Supply & Demand 101 for Court Reporters

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inCourt Reporting, Legal ServicesTags:, , , , , , , , ,

President Biden gave us all a rather crude lesson in supply & demand economics in his Presidential speech on January 7th, one that dropped my jaw.

Replace the words “car prices” with “court reporter rates” and “cars” with “court reporters,” and then replace the word “Americans” with “stenographers.” Now you’ll understand why I was stupefied.

In 2014, the National Court Reporters Association commissioned a study conducted by market analyst Ducker Worldwide, which predicted that the demand for court reporters would exceed the supply within five years (2018), yielding a nationwide shortage. The report said 5,500 new court reporter jobs will be available by 2018 as older workers retire and leave the field. Seventy percent of the nation’s 32,000 court reporters are older than 45, the report said.

On the heels of the 2014 Ducker study, there were three camps that formed: 1) those that sought to meet the demand more efficiently to overcome a shortage; 2) those that sought to increase the supply; 3) and those that sought to “whack” the demand, and stomp it out altogether, with their own profit-driven, inferior service (digital recording and unlicensed transcriptionists) and making the backbone of the profession (the stenographers) in our country poorer with 50-year-old stale rates.

Two notable SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms began development in 2018, Stenovate and CoverCrow, both aimed at helping to increase efficiency in order to meet demand for our services as the shortage grew more dire. Stenovate helps court reporters connect with scopists and proofreaders, allowing them to take more jobs per week and increase productivity. CoverCrow helps court reporters connect with agencies, allowing them to accept more jobs and more efficiently, and reducing the noise by setting advanced job alert filters. In June of 2021, CoverCrow launched their first integration with a CAT vendor, ProCat, to allow court reporters to get job alerts right in their Winner CAT software and automated their live check-in availability status when they open or close a CAT file and went live at the NCRA convention in July in Las Vegas. In August, 2021, NCRA launched ProLink to make it easier to find court reporters, borrowing from the CoverCrow concept. And in August, 2021, Stenograph launched Apex for their users to get agency job alerts in their CASECatalyst CAT software and other workforce features for court reporters.

Those in the camp that sought to increase our supply were non-profit organizations, such as Project Steno and NCRA’s AtoZ program. These organizations were able to garner some sizeable donations from industry partners, such as agencies and vendors and stenographers. Court Reporting schools all across the country increased their recruiting efforts as well and Mark Kislingbury opened up several new court reporting schools. Stenographers all across the globe took to social media telling their stories and sharing their positive career stories and advice. The number of Facebook groups grew. The number of reporters signing up for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others grew exponentially. Stenographers picked up their digital pens and published articles outside our profession, such as Lifehacker, Monster, and more. Whitney Kumar signed on as Judy Justice’s new on-show stenographer, instantly becoming the most popular courtroom role model and first court reporter with a name (besides Madam Court Reporter) in TV history!

There’s always going to be sharks in the water, especially when there is money to be made, whether it’s legal and ethical or not. Court reporting is a $3 billion industry, so the stakes are high. A feeding frenzy of bottom-feeders was unleashed when DRA’s Lobbyist Ed Howard clarified a loophole in the law that allowed anyone with a CA notary to act as a deposition officer. Videographers all over began to get their notary certificates. It spread like wildfire throughout the nation, with opportunistic agencies instructed their videographers to put their cameras on the ground and just record the deposition proceedings, and then eventually instructed the videographers to identify themselves as the “court reporter,” not just merely a deposition officer anymore. It evolved into hiring another button pusher to record the proceedings so that the videographer could hide the fact that they were serving in dual roles.

Are you following so far? It gets even more nefarious. In order to get past the laws in 23 states that explicitly require that transcripts be produced by stenographic means, these agencies instructed law firms to change the notice language to stipulate to break the law and have a digital recorder audio record the deposition testimony and later have it typed up by a transcriptionist. This in in violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which protects the due process rights of litigants. Such a stipulation of the attorneys needs to be ruled upon by the judge in their case. Judges in CA are refusing to admit depo transcripts attached to motions or in trial that have not been certified by a CA licensed Certified Shorthand Reporter. But since only 5% of all cases get to the trial stage, they’re taking their chances. The legal negligence cases may start against those playing Russian Roulette with their litigants’ lawsuits.

Eight years post-Ducker study, we have no idea what the actual number of active court reporters there are across the country. STTI and those in camp 3 would have you believe there’s a shortage of 33,000 reporters, a made-up number. But schools across the country have seen an influx of students. It turns out COVID has had a lot of people out of work and turning to the career they always wanted to try: court reporting. We need the NCRA to do another industry outlook study. We need the NCRA to publicly admit that the Ducker study they commissioned in 2013/14, predicting the shortage in 2018 was wrong. Those numbers were never realized. We need the NCRA to give us hope. Otherwise, greedy opportunists will continue to weaponize an outdated and inaccurate study.

“Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson. “And sore must be the storm / That could abash the little Bird / That kept so many warm.”

Staring ahead on New Year’s Eve, at what appear to be the coming storms of 2022, this once-hopeful profession is going to have to fall back on its reserves.

Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

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