conference this year. Then below that are 4 practice sessions unrelated to the conference.

Please feel free to spread these materials. Each is a flyer followed by explaining text.

And now from Chris DeGrazio:

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Student Giveaway:

Attention students!

If you’re going to be at the #NCRA conference in Louisville during August 1st-3rd, message me so that we can link up so you can claim your prize!

I’m collaborating w 10 creative people in our profession to create some custom & dope student swag. This is my third year doing this giveaway, so it’s going to be the best yet!

I’ll have a huge silver sequin duffle bag with me throughout the weekend filled w student swag. If you see me at any time, regardless of what I’m doing, come up to me so you can choose your gift.

The first year I did this (Vegas 2021), it was self-funded cuz I was too shy to ask people to donate & I didn’t know how I’d be received, some random guy giving out gifts to people he didn’t know. So I gave gifts to friends & colleagues & asked them to send students they knew my way.

The second year I did this (Orlando 2022), I was fortunate to have help from some friends whom I felt comfortable enough to reach out to prior to the conference. I also felt more comfortable encouraging students to come pick their gifts.

This year I’m going public w it. If you’d like to donate any amount, even $5, all of the $ raised goes towards the swag for the students.

After the conference I’ll share pics of the students & the awesome swag they received.

Regardless of whether or not you donate anything, plz share this post w students & reporters just in case they know a student who will be at the conference.

Thanks! 🤠🌈

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StenoMasters:

Exciting news! Joshua B. Edwards will be presenting StenoMasters at the NCRA conference this year on Saturday morning, the session before the awards luncheon. We need 3-4 prepared speakers to give speeches.

Giving a speech in front of your peers is a fantastic opportunity to share a story or a facet of your life that many court reporters don’t know about you. And you will get a ton of constructive feedback. Your speech does not have to be about the field. If you are interested in speaking for 5-7 minutes but need some ideas or help crafting a speech, please let us know. We’re happy to work with you.

Looking forward to seeing many of you in Louisville!

StenoMasters Zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/6330669418…

StenoMasters YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj_ymbetcgJKR_s7lhH8ZsQ

StenoMasters Mailing List:
https://forms.gle/upZUEUSEZcRJjsmX7

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Pride Meetup:

Join us on Friday, August 2nd @ 8 p.m. ET for our third annual Steno Pride Meetup at Miki’s Karaoke Bar @ 2230 Frankfort Ave, Louisville, KY 40206.
You don’t have to be queer or sing karaoke or drink alcohol to attend. This is a fun way to celebrate our diversity in an inclusive & laid back way.
Plz register in the link below so we can have an accurate head count ( :
See y’all there! 🤠🌈👨‍🎤👩‍🎤

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdI9ZrITWp34esF0BHyiWIczdc_L6YYmL_GDm06_z7pPG8bqw/viewform?pli=1

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Practice Sessions:

P.S. a note from Chris Day, Hawk Tuah girl’s got nothing on the steno community.

Yeah I’m jealous. They should’ve done a documentary on you.

Deepest thanks for sharing these materials with me.

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.

Explain Stenonymous Research in 60 Seconds.

Tomorrow I have a very serious post that I think I’ll be leaving up at least the entire week as the “most recent post.”

Today I have a new way of conceptualizing all the things I’ve written about.

Stenonymous.com shares image explaining the controversy with Speech-to-Text Institute in 60 seconds.

I read about how hardworking people like you don’t have time to read material like mine.

This means liars who have smooth, simple arguments can win you over faster than someone like me who spends time trying to explain the truth.

I lucked out. I have the time. With contributions from the community, I can expand operations until Stenonymous is able to incorporate and begin feeding money back into the field.

I will be working on a prettier image for you. But feel free to share this one. I need your help.

Divided, my research makes it clear that court reporter incomes will freeze or fall. Whatever your financial situation is, it will degrade if your income comes from being a working court reporter.

Together, we’ll make a difference.

You may not believe it. And that’s okay. Because I don’t always know what to believe either. We are human.

The truth remains the truth whether you believe it or not. Just one company stands to gain hundreds of millions of dollars if you don’t believe me. Consequently, many of them are working together to lie to you in violation of fraud, antitrust, and false advertising laws.

I was scared when I started down this road. Scared of what you might think of me. Scared of what the largest players in the game might try to do to me. I was loaded with so much fear that my health degraded.

I recovered because you stood with me.

I will stand up for you. Will you stand with me?

I will stand up for you. Will you stand with me?

I will stand up for you. Will you stand with me?

All rise.

Christopher Day addresses the audience for this blog post.

Addendum:

A reader stated “it reminds me of a business/professional form of the Margaret Mitchell Effect.” I thought this was brilliant, so it gets a home here. Just let me know if you want your name here, reader!