The Digital Decision has been made – no going back!

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inUncategorized

The big box firms like Veritext and our industry vendors who provide us with CAT software and steno machines are absolutely NOT going to abandon their Digital Recorder plan. But they NEED us. They need us more than we need them. I thought they needed us because there are laws in 25 states that prohibit transcript production by anybody other than a CSR. In CA, it’s actually a misdemeanor to attempt to admit an uncertified transcript into evidence.

A Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibit the deprivation of “life, liberty, or property” by the federal and state governments, respectively, without due process of law.[1][2][3]

The U.S. Supreme Court interprets these clauses to guarantee a variety of protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings); substantive due process (a guarantee of some fundamental rights); a prohibition against vague laws; incorporation of the Bill of Rights to state governments; and equal protection under the laws of the federal government.

But after talking with Veritext’s COO, Andy Fredericks, who thinks they can just stipulate away the laws. Veritext is having notaries produce transcripts. Not even CSR’s. Notaries. Not even sure if the notary produced the transcript. There’s a good chance the transcript was produced offshore and then their in-house notary just “certified” the transcript for them. This is why the SoCal Stip movement should have been educating attys that they need a judge’s ruling in order to order us to follow their stipulation. They’re bypassing due process and just going around the laws in 25 states, with impunity!

I just talked to an attorney and explained what’s happening to him and he said, “Oh, that’s why the court reporters were all creating a stink about the SoCal Stip.” See! They get it! It’s not that they would have now just added getting a judge’s ruling on their stip so they could still stip and steal our product, but when they see the bigger picture of how this is all working against them, they’re sincerely outraged and will fight WITH us! We need attorneys on our side fighting against what’s happening!

To put this in perspective. If Veritext is a $20,000,000 (20 million) company, and digital makes up 10% of their business, that’s $2 Million dollars!!! That’s HUGE! That’s MUCH bigger than I thought! That was shocking news to me last week. If USL is another $20 million company, and also has 10% digital, that’s another $2 million. That’s now possibly $4 mil. And the STTI has an agency training that is teaching all agencies across the US to go digital. So what if digital is now 10% of the entire court reporting business. If it’s purported to be $1.2 billion, that’s $120,000,000. Yes, 120 MILLION dollars. That’s a HUGE market opportunity. It’s like a Gold Rush. Don’t think that you’re going to get them to support steno with Gold Rush dollar signs in their vision. That’s just for 10% of the market. Now look at the entire $1.2 BILLION market opportunity. If they can capture ALL of the business by doing digital themselves – recruit, train, employ, offer benefits, only pay 10% of what they would normally pay reporters (50%) – they are looking at $1.2 BILLION!!!!! This is bigger than any money made in the Gold Rush! To put this into perspective, the output of gold rose from $5 million in 1848 to $40 million in 1849 and $55 million in 1851.

But we now know that Veritext’s shareholders have mandated each office must be doing 50% digital! So it blows these numbers based on 10% out of the water! This is much, much bigger than the Gold Rush!

If stenographers are to survive, we must envision a world WITH digital. We must be at the forefront, steering our own industry ship, otherwise, it will overcome us. We must demand that these notaries and “digital recorders” are getting the same schooling, taking the same tests, getting certified if they want to be in the same league and call themselves a court reporter. Christopher Day is turning the tables and putting some effort into recruiting their digital recorders, convincing them to become legitimate and become stenographers or voice writers.

We need to establish our position as gold-standard court reporters, at the top of the market where we will command top tier pricing.  ER, Digital, and lesser options may command the bottom market rates and services for the lower dollar-value cases and will probably make up the majority in the future.  We need to ensure our place at the top of a hierarchical structure, or else they will succeed in attempting to create what’s called a holacracy where digital and ER are on the same par with highly skilled court reporters.   We cannot let that happen.   

There’s a saying called “Wag the Dog,” and it was the name of a great movie with Dustin Hoffman.  Does the dog wag its tail?  Or does the tail wag the dog?  We can’t keep letting non-stenographers drive our industry and determine our value.  Entities such as attorneys, insurance companies, large agencies backed by venture capital, and other non-licensed, non-certified reporters who are profit-driven should NOT be driving our industry.   Am I right?  I’d like you all to visualize our profession and see us at the top of a hierarchical structure.  I ask that you all reach higher than you’ve ever imagined, because it’s within our grasp and it’s how we’ll thrive. 

ANNIHILATION

The point is simply this: Court Reporting is facing an existential crisis on several fronts.

The truth is that stenographers will become extinct if we don’t start valuing them appropriately.  Annihilation is one of the very real possibilities we are facing.  Yes, Annihilation.  The extinction of court reporters.  If we lose too many of our numbers, we will lose our software vendors, our hardware vendors because our numbers are simply not sustainable for their ongoing business model.  We may be able to continue on with our existing equipment for 20 years, but we will have absolutely no support for it if anything goes wrong and there will be no more replacements offered.  Once we reach that point, there’s no coming back. 

Hostage negotiators NEVER tell themselves it’s gonna be fine.  Hostage negotiators take the worst possible scenario and act like that is the reality they are dealing with, because if they don’t do everything they can, people WILL die.  They accept the reality of that outcome and are brutally honest about it.

I’m going to be brutally honest with you.  If we don’t walk out of here today accepting the reality of our possible extinction and utter annihilation and start taking drastic actions, doing things we’re uncomfortable with – if we don’t start getting others to value our skills, say no, and be honest about the consequences of not doing enough, it will be too late. 

We have a very small window of time to change the course of our history, a future where stenography is the gold standard, our numbers are strong, we are highly valued, and we command top-tier pricing.  That future is possible and its within our reach and our power to achieve. 

We have the ultimate advantage in this negotiation!  We have LEVERAGE!  We have laws in place in 25 states, for now. We have more than 27,000 stenographers throughout the country.  If every one of us start controlling the narrative and demonstrating our value, we could win!  Now, who wants to win? 

Court reporters are not commodities.  I’m going to repeat this:  We are the highly skilled gold standard that the legal industry cannot live without!  If they want us to be around in the future, we’d better learn to say “no,” we’d better learn our value, we’d better start to tell the truth about having court reporters available in the future, and we’d better start doing this before it’s too late. 

 

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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