August 2019 - CourtScribes, Inc. | Court Reporting & Litigation Support Archive - CourtScribes, Inc.

Archive for August, 2019

The National Court Reporters Association Annual Expo in Denver

Posted on: August 26th, 2019 by Sfl Media No Comments

29 men and women filled the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver representing the cream of the court reporting crop. They descended on the Mile High City for the annual National Court Reporters Association Convention and Expo, where contestants are competing for the chance to be crowned the fastest and most accurate reporters and captioners in the country.

This is basically the Olympics of court reporting.

Who are the Participants?

Most know court reporters from movies or TV shows as the silent, robotic human that sits at a steno machine without so much as a smile or smirk and types away indiscriminately.

“People think we’re robots,” said court reporter Amanda Maze, “We’re not!”

And while the name of the role suggests court duties only, the profession extends far beyond depositions and preliminary hearings. Music festivals, TV, movies and more need closed captioning for performances. Sports broadcasts need someone to keep up with the announcers for its telecasts.

And guess what…none of it requires a college degree.

“People have no idea what a great job it is,” says a court reporter from Illinois and contest chair for the competition. “You can travel. You can have a great government job. You can stay home. There are so many possibilities.”

What do the Contestants Have to Say?

Court reporting is not typing, contrary to popular belief. It’s really learning a language.

Stenography machines look like laptops with smaller screens. They feature keyboards with long, piano-like keys without any letters of numbers. To keep up with the speed of human speech, reporters write in their own shorthand, combining different keys to produce words and phrases. They can also program keys to write common words that can be used with just one keystroke.

While these skills are mostly used in courtrooms and in boardrooms, veteran court reporters and captioners relish the ability to compete against one another on steno’s biggest stage: the National Speed and Realtime competitions.

Court reporters are usually grammar buffs and detail nuts with unnerving concentration. The best of them just let their fingers fly, a rhythm so familiar it’s like breathing or blinking.

“If you’re thinking,” Maze said, “you’ve already lost.”

The Competition

In the speed contest, the contestants raced to complete three, five-minute sessions, that gradually escalate in speed and difficulty. Afterward, they’re allowed to clean up their transcriptions, and the person with the most accurate account takes home the gold.

And it’s all done in complete silence. Organizers gathered all cellphones and watches to prevent any distractions. One court reporter made sure that everyone had their Wi-Fi turned off.

Participants kept their stenos on black tripods, hoisted up to their waists. The computer voice launched into the third and final test, a rapid-fire sequence of questions and answers from a lawyer to a DNA expert. The speed: 280 words per minute.

The good news is that steno keys are virtually silent, unlike computer keyboards.

Many of the participants said the tight-knit court reporter community is what brought them to Denver. It wasn’t just about winning a medal. They come together as a fraternity that from our previous posts are “the last of a dying breed”.

CourtScribes.com is ready to serve you in your court reporting, videography services, interpreters, live-streaming, and video-to-text synchronization.

Although the majority of cities that offer CourtScribes’ services are in Florida, the company home base, other cities all across these United States that CourtScribes offers services in, are the following: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Port St. Lucie, Fort Lauderdale, Cape Coral, Coral Springs, Clearwater, Palm Bay, Fort Myers, Weston, Sarasota, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Hialeah, Stuart, Hollywood, Naples, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, Jupiter, Key West, Coral Gables, Maryland, Manhattan, Buffalo, Washington DC, Baltimore, Bowie, Virginia, Frederick, Albany, New York, Brooklyn, Westchester, Gaithersberg, and Rockville.

New York State Dealing With Court Stenographer Shortages

Posted on: August 19th, 2019 by Sfl Media No Comments

stenography News out of Albany, New York shows that across the country officials are looking to recruit young professionals to be court stenographers. This effort comes as big changes are being made to the justice system in New York state. We in the stenographer community tip our hat to New York as they are dealing with the court stenographer shortages.

“There’s going to be a lot of opportunity in the near future as we continue to lose people to retirement,” said John Keller, Principal Court Reporter for the 3rd judicial district of New York.

There are other factors that have led to the shortages like the development of digital recorders and a nearly 85 percent dropout rate in court reporting instructional programs.

Stenographers in many local courts have been covering for each other when the courts are short-staffed. But soon enough even that will become a problem. Especially because legislative changes taking effect, like the Raise the Age and the Child Victims Act, will likely increase caseloads.

What are the Courts Looking to Do

That’s why court officials are looking to implement new programs to recruit young professionals, like Steno A to Z, among others.

“The [New York State] Unified Court System and the Office of Court Administration is reaching out to BOCES programs and small community colleges to try to spark an interest in them starting programs,” John Keller said. “Because it really is an exciting field to get into. It’s very rewarding. It’s rewarding personally, professionally and financially as well.”

The average salary for a court reporter is not bad at all. It is about $57,000 a year. The top 10 percent of earners bring in about a very healthy $100,000 per year.

“If you’re a patient person and you can stay focused for a very long time that’s basically is what’s required especially when you’re in a courtroom all day long and it’s your responsibility to take every word down verbatim, word for word everything that is said in the courtroom,” Keller said.

You can learn more about the Steno A to Z program here.

There Is No Substitute for a Real Live Court Reporter

Posted on: August 12th, 2019 by Sfl Media No Comments

There’s still a place for courtroom stenography in the technological revolution by court reporting agency CourtScribes.

The facts are, that a trained court reporter (not court recorder) can produce a realtime verbatim transcript of proceedings with 99% accuracy. This would be in real-time, immediately, as the proceedings are occurring.

This article is a commentary from a court reporter who is well aware of the shortages in the field, as well as the new rise in digital court reporting.

When reading about artificial intelligence being used, digital recordings of proceedings, it is so fulfilling when we see how attorneys hate it, cannot rely on it, and are telling their agencies “Do not send a recorder! Send a real, live, skilled court reporter!” They request this, because court reporters are the gold standard of creating a record.

Questions to Be Asked

Does the field of court reporting/court stenography need more reporters? Of course, it does!

“Given appropriate management and supervision, electronic sound recording can provide an accurate record of United States district court proceedings at reduced costs, without delay or interruption and provide the basis for accurate and timely, transcript delivery.”

A trained court reporter can produce a realtime verbatim transcript of proceedings with 99% accuracy. That is in realtime, instantaneously, immediately, as the proceedings are occurring. When providing realtime services, a court reporter streams their recording of the proceedings directly to a user’s laptop, desktop, iPad, tablet or smartphone. Artificial intelligence, while useful in many applications, just cannot stand up to the output a realtime reporter can produce.

Try This Experiment

Here is an experiment. Speak into your smartphone, Alexa, Siri or other voice-to-text application in a normal, conversational cadence. See how frustrating it can be?

Now try doing that at speeds of up to 225 words per minute and see how disastrous it will be. Now throw in technical jargon, whether it be medical, industrial, etc. and the transcript would not be completely unusable if it was voice recorded only.

Before leaving school, a court reporting student must be able to write 225 words per minute. So they must be fast. Additionally, a court reporter is always present in the room and can clarify any discrepancies, inaudible words, phrases and adds priceless human interaction with the attorneys, witnesses, judges; whoever is part of the record. You just can’t get that from a recording device.

Court reporting has long been an intriguing but little-known profession. State associations are becoming more involved in recruitment, in educating the public on the field, and in educating reporters.

New court reporting programs are starting in various parts of the country. We are at a renaissance time period for court reporting. The public at large is becoming more educated about the field.

Upon passing the exam and obtaining one year of court reporting experience reporters are eligible for appointment to a permanent position from the many and various employment opportunities available as an official court reporter.

Burglary Conviction Overturned Due to Stenographer Errors

Posted on: August 5th, 2019 by Sfl Media No Comments

A man serving a seven-year prison sentence for a burglary in Byron, NY was granted a new trial because of errors made when a court stenographer was unable to transcribe the final day of the man’s trial in 2016. We have posted about this before on CourtScribes regarding the difficulty some have had understanding African-American vernacular.

It is now the third time this year that a stenographer has caused problems for Genesee County Court cases.

Victor J. Grimes, 29, was convicted of second-degree burglary after a jury trial in 2016. He was sentenced in August of that year to a seven-year prison term because he was a second felony offender.

Grimes appealed the conviction and the sentence.

And with that, the state Appellate Division, Fourth Department unanimously reversed Grimes’ conviction and granted him a new trial.

The court ruled that an “absence of record proof” on the final day of the trial led to the reversal.

The situation revolved around two notes the jury handed to the judge during deliberations.

The court ruled that “Here the stenographer was unable to transcribe the final day of the trial that included County Court’s handling of the jury notes due to an error that rendered the subject electronic stenographic notes unrecoverable, and a reconstruction hearing failed to establish the court’s on-the-record handling of those notes.”

The court did reject other claims made by Grimes’ appeals attorney, including that the verdict was against the weight of evidence and that the sentence was unduly harsh and severe.

Grimes, who had a long criminal history, including convictions for dealing drugs, was accused of entering a house on Cockram Road in Byron in May 2013. He was arrested and charged with burglary two years later.

Grimes has been in prison since August 2016 and his earliest release date was February 2022.

It will be up to the District Attorney’s Office to decide whether the case should go to trial again or whether an agreement can be worked out with Grimes.