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Administrative duties - What I wish I knew my first year out.
When you think of court reporting, you think you're going to be out in the "field" taking down the depo or at home producing a transcript.
Well, while you're at home there will be a ton of administrative duties for you to take care of that can quite easily eat away your time and your day.
There's administrative duties at the depo. Get the attorneys' cards and information Make sure you get all the exhibits. Get the witness's address in case the original is going to be sent directly to the witness. Make sure you're keeping track of exhibits. If the interpreter doesn't arrive and your agency was to supply the interpreter, contact the agency and let them know ASAP. This is before, while, and after the actual depo is taking place.
Then you go home. You've got to mark the exhibits if you didn't get them marked at the depo. Make sure you keep track of that parking receipt or you won't get paid on parking. If you're not going to hold on to the exhibits to produce the transcript, then you need to get them prepared to ship them to the agency along w/the parking receipt.
Once you've done that, then you need to check e-mail and telephones to see if an agency is calling to ask you to cover a job. Once you return the calls, then you need to produce the transcript backlog that you've got going. Of course, by this time, it's midnight. But whatever. Get a cup of coffee and it's time to start working.
Once the transcripts are finished, then you need to do the worksheets. They can be time consuming since a lot of agencies have their own special format. Be thankful and very appreciative of the agency who will accept your format for worksheets and transcripts, they've just cut your workload by a fourth. Once you've created a worksheet, then there's the billing sheet. At this point, you begin to feel this is all very redundant. Remember the worksheet is for the production department to produce the transcript. The billing sheet is for you to get paid. A lot of agencies have one sheet for both. Yay!!!
Now, you've got to start making phone calls to find a job for the next day or the next week or you need to confirm that your job is still going forward. It can be an endless round.
Once the checks start coming in, you'll be calling up the agency asking what am I being paid for. This is not what I expected. It may be more; it may be less. Every single agency I've worked with at one time or another has made a billing mistake and I've got short changed or over paid. It happens all the time. The wrong page number entered into their system means the wrong amount paid. So please be aware of what you're due. Don't expect the agency to do your bookkeeping.
See, none of this has to do with your producing a transcript. Administrative work is all about getting paid. So keep on top of it. Factor it in when you're figuring out your schedule for the week. Invest heavily in blue tooth. I am making a lot of these calls drivinig to and from the depo.
Anything I forgot? I'm sure there's a lot.
Well, while you're at home there will be a ton of administrative duties for you to take care of that can quite easily eat away your time and your day.
There's administrative duties at the depo. Get the attorneys' cards and information Make sure you get all the exhibits. Get the witness's address in case the original is going to be sent directly to the witness. Make sure you're keeping track of exhibits. If the interpreter doesn't arrive and your agency was to supply the interpreter, contact the agency and let them know ASAP. This is before, while, and after the actual depo is taking place.
Then you go home. You've got to mark the exhibits if you didn't get them marked at the depo. Make sure you keep track of that parking receipt or you won't get paid on parking. If you're not going to hold on to the exhibits to produce the transcript, then you need to get them prepared to ship them to the agency along w/the parking receipt.
Once you've done that, then you need to check e-mail and telephones to see if an agency is calling to ask you to cover a job. Once you return the calls, then you need to produce the transcript backlog that you've got going. Of course, by this time, it's midnight. But whatever. Get a cup of coffee and it's time to start working.
Once the transcripts are finished, then you need to do the worksheets. They can be time consuming since a lot of agencies have their own special format. Be thankful and very appreciative of the agency who will accept your format for worksheets and transcripts, they've just cut your workload by a fourth. Once you've created a worksheet, then there's the billing sheet. At this point, you begin to feel this is all very redundant. Remember the worksheet is for the production department to produce the transcript. The billing sheet is for you to get paid. A lot of agencies have one sheet for both. Yay!!!
Now, you've got to start making phone calls to find a job for the next day or the next week or you need to confirm that your job is still going forward. It can be an endless round.
Once the checks start coming in, you'll be calling up the agency asking what am I being paid for. This is not what I expected. It may be more; it may be less. Every single agency I've worked with at one time or another has made a billing mistake and I've got short changed or over paid. It happens all the time. The wrong page number entered into their system means the wrong amount paid. So please be aware of what you're due. Don't expect the agency to do your bookkeeping.
See, none of this has to do with your producing a transcript. Administrative work is all about getting paid. So keep on top of it. Factor it in when you're figuring out your schedule for the week. Invest heavily in blue tooth. I am making a lot of these calls drivinig to and from the depo.
Anything I forgot? I'm sure there's a lot.
Views: 56
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Comment by Katy Cuellar on June 30, 2008 at 11:28
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I have also had occasion to back up notes onto the court's ACORN system. I do this for them, but it's not for me. I would never go into that system to try to retrieve my notes unless there was no other way. I can't imagine why a reporter would stuff all their notes into that and not keep a copy at home for themselves.
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Comment by Rhoda Collins on June 30, 2008 at 10:42
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Wow! Sounds like you have a great system tho! Kudos to you! :) Yes, I would consider you a magician, lol!
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Hi Rho, I'm talking about raw notes. I store raw notes as well as transcripts on ASCIIs, then I put them in shoe boxes. I have two shoe boxes full for every year back to 1992. A raw notes ASCII set of two or three disks would contain about a month of notes for court. I go find the set I need, but it takes a while because this is all stored. If I ever made a transcript of any of that, I would have to refer to my billing sheets, where I list them. Since I can't get all the dates on the ASCII label, my computer lists these dates as it's backing them up. Every couple of years, I do a printout from that because I run out of listing space in the computer. So, the list of the dates on the disk(s) can be on paper or still in the computer. If It's on a backup transcript set of disks, which I do separately, it could have been produced over a number of years, not just in the year I took it.
Now, if I were to translate everything that I wrote in court, it would take a lot of time and a lot of disks, plus I like to retranslate because I always have new globals.
It's all very time-consuming, but I must admit that it's fail-safe, goof-proof, and I have never lost anything.
As to backing up the transcripts, I should mention that I also do a backup to the transcript backup, so I actually have a double set of transcripts.
Then I go through the big box for each year that contains all the court calendars and handwritten notes and stuff I've gathered in court that year, so I can find the attorneys' names, courtroom number, judge's name, defendant's full name, etc.
Everything previous to 1992 is being stored as paper notes by the courts I've worked in. In one county, the notes were destroyed because they were in a room built with asbestos. The court administrator retrieved notes in a Hazmat suit for a while, but finally they got rid of everything. In another county, the notes were stored in an old jail on the top floor. The roof leaked and there was pigeon mess in there, and they finally destroyed all those notes (I was so glad because it was creepy in there).
So, we're talking about a 1 page transcript here...hahaha! When I'm able to go back so far and produce something, I sometimes feel like a magician.
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I could suggest Searchmaster for 'finding' transcripts. I do an ASCII for each tranny when I am done editing and keep it in there. Easy as pie to 'search' for name/etc. This would be for 'future' jobs, as to put all your old ones in now, that would take a bit of time, lol.
Plus, can at least consider it a 'rough' backup file! :)
Rho
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I know how those administrative duties can snowball if you let it go!
I don't believe there's been a page rate increase here in 20 years. I think one might have finally passed the legislature, but I'm not sure what happened to it. Still, those little annoying court transcripts will come back to haunt you and cause many hours of time, but that is, I guess, the price you pay for working in court.
I don't always put in 35 - 40 hrs. I've freelanced for a long time, and you learn to spend nothing because you don't know what's around the corner. If you've still got some life left in you, Sue, I would recommend you go to court for five years and get a little vested pension and a health plan. Just my 2 cents :)
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Comment by Sue Baker on June 25, 2008 at 7:57
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Houston. I would say the same about it here, great reporters, good firms, but we have had some problems with tort reform and of course the rule changes which basically cut us out of a copy on every depo. I would still say it's a good place to report. My friend in Chicago just got a page rate increase for the first time since 1985, and no increase in copy sales. I don't think they are anywhere near 100,000, either, and Chicago is not that cheap to live anymore, but near as high as CA. Well, I'm glad to hear you are semi-retired. I really think that's the best way to report if you can do it. Full-time is more like being on call 24/7, and semi-retired probably approaches a doable 35-40 hour week, am I right? But administrative duties is something I try to totally avoid as I already have two full-time jobs, with reporting and the kids. The minutae of production uses a part of your brain that I don't have right now.
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No, Sue, I'm in San Francisco. Plenty of money here. Starting pay in Superior Court is $101,000. Trouble is, it'll cost you $100,000 for a loaf of bread (just kidding). I do love reporting here: going downtown, the hustle and bustle, cable cars, etc. I often feel like Mary Tyler Moore and have an urge to throw my hat in the air, if I had one. I am no hustler, though, since I deemed myself semi-retired last year. Still, the courts are great, the depo firms are great, and I do believe most of the reporters are really top-notch.
Where do you live?
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Katy, are you in the Chicago area, by chance? I have a dear friend up there, and reporting is a tough row to hoe up there with much pain and aggravation for not very much money.
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Wow, I got worn out just reading that! I guess a lot of what I do is automatic, and I'm rarely in a hurry, so it all just blends together, and I have no time, nor do I expect to. Probably, if I kept track of the time, I'd get really upset. I found the best way to go about all this is to estimate how long it will take, then double it. If I finish before that, I feel lucky.
But let me tell you what's really time-consuming, Kyung. Have you ever worked in court? Well, if you have, three years later, somebody will request a transcript from March 2, 2005, just a teeny tiny thing that was on the calendar of 150 other cases that day, maybe a half page long. You then go to your storage place, find that old disk, try to find the court calendar that matches it so you can get the case number, attorneys' names, department #, etc., and two hours later you're good to go! So, of course you'll want to mail it, but first your have to find your old covers, hole puncher, original & copy stamps (that are all dried up by now), bind the little dickens, find a nice manila envelope, look for your old professional address labels, and then ...then you have a billing problem. What is this worth? Some reporters charge a minimum, but that's illegal. And they don't charge for covers and certs here, so there's just that half page, which is worth about $1,50, plus postage. Or you could maybe bill the court for it, but that requires the clerk's initials, so you will have to drive downtown 24 miles roundtrip and pay $6.00 parking so you can get the initials.
And it's even worse if that request was from another county, because you will be calling long distance till hell freezes over to get your $1.50.
What do you think about that?
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