First African-American woman to graduate from Yale Law School, to join the New York City Bar Association, to join the New York City Law Department, and to serve as a judge in the United States!
Jane Bolin was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on April 11, 1908. She was the daughter of Gaius C. Bolin, a lawyer and the first black person to graduate from Williams College. At 16, she enrolled at Wellesley College where she was one of only two black freshmen. Bolin graduated in the top 20 of her class in 1928.
Although Bolin was strongly discouraged from applying to Yale Law School due to her race, she was admitted and graduated in 1931 as the first black woman to receive a law degree from Yale. She then went on to become the first black woman to join the New York City Bar Association in 1932.
On July 22, 1939, Mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, appointed Bolin as a judge of the Domestic Relations Court, making Bolin the first black woman to serve as a judge in the United States. Bolin proceeded to be the only black female judge in the country for twenty years. Source
Lyda Conley
First Native American Woman to Argue a Case Before the Supreme Court
Eliza Burton “Lyda” Conley was an Wyandot-American lawyer of Native American and European descent, the first woman admitted to the Kansas Bar Association. She was notable for her campaign to prevent the sale and development of the Huron Cemetery in Kansas City, now known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground. She challenged the government in court, and in 1909 she was the first Native American woman admitted to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United States. Source
Beth Robinson
First Openly LGBTQ Woman To Serve on a Federal Appeals Court
Beth Robinson (born March 6, 1965) is an American lawyer and judge from Vermont. She is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and is the first openly lesbian judge to serve on any Circuit Court. Robinson served as an associate justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 2011 to 2021.
Before joining the Vermont Supreme Court in 2011, Robinson was a civil litigator at Langrock Sperry & Wool from 1993 to 2011 focusing on employment law, workers’ compensation, contract disputes and family law and representing LGBT individuals in civil rights cases.
She served as co-counsel in Baker v. State of Vermont, in which the Vermont Supreme Court ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated state law. The 1999 decision led to the state Legislature’s enactment of Vermont’s civil union law the following year. Source
Claudia Gordon
First Deaf Black Female Attorney in the United States
Claudia Gordon is the first female African American deaf lawyer in the United States. She is also the first deaf student to graduate in 2000, from the American University (AU) Washington College of Law, in Washington, DC. At AU, Gordon specialized in disability rights law and policy. Since earning her juris doctorate from AU, Gordon has been active in working to ensure the rights of people with disabilities are respected. Claudia Gordon was born in rural Jamaica. Her mother immigrated to the South Bronx, in New York, so that she could earn a better living, and planned to reunite with her children as soon as she could. Claudia and her younger siblings were left in the care of her eldest sister, Mildred Taylor, a schoolteacher. While in her eldest sister’s care, Claudia suddenly developed severe pain in her middle ears and at age eight Claudia Gordon became deaf. Gordon graduated from Howard University in 1995 with a bachelor of arts in political science. At Howard, Gordon was a Patricia Robert Harris Public Affairs Fellow, a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society, and the Political Science Honor Society. More awards and honors came at American University, where Gordon was an Equal Justice Foundation Fellow, had the Myers Law Scholarship, and the J. Franklin Bourne Scholarship. In 2002, Gordon received the Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities. Source
Patsy Mink
First Asian American Woman Elected Into Congress
As a third-generation Japanese American, Patsy Mink grew up in Hawaii and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1948. She faced sexism when she was refused the right to take the bar exam in Hawaii, due to losing her Hawaiian territorial residency when she got married. She challenged the statute and was able to pass the bar but was rejected from jobs because she was married and had a child, so she started her own practice in 1953. She made waves challenging discriminatory laws and became the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman elected into Congress when she won a seat in 1964. She served for 12 terms and later ran for the 1972 presidential election, making her the first East Asian American woman to seek a presidential nomination. Source
Victoria Kolakowski
First Openly Transgender Person to Serve as a Trial Court Judge in the United States
Judge Victoria Kolakowski became the first and only openly transgender trial judge in the United States when she was elected to the Alameda County Superior Court in November 2010. Judge Kolakowski is a former President of the International Association of LGBT Judges, and of the Earl Warren American Inn of Court chapter in Alameda County. She was an attorney for twenty-one years in Louisiana and California, serving as a sole practitioner, attorney in a small firm, as general counsel for a publicly-traded company, as a senior government utility regulatory attorney, and as an administrative law judge for two different California agencies. As a judge, she has served in both civil and criminal trial assignments. She recently completed a year as the Supervising Judge of the Collaborative Courts, with subject matter oversight over all of the treatment courts (drug, behavioral health, veterans’, etc.) in Alameda County. Source
Ollie E. Watson
First Woman to Serve as President of the National Court Reporters Association (National Shorthand Reporters Association, at the time)
While the first convention of the National Shorthand Reporters Association (later renamed the NCRA), convened in Chicago in 1899 with 156 reporters in attendance, it wouldn’t be until 1951 when its first female president, Ollie E. Watson, was elected. Rachel M. Smith was the second female president, elected in 1954. Source
Charlotte E. Ray
First African American Female Attorney in the US
The daughter of an important figure in the abolitionist movement and newspaper editor, Charlotte E. Ray was encouraged from an early age to go to college. In 1872, she became the first woman to graduate from the Howard University School of Law. That same year she was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, becoming the first African-American woman lawyer in the United States. While details of her specific area of practice are debated, there is evidence that she was the first woman to argue a case in the District of Columbia Supreme Court. An example of her writing still exists from Gadley v. Gadley, a domestic abuse case from 1875. Despite her legal knowledge and corporate law expertise, and efforts to advertise her services in Frederick Douglass’ weekly newspaper, racial and gender biases kept her from a prosperous legal career. She later became a teacher in the Brooklyn school system.
Connie Rill
Founding President of the American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers (AAERT)
The founding concepts for the American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers (AAERT) began with Connie Rill (California), who in 1993 invited two associates, Steve Townsend (Arizona) and Janet Harris (Wisconsin), to explore forming an organization to represent the electronic court reporting and transcribing industry. Their efforts came to fruition in March 1994 when about 75 interested private-sector practitioners met in Las Vegas to formally inaugurate AAERT. Source
Arabella Mansfield
First Licensed Female Attorney in the US
Arabella Mansfield, also known as Belle Babb Mansfield, was the first licensed female attorney in the United States. Mansfield graduated from Iowa Wesleyan University in 1866 and taught Political Science, English and History at Simpson College. In 1868, encouraged by her husband, Mansfield took the bar exam and passed with high scores despite an Iowa law prohibiting women to practice law. After Mansfield fiercely challenged the law, the court ruled that women may not be denied the right to practice and admitted her to the Iowa State Bar in 1869. Despite the newly overturned law, Mansfield chose to dedicate her life to college teaching and activist work—specifically, the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
Deborah A. Batts
First Openly LGBTQ+ Member of the Federal Judiciary & First Black Faculty Member at Fordham University School of Law
United States District Judge Deborah A. Batts is the first openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual member of the federal judiciary.
President Clinton appointed Judge Batts to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1994. A distinguished member of the bench, she has presided over several high-profile cases, including a lawsuit against former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who was accused of failing to inform New Yorkers of the health risks of returning to their homes after the 9/11 attacks.
In 1973, she became an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. In 1979, she became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York in the Criminal Division. And in 1984, Judge Batts joined the faculty at Fordham University School of Law as the first black faculty member. Source
Vivien Spitz
Female Stenographer for the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
Vivien Spitz was the first female Official Reporter of Debates in the United States Senate and a court reporter at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. In 1946 Spitz, a court reporter from Illinois, was recruited to report verbatim proceedings at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. In 1948, after returning to the US following the trials, Spitz suffered from PTSD as a result of the horrifying testimonies from witnesses and victims of the Holocaust. She courageously persisted and went on to serve as an official shorthand reporter in the Denver District Court, then as the first female Official Reporter of Debates in the US Senate, and finally as an Official Reporter of Debates in the US House of Representatives – a job she held for ten years, under four presidents. In her retirement, Spitz received several humanitarian awards for sharing her experiences from Nuremberg with students and adults interested in medical ethics and human rights. In 2005, she published the book, Doctors from Hell, The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans.
Clara Foltz
A Suffragette who Passed the “Woman Lawyer’s Bill” in California
Clara Shortridge Foltz is most notable for becoming the first female lawyer on the West Coast. In 1877, a single mother of five children, Foltz supported her young family by giving public lectures on the Women’s Suffrage Movement. It was during this time that she began studying law in the office of a local judge. After being denied the opportunity to take the California bar exam Foltz authored the “Woman Lawyer Bill, which replaced the term “white male” with “person” permitted to practice law. In 1878, on her own education and merit, she passed the bar exam and became the first woman admitted to the California bar and thus the first female lawyer on the West Coast. Foltz tried cases in court before women were allowed to serve on juries and was a leader in the women’s voting rights movement. While she struggled for sufficient income for decades, Foltz had many more “firsts” throughout her life: she was the first woman appointed to the State Board of Corrections, the first female Notary Public, the first female clerk for the State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, the first woman to run for Governor of California, and the first female deputy district attorney in the United States.
Constance Baker Motley
First African-American woman appointed to the federal judiciary, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s first female attorney, First African-American woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court, and First African-American woman to sit in the State Senate!
Constance Baker Motley was born on September 14, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut. Motley attended New York University in 1943 and received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 1946. During Baker’s second year of law school, future U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice, Thurgood Marshall, hired her as a law clerk.
After graduating from Columbia, Motley became the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s (LDF) first female attorney. Motley went on to become Associate Counsel to the LDF, making her a lead attorney in many significant civil rights cases.
In 1950, Motley wrote the original complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. She was also the first African-American woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Meredith v. Fair). Motley was successful in nine of the ten cases she argued before the Supreme Court.
Motley was elected to the New York State Senate in 1964, making her the first African-American woman to sit in the State Senate.
In 1966, Motley broke another glass ceiling by becoming the first African-American federal judge after her nomination to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Source
Sandra Day O’Connor
First Female Justice of the US Supreme Court
Born on a cattle ranch in El Paso, TX, Sandra Day O’Connor graduated magna cum laude with a BA in economics from Stanford University at the age of 20 and received her law degree two years later. Early on in her career, despite her academic achievements, O’Connor found it difficult to find a paying job as an attorney due to gender biases. Not one to be discouraged, she offered to work for no pay and worked her way to become a deputy district attorney in San Mateo, CA and then a civil attorney for the army in Germany. Upon her return to the US she became an assistant attorney general for Arizona in 1965 and was elected to the Arizona Senate in 1969. There she became the first woman in the United States to become majority leader. In 1975 she was elected a Superior Court Judge in Maricopa county and then to the Arizona Court of Appeals in Phoenix. In 1981 O’Connor was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court. She was confirmed unanimously by the Senate and sworn in as the very first female justice, shattering the highest glass ceiling in the American legal system. During her tenure on the Court, O’Connor became known as a “swing vote” on many prominent cases, including Casey v. Planned Parenthood and Bush v. Gore.
Gloria Allred
Influential Female Attorney for Women’s Rights
A well-known champion for women’s rights, Gloria Allred began her career as a high school teacher in Philadelphia, PA. While working on her graduate degree at New York University Allred became deeply involved in the civil rights movement. She moved to Los Angeles, CA in 1966 and worked for the Los Angeles Teachers Association. After her own personal experience with assault, Allred began to pursue a law degree and committed her life to helping victims. In 1975 she was admitted to the State Bar of California and began a four decades long influential legal career. She has represented a wide variety of civil rights suits involving women’s’ rights, wrongful termination and employment discrimination, and was the first lawyer to challenge same-sex marriage laws in California. A master of the press conference, Allred is known for bringing cases against high-profile men and celebrities and managing the narrative that surrounds them for her clients.
“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
— Geo. Orwell, 1984
I’m sure that we all remember hearing that juicy rumor back in high school that you couldn’t wait to tell your best friend, who tells their best friend, and on and on. Now fast forward to your life as an adult. (Depressing… but moving on). When you think of your co-workers, you subconsciously consider some better than others; right? Are you good at what you do? Everyone lives with their own narrative, but sadly those narratives are much too often controlled by people other than you! Rewind back to high school and whether that rumor was true or not, good or bad, everyone is repeating it and talking about it. Rumors can drive narratives, and narratives control your future. So who is controlling your narrative?
The definition of a narrative: “a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious.” The definition actually includes that it can be true, OR NOT. I have seen narratives that promote a persons’ career and narratives that ruin them as well. It’s funny because the same words can be used in a positive or negative light depending on the current narrative. Let’s look at a couple popular examples.
We all know Steve Jobs and the story of his career, how he was called ridged, demanding, a micro manager, and controlling. He was even fired from his own company! How crazy is that?! All of those adjectives were made out to make Steve Jobs sound bad when times were tough and other people didn’t understand his vision. Remember that this was before Steve Jobs was a public figure and his co-workers actually created this negative narrative. Don’t let your co-workers do this to you! The reality is that all of those adjectives are what drove his company to its successes. And only once his career tragedy turning into a success did all of those same words magically became compliments! Funny how that works; isn’t it?
Now let’s look at another example, Jim Harbaugh. In this example, interestingly enough, it’s the media, not co-workers, who created the narrative. While he was the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, Harbaugh was called all the same adjectives as Steve Jobs. “He’s not a player’s coach, practices are too hard, and he doesn’t tailor to the media.” So the 49ers decided to fire Jim and list all of those reasons why. Then they hired someone with the opposite character traits of Jim, and Jim goes on to coach the Michigan Wolverines. Well, what do ya know?! Jim achieves instant success at Michigan, while the 49ers became arguably the worst team in the league overnight. Funny how that works, huh? So all of those ‘bad’ adjectives that you were using to describe Steve Jobs and Jim Harbaugh have now changed to compliments, and they were actually exactly what you needed! You simply allowed someone else’s narrative to affect your perception.
In both of these cases, and many others in life, the decision makers’ listened to a wrong narrative and let it affect their decision making. It results in more power for the narrator (the media or your co-workers) and they don’t deserve any. Don’t let the media, or your co-workers drive your narrative. Be smarter than that; drive your own narrative, and be hesitant to take others for their word.
Think about this; when you witness something for the first time without any predetermined opinion, you create the narrative for what you saw. For example, let’s say that you are taking a morning jog along the ocean by yourself. As you are running, you see a small child struggling to swim out in the water. A man swims out to try and save the young boy, but unfortunately is unsuccessful, and he swims back to shore. You are the only witness to the series of events. As people now swarm to the scene, the narrative of this man’s life and this event are in your words. What if you say that they were swimming together, and it looked like the man deliberately tried to drown the boy? Or what if you say he tried to save the boy in a heroic effort, but came up short. You are literally in control of whether this man will be in court for a murder trial, or in the local news for being a hero. The power that you have by witnessing that for the first time is unreal! Now, this is a terrible and extreme example, but it gets the point across. Perception is reality and narratives are reality in the world today.
People take what you say, in the light that you create, and that becomes the public narrative. It can be the difference of someone being a hero or being put in jail. Now enter your workplace. Think about all of your coworkers and whether they are good, bad, or just average. But think about how your perception is affected by a predetermined opinion. You were probably told by someone else whether that person is good or bad before you ever had a chance to form your own true opinion. Think about it toward everything in life. How many original opinions or narratives have you adapted, or are you just going with the flow of popular opinion? The public majority follows the popular narrative, and that is why you must control your own narrative if you want to control your future. Take control of your life!
So the moral of the story is this, don’t allow other people to control the narrative of your life! The next time you are joking around with your friends about being ‘lazy,’ ‘organized,’ or a ‘procrastinator,’ be aware that you are writing your own public narrative. They listen to your definition of yourself and it translates to their definition of you later down the road. Instead, try boosting yourself up, and before you know it, people might think more highly of you.
This is true for our court reporting industry. We must control the narrative. We must know our value and impart that value. We have to talk to the attorneys that we’re in front of every day and share our narrative. What is our court reporting narrative?
Court reporters are the checks and balances in a courtroom.
Court reporters are the Gold Standard.
Court reporters are the Responsible Charge who certify every word that is said and oversees every aspect of transcript production.
Court reporters are the most important person in the courtroom because their record transcends the courtroom and could go up to the court of appeals to overturn a lower-court’s decision.
A court reporter is independent from the court and cannot be directed to change the record or withhold the record.
A court reporter is unbiased and neutral and protects the record from being compromised.
A court reporter’s transcript is not the end product. The end product of a court reporter is a record that has captured every single word spoken, regardless of cross-talk or noise, that has reported speakers correctly, and that is free from any kind of tampering, is free from bias and influence, and is uncompromised by any interested party, and is free from any conflict of interest, and is certified by a licensed professional who is following all of the applicable laws, and is accountable with their license on the line, and is usually backed up by E&O insurance.
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.
Are you constantly working for hard earned dollars or are you working towards easy money?
As we grow up we’re taught, “you need to work hard.”
You need to get paid for your time.
You need to clock in.
You need to clock out.
You need to get paid for the time that you’re spending.
And that’s how your value is created.
That’s how you believe your value is measured.
And that’s how you will be rewarded in life.
Then, when we hear easy money referenced, it’s often made out to be a bad thing.
Too often we see people in society who are just grinding away in their 9-to-5 jobs.
And they actually value their own worth in, “How much time can I put in? How much work can I do?”
They don’t think nearly enough about leverage.
Most of their time is spent in the immediate day‑to‑day work.
But they should be spending more time thinking about how to make things better, and thinking about leverage.
Leveraging their time and energy by finding people to help get the results that they want, in an efficient manner, so they don’t have to be hustling every day.
Whether in work or life, most of us strive to accomplish more in less time. Wouldn’t it be nice to do in a few hours what it used to take you half a day? By concentrating and minimizing distractions, you can.
The chances are that you are not taking full advantage of the cutting-edge technology available to you. There are now several options in our market to consider.
Here are 3 ways court reporters can stop the hamster wheel spin cycle of working hard and leverage your time to work smarter.
CONTROL & MINIMIZE DISTRACTIONS
In order to work smarter, you must control your surroundings and minimize distractions. Make sure to hide that cell phone! One study found that having your phone present, even if you are not using it, can make you perform 20% worse than if it was out of sight.
One of the most impressive (and user-friendly) tools is a collaborative SaaS cloud-based software known as CoverCrow. Their platform helps you keep your job alerts lean and mean by focusing on only the jobs in which you would be interested. You set your own customized job alerts using advanced filters so you only get notices for the specific types of jobs you want to take and allows you to focus on the jobs that make more money.
It helps keep you off social media sites like Facebook altogether, which is a big black hole that sucks your time. CoverCrow allows you to check in with your live availability and current GPS location, letting agencies know that you are available for the next job and also locates jobs close to you while you’re out in the field, giving you that ability to take more jobs during the day and reduces wasted travel time. Or you can set the alerts to notify you for in-person jobs only, eliminating travel time altogether.
DELEGATE
Mastering the art of delegation is an essential skill for high-earning court reporters. Even the biggest control freaks, perfectionists, and micromanagers can find this difficult, but find ways to accomplish this. The key is understanding that the ability to delegate will make you more productive. One study even showed that CEOs who delegate experience lower levels of decision fatigue, fewer instances of burnout, and generate 33% more revenue than those with low delegation skills.
Delegate the stressful task of scheduling by using niche industry tools like CoverCrow’s auto accept feature, which can schedule lucrative jobs for you while you’re on the record so you are always the first to respond and you don’t lose that perfect next assignment.
Building a team of scopists and proofreaders and delegating your most time-consuming tasks to them can free you up to take more high-income-earning jobs and stay on the record 5 days a week. Use the latest tool for court reporters, Stenovate, to not only find and hire the right team, but also manage your entire workload right on their platform.
DOUBLE DOWN!
The newest scintillating remote-work trend for white-collar workers, in industries from tech to banking to insurance, is to double their pay. This includes freelance and official court reporters alike. Their schtick is to “work two full-time jobs.” Like Fight Club, the first rule for these folks is “don’t tell anyone” and “don’t do too much work, either.”
Dual-jobsters, from freelance to official, bragged on Facebook groups that they earned over $50k more per year by being able to take multiple remote jobs per day from the comfort of their home or courthouse office using remote platforms such as Zoom.
CoverCrow spent a good part of last year programming in all the different certification requirements all over the United States to help take the guess work out of accepting remote jobs in other states. Agencies and reporters have the assurance that they are in compliance with each state’s certification requirements when they post jobs or find jobs on the CoverCrow platform.
As you jump in to 2022, I hope you take the time to think of ways to stop the cycle of working for hard-earned dollars and create systems and put people in the right seats that have you earning easier money.
A tsunami of corporate greed and dishonesty has filled our nation’s leading providers of court reporting products and services. The big companies in the court reporting profession are like an obnoxious, gum-chewing roommate who owns a car when you don’t — just because we can’t live without them doesn’t mean that living with them is easy, especially when they’re, you know, trying to kill stenography and stuff.
You see, while the sales spiel of every moral company is to offer its community some way to make our lives better, to offer products and services that serve genuine human needs, a whole bunch of them in our niche legal industry have secretly been doing the exact opposite. These businesses need not be concerned about ethics in their pursuit of profit. Their weak view of corporate social responsibility drives their principal and overriding responsibility to shareholder profits, and their myopic view that their sole responsibility is to conduct the operations of the company in such a way as to maximize the wealth of their shareholders.
So, let’s get down to the brass tacks and discuss some of the worst examples … that we know about, anyway.
Planet Depos is one of the large international court reporting agencies that engages in a number of practices that skirt the rules and ethics of the profession.
Cost Shifting
First is cost shifting, where a court reporting agency gives their client, the lawyer who hires them, a discount and then turns around and charges the opposing counsel a much higher rate to make up for the loss. An easy way to spot this is when reporters are paid more for copy orders than for the original. Don’t fall for this.
Anti-contracting statute
Many states have anti-contracting statutes, but Planet Depos doesn’t appear to have any hesitation with skirting those. In Indiana, for example, their Code 33-41-3, bans court reporting services from entering into a contract with a person interested in the outcome of a litigation proceeding. The law was enacted during the O’Bannon administration specifically to stop national court reporting firms, but Planet Depo has gotten around the statute by enlisting the local firms on a case-by-case basis, rather than contracting with them.
Many states, such as Washington, have laws that requires court reporters to offer equal services and fees to all parties, but Planet Depos allegedly ignores those laws.
Fraudulent use of NCRA Certification logos
Kathy DiLorenzo, Planet Depo’s ambassador to reporters who is responsible for recruiting reporters all across the country, offers reporters large annual contracts to lock them in to working exclusively for Planet Depos. It’s much like an employment agreement, but calling it that would mean they’d actually have to pay employment taxes, so they just call it a contract to avoid those bothersome little details. Kathy retired from reporting after her stint as the President of the National Court Reporters Association, where, in her inaugural speech, she dared to be the first to broach the subject of being “method agnostic” and was tarred and feathered for it, and was tortured for her entire term. She was permanently emotionally scarred from the experience and confessed as much. The mere mention of it elicits a rather noticeable facial tick and twitch of her upper lip.
Wouldn’t you know, another NCRA past President now sits on the STTI board. Kathy DiLorenzo is listed as a Director. There she is right on the STTI home page of their website. Kathy assures reporters that they will always have a place in the industry, especially reporters that can do realtime and dailies. But in my humble opinion from personal observation, Kathy is on a mission to destroy the stenography industry and make sure that we all go to hell after what we did to her on the day of her inaugural speech as President of the NCRA. Who remembers the Steven King movie Carrie? Not sure if I should feel sorry for her or fear her. Probably safer to just fear her. She’s the only player of the lot of them that is in it with a personal vengeance, a woman scorned, and not pure profit motives.
Planet Depos is one of the biggest proponents of recruiting and training digital reporters, but worse, marketing and educating attorneys to use them and to change their deposition notices to get away with it in the 23 states that have laws against it.
Not only is Planet Depo’s “Digital Reporter” solution inferior, it actually contributes to exacerbating the court reporter shortage. After pouring money into recruiting and training digitals all over the country, Planet Depos realized it had a problem on its hands in the 23 states that require a licensed CSR to produce transcripts, but what’s worse is when they started to realize that, perhaps because of the shortage of certified shorthand reporters in the first place, they couldn’t find any CSR’s to produce transcripts of their audio/video recordings now after the fact. So Planet Depos hosted a Zoom seminar for court reporters on the state of the industry, which turned into a let’s-recruit-court-reporters-to-transcribe-our-audio-files presentation by building confidence in just how great their digital reporters were doing at pushing a button. Kathy and her team tried to set the stage with their phony STTI numbers that were based on a 2013/2014 Ducker Worldwide study. What’s phony about these slides and their projections are that they are not based on any current data, but they simply just took the old 2013/2014 Ducker data, that was obviously wrong in the first place, and only forecasted up to 2018, and then they drew the lines out on the graph in a downward progression to show the future up to 2023 and 2033, and voila! There you have it! An even greater shortage is predicted. All the numbers below that come after the 2013 study are completely fabricated by STTI and not substantiated by any independent study of our market.
At this reporter Zoom training, Kathy DiLorenzo then tried to convince the attendees that every stenographer who wanted a job would have one. But we needed to first help them solve the problem of our shortage by helping them with their backload of audio files that they’ve been doing without us just fine.
The obvious problem here is that transcribing audio files takes four times as long to transcribe and takes more manpower. It would require 4 people to do the job that we could do in person with only one human being. If you had a shortage of machine court reporters before they introduced their “digital reporting” solution to the world, then you’re going to have an even bigger shortage of court reporters after years of recording audio of proceedings are piling up. You can’t possibly train a transcription army of that size in all the nuances that it takes a machine stenographic reporter decades to learn in the field.
Another, more serious problem is that no self-respecting, ethical, professional and certified stenographic shorthand reporter would certify a transcript that they had no part in creating. That is, after all, what we are certifying when we sign our name, that it was taken in our presence. We are the responsible charge of the proceeding who not only was present for every word spoken, but we were at the center and in control of the entire production of the transcript and are putting our license on the line in certifying it. It means that we personally hired and oversaw the production of every aspect of creating the transcript. Court reporters hire subcontractors such as proofreaders and scopists who work under their direction and control. Court reporters have control over the transcript production at all times. Being handed a video or audio file by an agency is completely outside of our authority as the responsible charge. We have no idea who produced that video or audio, if it has been altered or compromised, and we don’t even know where the original file is housed, whether it’s some digi person in the Philippines or elsewhere. We have no idea how many hands it has been through.
The National Society of Professional Engineers went through a similar struggle in their profession when anyone could call themselves an “engineeer.” The NSPE put a stop to it by publishing a “Responsible Charge” statement on their website (which cost them nothing but brain power), they focused on getting every state to adopt a standard title of “Professional Engineer” (“PE”) and then mandating state licensing as a PE, and they criminalized anyone performing the duties of a PE without a license, and the licensing board was given the teeth and budget to prosecute offenders.
Planet Depo’s digital reporter solution is a complete failure and a danger to the entire legal industry. But they are continuing to recruit digital court reporters anyway.
This is from a Planet Depos newsletter send on December 22, 2022, where they advertise for “Digital Court Reporters” in every state. But you’ll see the April 20, 2023 newsletter now advertises for a “Deposition Officer” in California, where they were recently investigated, simply changing the title.
April 20, 2023 e-newsletter:
The California Court Reporters Board is powerless to act because of poorly written legislation that does not clearly state that it’s not only what title they use to call themselves, but it is the job they are doing that should be considered in these investigations, and does not give the CRB the power to enforce the laws,
Misleading advertising of NCRA certifications and advertising for digital court reporters to take jobs in states that don’t allow “digitals” by simply changing the job ad’s title are not all that I take issue with when it comes to Planet Depos. I saw a post on Facebook where Planet Depos was instructing their videographers on Zoom depos to call themselves the “court reporter.”
This image below was a letter from Planet Depos written in 2017 to their videographers when they were just getting started with their solution to just record a deposition with the intent of transcribing it later if it’s ever needed.
Here below is a Facebook comment about the letter by a certified stenographic shorthand reporter speculating about Planet Depos evolution of digitals. Being on the front lines, showing up in court where these fake transcripts are starting to be submitted (and getting rejected by judges), and in depositions at law offices all over the country, CSR’s see what’s happening with their own eyes, and they make friends with attorneys and paralegals and receptionists and hear what is happening in the law firms they service, and reporters (the real ones) talk to each other about what they’re seeing. Nothing is hidden.
Yes, that’s Planet Depos apparently instructing their videographer to put the camera on the floor to record the audio surreptitiously. This snippet should send a chill up the spine of every lawyer and judge in the country. This is written about a company that’s taking the law into their own hands, skirting the laws against surreptitious recordings, skirting the laws requiring a CSR in 23 states, violating the US Constitution’s 5th and 14th Amendments that offer due process protections to litigants, flagrantly casting aside all professional ethics.
Planet Depos can tell stenographers they’ll have a job as long as they want one until they’re blue in the face, but the reality is that they ARE replacing us. This type of post on Facebook is being seen more and more frequently.
Original post on a court reporters Facebook group about why her job canceled.
The response from a seasoned certified shorthand reporter.
In California, a Certified Shorthand Reporter must produce and certify a transcript in order for it to be admissible in court. A Certified Shorthand Reporter must also be present. They don’t have to be in person, with the COVID emergency orders still in place, but they must be present for the entire proceeding. Planet Depos and all the other players pushing their digital and AI solution don’t seem to be complying with the state laws in 23 states that require transcripts to be produced by certified reporters; don’t you think? They can stipulate to other means all they want, but judges, who are the ultimate arbiter, are not admitting transcripts produced by notaries or transcriptionists, and they’re also not admitting video that is not accompanied by transcripts signed by Certified Shorthand Reporters.
A post by a California Certified Shorthand Reporter who reported a civil trial as an Official Court Reporter Pro Tempore in CA.
Planet Depos can coach law firms and attorneys about stipulating to using their inferior digital transcription and video-only methods all they want. Two attorneys can stipulate to anything they want. That much is true. But the judge must rule on it. And when it gets to court in trial, in the 5% of the cases that do make it to trial, it will not be admitted by a trial judge. Attorneys are playing Russian Roulette in taking a chance their cases won’t go to trial and that a judge won’t notice that their transcripts are not produced by a licensed Certified Shorthand Reporter in 23 states that require it or that they can get the other side to agree to offer a video with no accompanying transcript and pull one over on a judge who will allow it or that they can get an official court reporter pro tem who is obtuse enough to let them talk her into certifying their video at trial. Those attorneys are opening themselves up to the possibility of a malpractice lawsuit and better hope their malpractice insurance is up to date. They better hope they win their case and their client is happy with the result of the verdict, despite their legal malpractice and negligence.
US Legal
Where do I start. Do I start with US Legal’s CSO allegedly bullying the women in our field? Or US Legal allegedly underpaying stenographers? Or with US Legal’s allegedly unreasonable rates for services. How about the fact that US Legal is allegedly misleading the world and exaggerating about the court reporter shortage with impunity?
U.S. Legal allegedly engages in cost shifting – and allegedly skirts the rules and ethics of the profession – by allegedly giving the lawyer who hires them a discount and making up for the loss by charging the opposing lawyer a much higher rate.
Or maybe we can discuss how US Legal is allegedly operating in the state of New York where it has been inactive for two decades?
But what about the $50,000 donation US Legal made to Project Steno to support the recruitment of stenographers? Isn’t that proof that they support stenographic methods?
If US Legal were legitimately changing course and embracing digital technology and method-agnostic speech-to-text technologies, then wouldn’t their $50k donation to promote recruiting stenos be “undermining” those efforts? Wouldn’t their business and employees and customers and shareholders be harmed? Let me explain why that is possibly not the case. In order for US Legal, and the others, to succeed in fundamentally transforming our legal ecosphere with their “digital reporter” solution, they still need machine stenographers; right? Why? Well, for one, there are still laws in 23 states that require that transcripts be produced by licensed certified stenographic reporters or voicewriters. But most importantly, and most overlooked, is the fact that stenographers don’t learn most of what they need to do their jobs in school. They learn it on the job. And there is no textbook in existence to teach everyone what stenographers know in order to replace us. -There is literally no one-place-you-can-go to learn the art of stenography and producing transcripts. It doesn’t exist. So until they can change the laws in 23 states, and until they can suck all that knowledge from our collective brains, they need us.
Regardless of the appearance of helping stenographers and ingratiating themselves with all things steno, the President & CEO of US Legal is on the board of directors of the Speech-to-Text Institute. That says it all.
US Legal President & CEO is on the STTI’s board
Verbit
Verbit isn’t even a company that’s in the court reporting profession. They’re the ultimate outsider with no connection to the court reporting industry. Court reporters across the country are receiving cold calls from telemarketing people at Verbit who are claiming that they have more “NCRA certified legal transcriptionists” than any company in the U.S. They are so ignorant about our industry that they don’t even know that’s not even a certification that the National Court Reporters Association offers. There’s no such thing. Verbit is perpetrating the greatest fraud ever committed in our Legal Industry, if not all of America.
Verbit is an Israeli company, but they claim to be headquartered in Manhattan, New York, which is allegedly a lie. They claim to have Unicorn Status, where they are valuated at over $1 Billion, but they have no presence in the legal industry which they claim to serve. Their plan is to replace all court reporters in the United States with their subpar automated speech recognition (ASR) software, but they’ve been calling stenographers and begging them to certify their transcripts for them. Their allegedly outright lies and false claims are destroying the image of stenographers — you know, the real court reporters, steno machine writers and voice writers, stenographers, the real guardians of the record, the Responsible Charge; don’t you think?
Verbit claims their Automated Speech Recognition solution is 90% or more accurate; however, a Stanford University studied ASR from the largest companies in the world and found that it’s only 50 to 80 percent accurate, and that’s just with the words appearing on a page. Court reporters are marked off for punctuation errors and formatting errors on tests where we must achieve an accuracy of 96.5% to pass. Realtime reporters, however, consistently write at above 99.8% accuracy. With 300 words on a page, Verbit’s ASR would only be getting 150 words correct, without punctuation. A good realtime reporter makes one mistake every 4 pages, and that could just be a punctuation error. Their claim that ASR is 90% accurate does not include punctuation, which is not included at all in ASR programs.
Automatic Speech Recognition has many well-documented problems. Dropped text due to latency and well-documented racial bias have no place in our legal system or in the captioning industry. With published proof that digital reporters in Kentucky are utilizing speech-to-text companies like Verbit for their transcription needs, privacy should also be of the utmost concern for litigators and litigants alike.
Verbit was allegedly caught putting real transcripts of legal proceedings up on their website to test and train new transcribers – transcribers who are not licensed, not sworn in, not even located in the United States. Verbit allegedly did this without any permission from any of the litigants related to the transcripts. The breach of privacy is grossly egregious in my humble opinion. It’s the kind of practice an outsider to not only the legal industry, but to the United States of America would make, and one that should not be tolerated; right?
Verbit is allegedly in bed with all of the big proponents of Digital Reporting in our industry. We found out that BlueLedge allegedly has ties to Veritext, US Legal, and even Stenograph. Verbit’s only “in” to our court reporting profession has been to partner with the defectors, our Achilles heel. These traitors of the court reporting profession were the only ones to embrace Verbit’s subpar AI technology. They’re holding onto each other like shipwrecked swimmers hoarding pieces of wood. They’re getting absolutely no support from the tried-and-true traditional Gold Standard of the mainstream Court Reporting profession.
Verbit’s partners in attempting to fundamentally change the court reporting landscape with their AI-Digital Transcription partnerships, clear as day.
Veritext
VeriTEXT is the biggest offender, in my opinion, when it comes to cost shifting practices – and allegedly skirts the rules and ethics of the profession – by giving the lawyer who hires them a discount and making up for the loss by charging the opposing lawyer a much higher rate.
But where Veritext has really screwed over reporters is with their Digital Training programs. Rather than recruiting and training new stenographers to enter the field, they have decided that it’s more profitable — 50% more, in fact — to create a whole new field that can push a record button. According to Andy Fredericks, Veritext’s Director of Operations in CA, digital court reporters now make up 10% of their business and is growing. If Veritext has an estimated annual revenues of $100 million, that would mean their digital business is already garnering $10 million for them annually, roughly, and it’s growing rapidly. The profits on their digital program is 50% higher than using stenographers who invoice for their services. Veritext is charging the same rates to their attorney clients whether they send a stenographer or a digital button pusher. And Veritext has no plans to back down from their aggressive plan to grow their digital business. What’s really egregiously wrong about this though, in my humble opinion, is the fact that Veritext is going about pushing digitals on their clients by lying about not having an available stenographer to send, when, in fact, the shortage is not as exaggerated as Veritext is claiming it to be.
Veritext is even paying their new digitals salaries and benefits, which crosses the line and violates the ethics of the profession, allegedly. There are attorneys who sit on Veritext’s board, which makes it a conflict of interest, in my humble opinion, for Veritext’s digital employees to be working on cases, whether it be trials or depos. It would also be a conflict of interest for stenographers to be working for Veritext because of its board that includes attorneys, or even worse, reporting a deposition or trial where one of the Veritext Board Member attorneys is on the case you’re reporting!
Many reporters have allegedly witnessed Veritext boldly skirting the laws that require transcripts be certified by Certified Shorthand Reporters (CSR’s) in 23 states. Veritext has created marketing materials and is hosting Zoom training sessions for attorneys and paralegals in 23 states to teach them how to skirt the laws by changing the wording on their depo notices to say that if a stenographer is not available, they will use a digital.
But Veritext goes farther in their alleged scheme to break the laws in those 23 states. They are having these digital recordings then transcribed by notaries, not Certified Shorthand Reporters as the law requires in 23 states. When asked about this, Andy Fredericks fessed up and openly, boldly admitted to me, that yes, in fact, they ARE having transcripts produced by notaries in CA, a state that requires by law that transcripts be produced by CSR’s, and he professed that he knows of “no law that prohibits attorneys from stipulating away those laws. ” But they’re also just skipping the stipulation and stating that “absent an objection,” they’re basically just going to break the law and do what they want; right? This deposition had “Ivory Hallstein,” a “Digital Reporter” and “notary” swear the deponent, record the proceedings, and then included a signed certificate of Notary Public by Ivory, page 27 at the end stating that it was transcribed from the recording, and then the transcriber’s certificate on page 28, clearly violating the law in CA.
Ivory is a notary, not a Certified Shorthand Reporter, acting as the depo officer in CA
Ivory is certifying the transcript with a Certificate of Notary Public. This does not meet the requirement that transcripts in CA must be produced by a Certified Shorthand Reporter licensed in CA.
The same depo proceeding was then transcribed by Helen Venturini, a transcriptionist, and attached her Certificate of Transcriber to the deposition transcript. This also violates the law in CA which says that a transcript must be produced by a Certified Shorthand Reporter in CA. This deposition transcript is inadmissible in a CA court.
What’s even more shocking is that Veritext is now including a “Company Certificate” on transcripts. Veritext is now the transcriptionist. Get a load of this:
Veritext attaching its own “Company Certificate” to deposition transcripts. T
Veritext’s “Company Certificate” claims that the transcript and exhibits were submitted by a court reporter, yet no court reporter was involved in this deposition whatsoever. Veritext was acting solely as a transcription company. Then their “Company Certificate” goes on to state that Veritext “complies with all federal and state regulations with respect to the provision of court reporting services,” while not actually offering any court reporting services. Veritext only provided transcription services, which is against the law in CA to have a deposition transcript produced by anyone other than a California Certified Shorthand Reporter. Veritext is claiming to be the Responsible Charge, a position only a Certified Stenographic Court Reporter should have. Veritext employs the digital notary, employs the transcriptionist, has attorneys sit on their board who are also using Veritext for their deposition and court proceedings to produce their transcripts, all of which are unethical and are a conflict of interest, in my humble opinion.
Well, Andy Fredericks of Veritext, you’re looking for the law that prohibits attorneys from stipulating away the law, but you’re looking in the wrong place. It’s unconstitutional. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States protect the Due Process rights of litigants that you are violating with impunity, out of your own mouth! All persons are to be protected of Due Process of Law. These articles act as a restraint against those that seek to change the law by its mere will, which is what Veritext is doing and is teaching attorneys and paralegals to do in an attempt to make more profits for themselves.
Sure, attorneys can freely stipulate to anything, but in order to make it so, it requires the ruling of the court! You cannot simply stipulate to break the law and then just break the law. The judge gets to decide and rule on attorneys’ stipulations when it comes to laws. Judges are the ones who make a ruling as to whether or not your transcript or video that was produced without the involvement of a Certified Shorthand Reporter get to come into his courtroom or not, and they’re not and they won’t.
According to the CRB, only certified transcripts created by a licensed court reporter are guaranteed to be accepted in court. In the case of the deposition transcripts above, a judge in Kern County CA refused to admit these transcripts that were not transcribed by a licensed CA shorthand reporter in a CA trial where they were attached to a motion in that trial this past summer of 2021.
CALIFORNIA CODES – CODE OF CIVILPROCEDURE – SECTION 2025.010 – 2025.620
Stenograph
Warning To Digital Innovators: Regulated Industries Can Bite…
Yes, Anir, the Stenography industry is unlike any industry you’ve ever experienced because it’s Regulated. We’re not “divided.” We stand united behind Steno. You’re dividing us with your move to cater to button pushers who are unlicensed in a regulated industry!
The backlash over Stenograph’s new MaxScribe product has been seen as an attack on corporate freedom and digital entrepreneurship as a whole. Such claims are inaccurate because undertakings, irrespective of their legal form, location and mode of operation (digital/ ‘traditional’), are equally subject to, among others, (i) competition law; (ii) the respective regulatory framework, and (iii) rules on (un)fair competition. If an undertaking is found to be in violation of any of these, then naturally respective measures shall be taken to deal with the consequences of the infringement.
At the same time, these decisions are part of an increasing pattern whereby conflicts between regulated business and digital networking platforms in many different industries are playing out in the legal and regulatory arenas. Booking.com is a typical example. Others include Uber, Airbnb, and PayPal. The case of Booking.com should be seen from this perspective. Access to the website has been restricted temporarily by the Turkish court on the grounds of unfair competition, and technically, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) has implemented the order of the court.
To be abundantly clear, Anir Duta, the President of Stenograph, the largest 800-lb gorilla in the Stenography industry, now sits on the board as Vice President of STTI, The Speech To Text Institute, which many have called out as being a conflict of interest. Some claim, with merit, that STTI is a propaganda machine for proponents of digital technology.
Since I began writing this article, Anir Dutta’s video has been removed where he talks about his dismay at how our industry is divided on the issue of introducing method agnostic technologies to produce a transcript, which he wrongly believes is our end product. The only YouTube video of Anir that is remaining is his interview with Jim Cudahy of STTI on Spotify.
Who does Anir say he has a duty to? Who are his stakeholders in this ecosystem? He describes them as the stenographers, voice reporters, digital reporters, or agencies, or transcription services. But he leaves off the most important stakeholders in the legal ecosystem: the attorneys, judges, and litigants. And let me just add my observation that digital reporters, agencies, and transcription services have never been Stenograph’s customers or focus, that is, before Anir arrived. He’s selling out the litigants, attorneys, and judges to go after the bigger profits that he can get by catering to the new stakeholders – the agencies now hiring notaries, videographers, and transcription services who are all seeking to replace machine stenographic court reporters, his bread and butter. He may just succeed if we don’t do more to stop him now, while he still needs us. We won’t have any leverage left once we reach a tipping point.
Yesterday’s news story (4/18/2023) says it all.
The news sent shock waves through the court reporting community yesterday, leaving decades-long supporters scrambling for other options as software and hardware providers.
The outrage is real:
Stenograph’s new leadership could be to blame for the new direction. In an effort to expand their market reach and increase profits with new technology offerings, they are alienating the customers that have spent 80 years being loyal to them, supporting them, building them, and buying their products that were built specially for their niche market. By focusing on the “transcription” aspect of a court reporters’ job, they are missing the essence of the value that we bring to the legal profession altogether. My belief and understanding is that Stenograph aims to REPLACE steno court reporters, steno agencies, steno CART providers, steno captioners, and steno students with inferior transcriptionists. Their new partnership speaks volumes.
Where do we go from here?
You don’t have a real court reporting industry if the dominant portion of it has no interest in being legal. There’s no other regulated industry in the world that operates like that.
The regulated businesses’ discontent is understandable since customers favor companies that are taking full advantage of the digital economy/world and offering cheaper services, wider choice, larger corporate profits, etc. Digital entrepreneurs may even be several steps ahead of ‘traditional’ service providers in some aspects like recruiting, sales, and training. This is not bad. Being able to adjust your business to the emerging challenges of the digital economy is part of being competitive and successful in the market, as long as it is done within the legal and regulatory framework (i.e. taxation, licensing, permits, fair competition, working conditions, etc.).
In any case, regulated businesses that are currently at war with digital entrepreneurs may be perceived as unofficial ‘watchdogs’ of online platforms’ compliance with laws and regulations. Beware…they may bite!
Court reporters need to look to other regulated industries and start implementing some of the actions they’ve taken to fight off unregulated outliers. Court reporters need to stand united, adopt customized technologies that can ensure their success, and fight back against the invasion of digital entrepreneurs who threaten not only the livelihood of licensed and legitimate court reporters, but Justice!
A divide in the industry has been taking place. It’s time to just call it what it is. Those businesses who are adopting digital reporting where they record the proceedings and have it transcribed later, are simply “transcription companies” now, and not “court reporting” companies. If every stenographer and voice writer stopped working for “transcription” companies and buying software and hardware from transcription companies, and let the world know that those companies are no longer “court reporting” companies, it could end this fight right now. The money they make off court reporters when working for them and the money they make when their products are bought goes to marketing digital alternatives and are helping them to pivot to this new business that threatens not only the livelihood of court reporters, but their very existence; wouldn’t you agree? In my opinion, if court reporters continue to support them, it will be the death of court reporters and the court reporting profession. It will be the death of Justice in America!
Reporters divide and conquer, but they also must be united. We are stronger together!
Adopting AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies in the court reporting industry is one of the most complex issues of our generation, despite the great promise that AI holds for CAT (computer-aided transcription) software vendors looking to create a better and faster experience for its customers and higher translation rates for the ultimate end users of a reporters’ realtime feed.
Applying AI technologies is a critical competitive advantage. Even once we have a sense of how we could serve our market with AI, adopting and scaling these technologies within our industry is a behemoth of an undertaking. The conventional wisdom – to start small – has given way to a recognition that organizations need a fundamental shift in their approach to data to do even that well. Onboarding AI is not an easy undertaking.
Especially as the pandemic has accelerated the use of remote technologies — such as Zoom who has incorporated ASR (automated speech recognition) technology into their platform for judges and attorneys to use, instead of a stenographer’s realtime streaming — the big question on everyone’s mind is whether all that onboarding eventually means that the ASR bots are going to take all our human jobs. The promising answer from most experts is that there will certainly be roles for humans even in a machine-powered future; the real question is what those jobs will be, how our court reporting industry can prepare our workforce to incorporate emerging AI technology, and how human stenographers and AI will work together.
Finally, the question at the crux of any discussion about AI and ASR is this: Are we managing the machines, or are they managing us? Leaders need to set boundaries for the bots (ASR, AI), ethical, legal, and otherwise. There are a myriad of ways that AI’s tentacles can reach dangerously beyond what we expect – so we need to learn how to keep them reined in.
How Big Agencies Exploit Legal Loopholes in the Use of Digital Recorders
Many large agencies that advocate for the use of digital recorders are managing to circumvent laws in 25 states that require transcripts to be produced by licensed Court Reporters (CSRs). They argue that these laws can be bypassed through stipulations, and in some cases, they’ve succeeded in convincing the legal system of this. For example, a Veritext executive recently stated that they have yet to find any law preventing them from stipulating to the use of a digital recorder instead of a stenographer.
Due Process and Its Constitutional Roots
The concept of due process is deeply embedded in U.S. law, particularly in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no individual shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property” by the government without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment extends these protections to all U.S. citizens, regardless of race, gender, or religion.
Due process ensures that legal matters are handled according to established rules and principles and that individuals are treated fairly. Its origins can be traced to the Magna Carta, a foundational document from the 13th century that established key legal protections. One notable clause in the Magna Carta reads: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” This essentially means that a judge must review and rule on any stipulation made in a legal case.
The Due Process Exclusionary Rule: A Barrier to Illegal Practices
The Due Process Exclusionary Rule states that if evidence is obtained illegally — for instance, through an unlawful search and seizure without a warrant — that evidence cannot be admitted in court. This principle can be extended to the creation of transcripts. If a transcript is made illegally, through methods that violate state laws or regulations, it cannot be used in court.
Stipulations and the Role of the Judge
While attorneys may attempt to stipulate away legal requirements, the law is clear: only a judge has the authority to validate such stipulations. Attorneys cannot simply bypass laws on their own. If they wish to alter or disregard a specific legal provision, such as the requirement for a licensed CSR to produce transcripts, they must present their stipulation to the judge. Only after the judge’s ruling will the stipulation hold weight.
Attorneys can stipulate to anything they want, but only a judge can make it so. If attorneys want to stipulate away a law, then they must bring it before the judge who will then make a ruling on their stipulation before it will be allowed.
“The presence of fear is a sure sign you’re trusting in your own strength.” ~A Course in Miracles
As human beings, we all experience fear. Our bodies are built for survival, and our fear is the gatekeeper. Fear protects us and keeps us safe and secure by making us aware of any potential threat that might come our way. Fear breeds suspicion, caution, and vigilance.
Those things are fine if a hungry lion is chasing you. But if your intention is to live in the abundance that is always here, to lead with the heart, to be open to the depth and breadth of what might be possible in your life, then fear deserves your attention.
We fear being replaced by Speech to Text Recognition Software (ASR). We fear that ASR is crazy good. We fear that our vendors and associations are betraying and abandoning us. Many stenographers will simply want to run and retire or find another career. We can’t let fear dictate our fate. We must stand and fight! Because the truth is, we can win and survive long into the future and make more money as stenographers than ever thought possible! We must learn how to control our fear, or it will control us.
Purely a Matter of Choice
Simply said, running from fear doesn’t work. If we avoid turning to face it, it will nip at our heels forever. What does this mean? We live a fear-led life, choosing partners, jobs, and friends out of fear. Habits and addictions run wild because we are afraid of meeting our feelings. We feel separate and alienated, while deep inside, we recognize the echo of truth whispering softly.
Here is my question to you as we move into 2020. What do you want? I mean what do you really want for this precious life you have been given? If you are committed to knowing yourself fully, to living fully, then get to know fear. Start with these facts, then step aside and let your life unfold in all its glory.
Facts About Fear
Fear-motivated thoughts are all about “can’t.” They create a negative, imagined scenario about the future. Here’s the truth: you don’t know what is going to happen, so these thoughts can’t possibly be true. Buy into these thoughts, and you are inviting limitation. Let them float on by, and you will see what is actually true for you. We must focus on the “win” scenario. Stenographers will win this fight!
Fearful thoughts are designed to keep you safe and limited. They are not wisdom, and they are not truth. You get to choose what to follow. Keep your thoughts on positive action items that you can do to help you survive. If you encounter a bear in the woods, you pick up a big stick and make a lot of noise. We need to raise our voices and let them know how big we are. There are 27,000 of us. The truth is: we outnumber those that seek to take control of our profession. Let them hear how big we are!
Fear always includes physical sensations. Learn to recognize these, and receive them as they are with an open heart. Channel the energy of fear into excitement and enthusiasm. Let the adrenaline of the fight flow to propel you into ACTION! Take action! Take to social media, like blogs such as Stenonymous, speak out, speak at bar associations, court reporting associations, write letters to your congressman, your state attorneys general. Gather evidence of law breaking in your states that require certified transcripts!
Fear makes us think that something negative will happen, when the truth is that we don’t know what is going to happen. Become comfortable with not knowing so that fear doesn’t rule you. Stay focused on a positive outcome! Stenographers will win!
Resisting fear strengthens it. The antidote is awareness – being willing to directly experience fear as it appears to you in the moment, recognizing the thoughts and physical sensations. Fighting with an end-game scenario has proven effective in negotiating successful outcomes. If an ASR takeover in the legal industry is successful, it can lead to absolute corruption by those in power, jeopardizing the entire United States justice system!!! Spread that awareness of the potential of a disastrous outcome.
The goal is not to get rid of fear, as you don’t have the power to make this happen. But you do have the power to change the way you relate to fear. Learn to receive it with curiosity and a loving heart, get to know how it spins thoughts that deflate the things you are enthusiastic about. But don’t feel like something is wrong or you have failed if it continues to appear. Simply meet it lovingly every time. Don’t sweep it under the rug and not talk about it. Do the opposite. Talk about it, debate it, and get the conversations freely flowing about our potential fate. Don’t be afraid!
A surge of fear tends to arise directly after a moment of truth. Say that an idea appears in your mind about something you’d love to do. Soon after, you might notice that your mind is filled with reasons why you can’t or shouldn’t do it. Recognize that this is fear speaking. Maybe you’d like to do a presentation at your local bar association, and then you are gripped by the fear of public speaking. Join the recently-started StenoMasters toastmasters group that is a remote, all-virtual meeting that you can do from the comfort of your home office or even in the car on the way home from a depo or trial!
Recognizing the presence of fear allows you to make conscious decisions. You have the clarity to see what fear is guiding you to do, and you can consider what you really want. We want to survive! Right?
Fear is not the enemy. It can be the voice of reason, caution, and practicality that serves you well at times. But don’t let it slow you down. Sometimes the seconds you hesitate could mean life or death. If we’re going to save the stenography profession, we have to act NOW!
It takes energy to resist fear. Getting to know it and allowing it to be lets your body and mind relax, as the fight is over. This opens a space for creativity, wonder, awe, love, beauty, inspiration. Embrace it! Use it to propel you into action NOW!
Learn about fear. Know it so well that it can’t sneak up on you. Free yourself from the chains of fear, and every moment of your life will shine.
How have you dealt with fear? Does it hold you back? What happens when you embrace fear? I’d love to hear…
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.
STENOIMPERIUM 
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