Positive spin on a crappy depo

[Kyung]

Well, you know, you have those days when the attorney is a motor mouth. When things are just flying. (Yes, I did tell him to slow down. Another one of those attorneys who can't help themselves.) On those days, I go home feeling quite beat down. It's a hard job. You just hate going back over the job bec. you know you'll have to fix so many untranslates.

Well, one way to look at it is you're dictionary building. This is your chance to add another hundred words to your dictionary. This is an opportunity to evaluate what words you kept missing, what words you need to come up with a brief for so that you'll have it ready next time.

We do a lot of this when we're in school. But I think it's something that we do less of as we get out into the "real world." A lot of reporters send stuff to their scopists and it all comes back cleaned up. Voila!!

But we may be doing a disservice to ourselves. Think of this as an opportunity to really get to know your own writing. Sometimes I think it's only when we go over the crappy depos that we become better reporters.

We put a lot of emphasis on speed, speed, speed. And don't get me wrong, speed is your friend. but 250 to 300 wpm is really difficult to get, especially when they (the witness and attorney) are cutting each other off. Remember, last time I checked the RPR and the RMR dictations, they're pretty courteous about not talking on top of each other.

Or you can think, stuff it!! I'm sending it to my scopist. And that is a perfectly legitimate response..

[Karen A. Jones]

Kyung,

If those new words are dictionary-worthy, even as a misstroke, your scopist should be adding them to a dictionary update, sending the update to you, and then you decide if you want to add those words to your main dictionary and then merge them in.
That's what the scopists I know, including myself, do. The reporter is the one who would make the final decision as to whether it goes into their dictionary or not.

I don't post often on this site, but this was a good opportunity for me to stick my two cents in

Karen