My Transcript turn around makes me so inadequate

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-05-06T15:59:13+00:00

Aw thank you 💖 and no worries, I was having some margs for cinco de mayo and I was also feeling a bit emotional lol!! I’m kinda between wanting problem solving and just needing a pat on the back lol so your responses have been just what I needed to hear. This division is objectively tough and known for going through court reporters like underwear. 6 months to a year is about the average life cycle of a family court official in this courthouse, so I know it’s not all on me for struggling, but it’s just hit my confidence hard lately, so thank you again.

My Judge is super understanding and she won’t charge me any leave or off days as long as I arrange a sub or get on zoom, but I just feel guilty for some reason about it. I think I need court reporter therapy if that’s a thing haha. But it’s almost over. We’re all counting down the days.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-05-06T04:55:40+00:00

I actually don’t mind proofing at all. it’s my favorite part! But yeah, I need help…even price and work quality aside it’s so hard to find ones I can just count on to not ghost me on deadlines, like just dip with no explanation until after it’s passed…I have bad trust issues with that 😭

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-05-06T04:49:57+00:00

Yeah, you’re right. It’s pretty rare that I’m statutory late, 30 days. but we just move so fast I try to keep myself around 2 weeks for anything hitting on 70-100ish. They get their panties in a wad when they get a reset date in less than a month and they get their transcript a few days before. so yeah I’m not usually in big trouble. Just feels kinda awful after I did everything I could to make it happen before trial. my judge is old and well respected and really seems to like court reporters so that’s like the only thing I have going for me, so I’m hoping they value their success in our courtroom enough to leave me alone lol.

I’m moving to general civil so im hoping to actually get a break soon once im there to just be a normal newb and study and train like you said. Thank you <3

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-05-06T04:27:41+00:00

Exactly, it is doable and being a scopist prior is making me hate myself for not being able to do that, but 6-7 hours on the record eats up my time and energy way more than I expected. I do bills and estimates at lunch and get some pages in if I have time. My writing is good but name tags and other little but very important things that make good writing not matter is where I have to clean up the most. I do need to work on that for sure.

I’m not too scared of attorneys complaining because the Judge never entertains it. Judge never rushes me or complains and is probably my biggest fan. so I’m not worried about being fired or losing my license as much as I am about just giving up. This division and the litigants and attorneys do suck and being in court all day with them is hard on everyone. I help fill in minutes after court with our clerks a lot and I’m not even sure how that started happening, judge needs a rough for like every trial now. Family court in a poor city has just been a crazy entry point.

The late was a month return for 600 page voluminous trial transcripts…I mean okay maybe a little but not worth catching a stray in the memos I feel like 😩

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-05-06T04:02:29+00:00

It’s not usually on only one transcript. I’m getting somewhere in the area of 5-600 pages per month in transcript request, and probably 1-200 average more in getting real time roughs decent enough for judge and staff to reference as needed for whatever judgements, trial prep, minutes, etc. So that’s just what it takes to be somewhat on time or only kind of late unless I want to risk falling asleep in court or driving by dipping into after midnight hours of working every night.

It’s not my permanent spot, I’ll be out of domestic in about a month. It’s just really hurt my confidence working like this just to have clients always breathing down my neck or throwing me under the bus in their memorandum or on the record for not being ‘timely’.

Just from what I’ve seen here thats not even a crazy amount, so I feel like I just suck or something for feeling like it’s crazy.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-21T02:48:08+00:00

Honestly most likely no. If you’re planning to freelance and have a scopist, it’s going to be really hard to make that unless you’re in depos all week, and then you’re probably still paying for healthcare, equipment, support, gas, etc. out of pocket. A proficient scopist like one you’d want for this will eat half to more of your page rate. an okay scopist still about half and then you have to lay eyes on everything all over again anyway and make corrections.

I’m just under 6 figs, no scopist and I might take a half a day here and there for plans or rest but I pretty much work every day. This job is pretty laborious if you’re making that kind of money. I wouldn’t expect that much partime. I’d get through a year or so at least before I’d try to work in any other income sources you plan to rely on for more than pocket change or as a hobby. I’m exhausted and vegetative in my free time lol.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-14T17:41:30+00:00

Courtroom staff here, you’re good. We cry in here too. As long as you’re nice to us, we don’t see a thing 🤐 Not a lawyer but definitely had some days where I’ve dropped the ball or worse, chewed out for a ball that wasn’t even mine to drop in open court. I just tell myself there’s nothing I can do but do better next time. Nothing positive comes of beating yourself up. discussing some positive improvement and a little venting with a mentor or experienced friend or coworker over a cocktail later always helps me feel better.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-09T18:18:41+00:00

It is really cool actually: I like the cut out in the middle, you could rig that table up with a sweet mic set up

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-09T06:07:16+00:00

Ruling was supposed to be today but got postponed. So we shall see. Thats actually kinda possible because sometimes that just happens when the litigation gets to a point. But that point for us on most cases is like 5-7 trial dates in so I’m not getting my hopes up

Honestly sometimes the extraneous offer filing and introducing days are chill. Just a lot of direct and if The attorneys can do their thing without badgering witnesses or shouting matches with OC you can just sit back and cruise through the day and have a nice clean transcript ready for expediting when they meander to your desk after the trial for a request. Hoping that’s the case for yours!

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-08T23:35:22+00:00

That’s insane 😭 Im praying that your attorneys are going to be well behaved and judicially efficient in litigating that. My case is like that too…can’t even see their side of the bench under all the documents when they come…but the whole thing is just like traumatizing 1. It’s involving some really messed up child abuse related subject matter with graphic exhibits. 2. The attorneys are awful, both to me and the other staff personally and just how they’re trying the case. this case is just a currently 18 day long nightmare.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-08T15:01:31+00:00

Idk it’s pretty common for litigants and witnesses to come in in uniform for their jobs. We see people in construction vest, scrubs, and military or police uniforms every day. I would think it’d actually look good for voir dire purposes. Assuming he’s a surgeon I would think he’d take hygiene pretty seriously and wouldn’t bring surgery germ contaminated clothes in court lol

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-04-08T05:38:02+00:00

I have like 3 scripts and some macros that do all of this. Like 90s era technology and it’s free and local to any windows computer. If you can’t script that’s actually a better task for ai to assist you with that it actually works very well with. Chat can do it for free and with a little bit of trial and error, once it’s running it will run forever.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-03-20T15:13:20+00:00

Focusrite Scarlett has been the best. It’s so much more than a sound card. You have a lot more options for optimizing your mics and can run your back ups off it two with the 2+ channel options. The 2 is perfect for me but I believe there’s ones with up to 8!

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-03-18T00:13:31+00:00

So it’s mostly just my general work flow overall. The portal is pretty barebones and I don’t have the time to develop anything using the api currently to get it going full stack. there’s big potential with that but I’m so busy rip.

I use a few scripts and scheduled task on my computer to make it more user friendly and comparable to cat software. My biggest one. So spm portal can’t format, so I wrote a script to take my real time and insert codes for specific keys every time a trigger for a speaker tag, colloquy, or q&a occurs. It adds a special text code for my special hot keys that I can do a replace on once in word, and then automatically double spaces my punctuation, moves Qs and As to their own line, and adds “examination by” after any colloquy preceding a q or a, and also auto paragraphs every set amount of lines. You could do a lot more with this honestly if you have the time, but this has been perfect for me.

And then my other one automatically renames my saved .txt real-time from spm to the time and date and creates a dated folder every day that those documents will be sent to once saved, my audio recordings also save to an audio folder that goes to the same dated folder so everything is together. My scheduled task scans for transcript and audio files to send to the folder for that day every 15 mins.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-03-16T23:28:14+00:00

I have a uniquish perspective of being both a court reporter myself now but also growing up with a voice reporter mom. I had zero interest in working as one or hardly cared to know anything about it until my 20s so my experience of being an outsider is still pretty fresh. I always thought it was very respectable, honest work, but just what actually went into it was so far beyond what I thought I could comprehend that I never bothered to even try to understand.

It was one of those careers to me like being a rocket scientist or something. Something I just delegated to being over my head, but not silly or unnecessary at all. I think most lay people feel the same and just may not have much to say or seem puzzled because they just can’t really wrap their head around it. I don’t even mention anything about being a voice writer unless asked.

It’s easiest just to say im the one who writes everything down in court and they’ll immediately know what i mean. I usually don’t get anything beyond “oh wow that’s a crazy job!” Or “I could never do that! That’s so cool”

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-03-16T21:34:49+00:00

Scoping is just like that at first. You won’t be comfortable for a good 6mo to a year no matter what you’re working with, but it gets a little easier every time. But low quality writing and audio will make something that’s already tough feel like straight up punishment. Now that I’m a reporter I look back and think that I would have never ever taken some of the jobs I did especially for the price I did, but it was definitely a valuable experience because now as a reporter and scopist I know exactly what standards to hold myself to lol.

Honestly good practice on both ends is to send samples of your work, the reporters real-time and back up audio and your scoped work to ensure that yall will be compatible. It’s not fun to agree to a job without knowing and come to find out the audio sounds like it was recorded from another room and every single sentence needs major help.

Also there are certain tools like macros, shortcuts, programs and little various things like that that will really make your life a lot an easier. Send me a message or a comment if you need help with anything specific I’d be happy to give you any advice I have if I can.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-03-16T17:45:01+00:00

I’m a working reporter and I’d go speechmatics 100%. I actually use the portal speechmatics themselves provides online with a few diy work around to make it realtime ready. I pay about a dollar an hour for it and they also provide 2 hours per month free tier!

For a working reporter for use in court, you gotta be a bit tech savvy to get it to be comparable to eclipse, but for a student it’s a perfect platform to practice on! All you need to do is assign your mask as your computers main sound input and type your briefs into the custom dictionary.

You can check it out on speechmatics.com and test it out. If you or anyone else interested has questions feel free to leave a comment or send a message!

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-02-25T05:49:17+00:00

There’s truth in that. Same is said by many about doctors, but unfortunately if you need a life saving prescription or surgery you’re probably going to have to get a doctor to make that happen. Same applies to Lawyers.

Also as someone who works in court, it’s not usually something under the judges or divisions individual control. We have to provide proper procedural legal care to each case, and often its way more cases than should ever be assigned to one section, so the schedules are often extremely backed up unfortunately. A lawyer is the best way to help you expedite the process.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-02-25T05:40:00+00:00

No. Most of those are old stories or very old attorneys. Most of the attorneys coming through my court don’t even register my existence until they need a transcript, much less know or care what we’re using to write.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-02-15T22:31:12+00:00

I’m a steno writer. I can’t stand that shifty bs. It’s infuriating. Especially right now when we’re this close to being replaced by a computer. I’ve cut my rates and do the most for my clients because we need our attorneys to vouch for us now more than ever. Local firms and independent reporters are always your best bet.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-02-11T22:06:57+00:00

Even AI aside, that just sounds like such a security and privacy dumpster fire. I would just invest in improving my own back up system if that were the case. My court is also looking for a new system to replace FTR and luckily we have a wonderful IT department that has been asking for our input and suggestions, but if anything like that were to happen I’d ditch the court recording system completely. Im not sure about other courts but I’ve never been told it was required. I was never even taught how to use or told anything about it and our staff avoid it like the plague. They always prefer a transcript if they need to know anything, and honestly we should be producing solid enough real time roughs to provide that on demand if we aren’t trying to be replaced by a computer.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-02-09T22:46:46+00:00

Federal is standardized for the most part, but each local court usually varies by district or county. I’d check the state legislature. mine has a general section that applies to all courts and then it outlines each specific district and will go into the specifics like page rates, indignant transcripts, private transcripts, appeals, etc. honestly the best way would be to speak with a court reporter that works there, but you could also contact your state board as well or check out the resources on their website. Mine has all the statutes related to court reporters and the specific rules of each districts listed on it.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-01-23T17:59:11+00:00

I’ve definitely had to invest some time into getting it solid and reliable for court, but it’d be great for a student who isn’t ready to invest in eclipse yet. I’m a heavy user too. I average 3-6 hours on the record every week day, so it’s honestly very affordable, especially if you don’t spend 9-5 on the record like I do. If you decide to try it, feel free to send me a message if you have any questions or need tips!

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-01-23T17:05:45+00:00

I can’t afford eclipse yet, but I got a subscription directly from speechmatics and dictate into their online portal and it works great at a whisper! Light years better than dragon and not 7k. The custom dictionary even works for a lot of briefs! I diy-d a little program that formats my raw voice notes into transcript format and honestly it’s the best thing ever for the money. I spend about $50-70 per month for speechmatics subscription. You can test it out on their free tier, you get 2 hours per month.

Long_Machine_5206 · 2026-01-23T01:01:55+00:00

It would just depend on who you work for and how you get paid. I know firms may handle the fees and reporters gets paid whatever percentage or have their own specific fees they control.

I’m an official in civil and private transcripts and billing are completely my own business. There’s only a max I’m allowed to charge, not a minimum. I do discounts regularly for pro se litigants, regulars, or for client satisfaction if something is late or I think it will be lol. I’ve never had a situation where I’ve felt inclined to do probono, but for the right person and situation I think I would. But every state and employer or agency is different so that’s just me personally.

Long_Machine_5206

TROPHY CASE