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NCRA Addresses Recent ACICS Failed Appeal

The NCRA posted nine suggestions for steno students on its website just yesterday for students who are knocking on closed doors at court reporting programs that have just shut down and a number that may be shutting down at a location near you ... soon. I went on LinkedIn and Facebook and came back with nine suggestions that will really make you think.

Those of you who are accomplished and proven stenos, I have no doubt you all will finish your careers as stenos.

The question that remains is: Will you be able to remain as officials in the courts as employees or be unceremoniously dispatched as contractors like what has been happening in California, and what already exists in Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, and other states where court administration is divesting itself of, yes, overhead (high salaries, benefits and future pensions) a system that has worked for 150 years, but this is no longer, as more courts go DAR protecting what resources they have left. Right now 70% of all courts in the USA are DAR only.

Will you, as freelancers, have to get ready to confront technology that will for sure compete with your pricing on services? For sure you will. Sooner or later.

At AMVSR LLC, we have a solution for all those students (95% of you) who will never make it, but are very well acquainted with a CAT editing system.

Here is a link to show you how you can become a digital court reporter, yes the next best thing, right, eventually the only game in town, because in this our 21st Century, DAR is becoming King, and if you want to really be a participant in this transcription business, wake up and smell the coffee, because training to become a DCR, can be literally overnight, you will be able to do it with your iPhone 5 (and later) with high-quality Lavalier condenser lapel mics, and since you already have a CAT system, for under $200 you can start making money while you practice your speed on the steno if you insist going that route after you see these videos!

Your iPhone Will make You Money!

Below is a video showing how ASR Transcriptor transcribed an archived video off the Internet or it can just as well transcribe it in realtime! Yes, as soon as you post your audio on your Google Drive, and you allow us to access that media, ASR Transcriptor is sending back to you and the lawyers the working rough draft an dif you are the CAT scopist, start editing the job! How so? Because you have the original MP3, you now have the RTF to import into your CAT system, you are making the lawyers behave themselves as the deposition is still in progress, you are marking the exhibits, and the lawyers may very well get a near certified copy of the transcript before they leave! And yes, you are a DIGITAL COURT REPORTER!

ASR Transcriptor can even remotely access a courtroom and deposition site retrofitted with the correct hardware with HQ streaming technology, and provide realtime transcription directly into the lawyers' smart devices!

ASR Transcriptor Transcribes

Below is a Total Eclipse digital text editor, editing that same transcript. However, any CAT system will do.

Total Eclipse Easily Edits ASR Transcript

QUESTION: If this were a daily copy assignment, pause and think, could you work on this file at $2.50 per recorded minute and keep up? All you do is add punctuation, the Q and A, the Speaker ID for colloquy, swap out bloopers for the correct words, occasionally type in a sentence here and there,(just like when a court reporter drops and relies on their aduio backup) while always listening to outstanding audio?

Steve Zinone Past NCRA President

Now go after conferences, Steve would be soooo easy to edit, and if the convention officials wanted daily copy, are you going to turn up your nose to editing Steve's speech?

Did you know that 90% of all state legislatures don't have their speeches transcribed? Did you know that 90% of all United States Congressional hearings, the Senate and the House only use DAR? No stenos? Why? Nobody likes to do that work anymore. Too hard.

If you did that for just three hours a day, Monday through Friday, you would be making over $100,000 a year. Is that what the NCRA said you could possibly make - assuming you are not one of the 95% who will flunk the multi-year course, as history had shown, and just before your school shuts down?

Steve Hubbard