A Surging “Scully Effect” is Cooking Up Steno Careers

Aside from the period falling outside of the quotes, the missing comma pair, and the missing Oxford comma, which I’ll forgive, this post today touches on something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. We need a TV show or movie that would draw thousands to the profession of shorthand reporting. There have been other shows that have led to an increase in those fields portrayed in movies, such as Jodi Foster’s role in Silence of the Lambs, which led to lots of women entering the field of forensic psychiatry, including one of my sister’s best friends in high school.

Over the years, and in my head, I’ve drafted multiple scripts for TV shows with steno leading ladies and men, from comedies to dramas, from hourlong to half-hour long episodes. I concocted one that would be like a Sex in the City meets Allie McBeal that I was going to title “Steno in the City” until that trademark was assumed by the very talented Shaunise Day My multiple-hour commutes to the city for depositions and court work were usually filled with new plot twists or characters or storylines, lots of them lost due to the lack of paper and pen at the time.

I am quite sure I’m not the first or the only court reporter who has ever spent time daydreaming of the possibilities that the big screen could hold for our industry.

There have been lots of court reporters who have graced the big screen and the little boob tubes over the decades, playing the part of the court reporter in courtroom and deposition scenes. Actress Kate Hudson brought lots of attention to our profession in the motion picture  Alex & Emma (2003), in which she played a stubborn stenographer.

But there is a court reporter who is living the real-life dream and is representing our profession in Hollywood right now. She’s even been nominated twice (not once, but TWO times) and won an Emmy Award! You all have probably heard of her by now, our very own, Whitney Kumar! She’s been traveling the country talking to court reporter associations, regaling us with tales of wardrobe, makeup, hair, and how she got the part on the Judy Justice show!

Whitney’s regular role as the real human court reporter in Seasons 1, 2, and now 3 on Judy Justice has shown a side of court reporting never seen before. She is able to read back the record in realtime for Judge Judy, unscripted. She’s taped 255 episodes between 2021 – 2023, and just wrapped up her 3rd season.

The cameras pan in on her flawless unedited relatime that is her own work. It’s not made-up Hollywood CGI effects; it’s really her own talent and skill as a court reporter that the audience is getting a taste of on their screens in millions of homes. Her professional demeanor, impeccable wardrobe, and model good looks is our profession’s dream come true for having any possibility of the “Scully Effect” happening, which would drive hundreds of prospective stenographers to our court reporting schools and give our profession hope of a bright future.

Judy Justice came in as the number one original program on IMDb TV for its first season, with more than 25 million streaming hours viewed towards the end of that season.  According to the New York Post, the first season generated more than 75 million hours watched between both the US and the UK as a whole.

The X-Files began airing in 1993, and after a few seasons, people began noticing a phenomenon called “The Scully Effect.” The “Effect” referred to the large number of female X-Files viewers who were inspired by Scully to enter so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

I’m wondering if the same phenomenon is happening currently in the Stenographic Shorthand Reporting field. After a few seasons of X-Files it happened. I’m wondering if after 3 seasons of Judy Justice it’s happening in court reporting.

West Valley College’s new instructor, Ana Fatima Costa, posted recently that “Since fall semester began two weeks ago, with triple the amount of students in now three classes—Internship, Codes & Procedures, and CSR Exam Review…” This court reporting college’s enrollment has tripled! We’re seeing this upward trend in colleges all across the country with rising enrollments, thanks to the multitudinous efforts of the likes of the NCRA AtoZ program, Project Steno, schools, court reporters, and associations all over the country who have ramped up efforts to recruit prospective student to the profession.

Court Reporters have been making efforts to increase the spotlight on our career for the last decade and ongoing. Cassandra Caldarella’s article “10 Reasons I love my career as a Court Reporter” has been printed by court reporting schools all over the country and put into their packets for prospective students since 2018. And Caldarella’s 2015 Lifehacker article “What I do as a Court Reporter” was reposted by hundreds of career sites, including Monster.com and was viewed by over 8 million people.

NCRA’s A to Z program’s first graduate started the program in the Spring of 2017. Project Steno launched on December 7, 2017, five-plus years after the Ducker Report was published which predicted the dire shortage of court reporters.

If the “Scully Effect” was documented as happening after only a few seasons, we’re talking about only 3 years. The above-mentioned activities have been ongoing for more than five or six years with no such tripling effects in school enrollment. It’s only in the last 3 years, after the Judy Justice show aired, that our schools are flourishing, and exponentially.

There was a survey conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media that gathered data from women who entered STEM fields where they were asked if they knew about the show X-Files and if that influenced them to enter the field.

Their findings proved what was dubbed as The Scully Effect to be real! But how is it that someone playing a character who works in STEM can inspire so many people to go into those fields, for real?

Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, the Law of the Picture says it best: “People do what they see.” When we see someone who looks like us doing something, we realize that it’s possible for us as well. Now there’s science behind this phenomenon.

The Court Reporting industry ought to commission a study, a survey, that validates the hypothesis that this “Scully Effect” is happening now in our profession, which I suggest that more women and men are becoming interested in court reporting because of Whitney Kumar, and her role as Judy Justice’s stenographer throughout the show’s 3 seasons. Maybe schools can employ a survey such as the one that the Geena Davis Institute conducted and feed it back to one source to curate the data – such as the Steno Strong committee. (hint, hint, nudge, nudge)

Re-imagining and portraying our image as a valued professional is crucial! One of the reasons for the shortage of court reporters is because we’re the best kept secret. High school counselors have long stopped telling students about our profession because of their false belief that we would be replaced by electronic recording, which will never happen. Who better than to give the public a new image with a fresh face than the vibrant, young, sexy, gorgeous, smart, business woman, Whitney Kumar? What little girl wouldn’t want to grow up to be just like her?

While law schools are overflowing with students interested in a legal profession, and those students can’t find jobs after graduating because of the glut of lawyers entering the profession, many of whom believe that court reporters are glorified notetakers, because they only know what they’ve seen portrayed in the law shows that lured them into law schools: the portrayal of boring, elderly, librarian, conservative ladies who sit with antiquated steno machines with paper overflowing that never say a word. The disparity in their belief versus the reality – for example that court reporters often make more than attorneys and judges and are the most important person in the room at legal proceedings because they hold power greater than a judge – that of producing the transcript that can overturn a judge’s decision – is reflected in the phrase, “you can’t be what you can’t see.” For many law students, it’s hard to envision themselves as a court reporter because they believe the role is beneath them. They don’t know what we do, and they don’t know our value, our worth, and the dollars we make for our special skillset.

How does The Scully Effect solve the shortage of Court Reporters?

Ordinary people don’t normally see court reporters in their daily lives. They’re in courtrooms or out in law offices doing their work, and normal people are off doing whatever it is they do. But on TV, those two paths cross. People are given an inside —even if a little dramatized—peek to a world that’s often off limits to them. And in that moment, new realities open up.

Kudos to Whitney Kumar for conjuring the “Scully Effect” in court reporting! I know it’s happening! I challenge someone, anyone to prove me wrong! But I believe that Whitney’s Scully Effect could be bigger, a LOT bigger! What can we do to help bolster this Scully Effect in our industry? If the survey found that 50% of the women in STEM industries had seen the show and were influenced to pursue a STEM career, and that 24% of the entire population in those industries had come from the Scully Effect, then let’s take 24% of our industry, with an estimated 27,000, that would be 6,480 reporters in the future that will have found our profession because of Whitney Kumar on Judy Justice. The attrition rate in STEM fields is about 48 percent versus a the 90 percent attrition rate in court reporting school, so we can adjust that number to roughly 3,240. The simplified point being, we have a ways to go to match the numbers in the Scully Effect from the X-Files show.

Here are some additional actions taken in the U.S. that worked to increase the amount of women entering STEM fields:

It makes me wonder if Judge Judy Sheindlin, the highest paid woman on American television ($440m) would consider donating $1 Million to Fund Court Reporting education for Women.

I know our industry has a lot of published authors out there, including Jason Meadors, Diane Kilpatrick, and others. Any possibility of collaborating on a Book Series for Young Girls that can close the gap in Steno?

We need a national, unified effort to attend high school career fairs to educate about the steno career on a regular basis.

Whitney, traveling the country to talk at court reporter conventions in our own industry, was preaching to the choir, so to speak, and getting reporters all over the country fired up and excited about being court reporters. It was great for our morale! Time to bring her appearances to an outside audience, to the next generation of court reporters, to prospective court reporting students. We need to expand her reach, introduce her to a new audience to share with them the best kept secret! What are your thoughts, ideas, suggestions to how we can capitalize on her Scully Effect to help our profession replenish our ranks and thrive and survive?

A spin-off from Judy Justice, with the Stenographer as a lead character!

My ultimate vision for Whitney Kumar and an explosive Scully Effect would be a spin-off into her own show, highlighting her as the lead character, navigating the legal waters as an agency owner, a twin, with a team of court reporters who work for her and are her friends and client attorneys in her spectacular life. Her real life is more exciting than other reality shows that need fabricated plot lines to bolster their lead characters. There’s enough material to go on and on for 9 or 10 or 25 seasons! Surely, there has got to be a way to pitch this to the Judy Justice team to have them help make this a reality!

What are some of your ideas to bolster this emerging Scully Effect in court reporting?