Scopists Trashing Court Reporters

[Quyen]

Okay, I'll admit I posted this earlier and yanked it because I didn't want to create any bad blood, but I've been reading/seeing a lot of this going around in different forums/places lately, and it has really bothered me. I would love to hear what both sides have to say about this. (I have this tendency to address "sensitive" issues.) So here again is my original post:

I'm not much of a blogger, so this is just me kind of wondering aloud. I've never used a scopist, simply because I'm just a control freak, I guess, but I've just been reading a lot of "stuff" about all the really mean and nasty things scopists say about reporters, mostly along the lines of how poorly reporters write and how reporters depend on audio, blah, blah, blah. I just think it's really sad and in poor taste that some people feel the need to do such things, particularly since scopists seek out jobs from reporters, and they get paid to do the work. Yes, I know I've also heard about some reporters not paying their scopists and such, but that an entirely different issue. It just seems to me that some scopists have this -- I don't know, loathing of reporters for some reason.

I mean, scopists who have been scoping for a while know what the job entails. From what scopists have said, it just seems like they feel they shouldn't have to "fill in the blanks" or be paid more to do so. The way I've always viewed any job that I've ever worked in my life is, well, if I don't like it, I won't do it. But if it's a job I decide to do, then I accept the duties required of me, and I'm going to do the best job I can. If it ever comes to the point where I feel the need to trash my boss or my employer, then I know it's time for me to find another job. But from what I've seen/heard that scopists say about reporters, it would certainly discourage me from even thinking of ever using a scopist.

I guess, in a perfect world, I was thinking that it would be a relationship of mutual respect and support between a reporter and his/her scopist. Maybe I'm just missing something.

[Quyen]

Lol, Monti! Where have you been all my life?! You've never been my videographer! You wouldn't want to work with me, anyway; I'm crazy.

Thanks, everyone, for your input. It would just be really nice to see reporters and scopists working together as a team with mutual respect for each other. I know there are frustrations to every job, and every now and then we need to rant/rave. But if we REALLY want to do that, let's try to do it in private and not in public forums.

[Lois Whitley]

Hello, All,

I'm putting in my 5 cents worth here also. I've been reading through mainly this site because it's the most informative, enlightening and educational site I've found so far for us scopists. In my 19 years of scoping experience, I have never raised my page rate. I cannot believe the various rates scopists are charging now for every little thing extra they have to do. For me personally, my stable page rate is made up by the volume of repeat work I receive. And I also am shocked about the performance comments I see from reporters about bad scopists. I started out scoping by reading from steno paper notes from the reporter, and when there was no audio in use. I truly believe that the reporter/scopist working relationship is a team effort. Communication back and forth is the key. And don't be afraid of constructive criticism. Scopists should always ask questions if they're not sure. I always put a scan mark in transcripts where the reporter should double-check, or sometimes I'll put in a little hidden scan note for the reporter, that she can delete after double-checking. My main reporter and I have a good relationship. We've had some words back and forth about performance, and they're always resolved, with the relationship growing stronger. I can always tell when my reporter is getting tired during a long depo, just by reading and listening to audio.

As for trying out new scopists (and reporters), I feel each should give the other a fair chance in the beginning. Communicate wants and needs as to personal style. Sample transcripts are always helpful for the scopist to get from a new reporter for preferences. If the reporter finds something she doesn't like by a scopist's first work, that should be communicated right away. Then it's the reporter's choice as to whether she wants to give that scopist a second chance.

It's an embarrassment to us scopists in general, and makes all of us look bad when it's not deserved, when we're "trashed" by a reporter who was unhappy with one scopist. I would never, never bad-mouth either a scopist or reporter, ever, especially in print and over the Internet! Again, communication and respect for each other is key. We're all in this business together as a team, as guardians of the record.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

I am going to start a competitive site with a new twist... "Reporters bad mouthing videographers."
I see how some of you look at me!!

Reporters mind "look at this guy... he is sitting like its a competition... do something for gods sake! humor us and twist some sound knobs or something... look at him sitting, another 15 minutes and he will hibernate... all he needs is a hookah and a cup of tea I tell you what."

My mind "Uuugh, that doughnut is not sitting well... huh! from this angle the reporter looks like she is playing a midgets grand piano.. coool."

I am kidding, I love reporters!
In the 9 years of doing this there are only 2 court reporters I refuse to work with, the rest are great.


Back to the subject: do NOT bad mouth/bite the hands that feed you.
I love the agencies I work for and the ones I dont like I keep to myself.

[Judy]

Cindy,

I wish you were on Eclipse. My regular scopist is on a daily for at least a week and I need to find an overflow scopist.

I've said before that I've urged reporters to go to "that" site to see how scopists/proofreaders talk about reporters. I'm not putting down the site at all as I think it's got some wonderful aspects. But if you're the reporter that wrote a name five different ways and your scopist is venting about you on a public forum, wouldn't you want to know? When searching out a new scopist, I now go to that site to make sure s/he has a positive approach in working with reporters vs. a negative approach. Who needs to deal with the negativity?

[Cynthia Ott]

I've had the good fortune of working with four excellent scopists in my career, all of whom have brought a will-do attitude to my work. I am a realtime writer, and I send out a clean product. My full-time scopist who I have been using for the last five years, does my title pages and appearance pages for me, inputs my ending parens and sends me back my work on time, every time.

I am out there fulfilling the needs of my different clients and I expect a scopist to fulfill my needs, including typing up title pages if that is my request. I have a reporter friend who will drop a scopist in a heartbeat if they refuse to do title pages, exhibits, etc. As reporters, we are in an unforgiving profession. We have deadlines to meet, jobs we cannot be late for, transcripts that must be perfect. We need scopists to offer us flexibility.

I have a huge admiration for the scopists I have worked with. It is a relationship that needs to be treated on both sides with respect and, most importantly, COMMUNICATION. I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't have their support. I guess this is turning into a pro scopist post.

I would say if you've never used a scopist, be cautious going in and keep your eyes open. Don't send a thousand pages worth of work to a scopist you've never used before, you may get burned. And if you send them garbled up garbage with paragraphs missing from transcripts, what you get back from them is going to reflect that.

At night and on the weekends, when I'm out having a good time, or at the gym working out my attorney frustrations, I know using a scopist is the only way to go. I send my scopists a good product, they send me back a better one, and my clients get the best transcripts I am capable of providing.

[April McMillan, CRR, RPR, CSR]

Oops, went to hit the return key and ended up posting the comment w/Yea! at the end. Oh well.
Bottom line is there's good and bad out there in everything, and sometimes the bad is just smack-dab in our face.

I hope you were able to get everything off your chest :)

April

[April McMillan, CRR, RPR, CSR]

Q,
I used a scopist about 12 years ago but it just didn't work out. I've been a CRR since '95, I'm a briefaholic, and, yes, I too am a control freak. So I figured I would scope my work because I was not up to training anyone on my "style." Well, about 8 years ago I started getting debilitating migraines, and I'm now at the point where I cannot take the computer screen's glare for long periods of time. When a migraine hits, boy, do I fall behind.

While dragging my feet and with my husband's encouragement (really, he was the one dragging me), I started to look for a scopist on different forums. Luckily, I found a great scopist on this site and even got a lot of positive feedback about other scopists. There are a lot of blogs out there about bad scopist experiences, and I was a lot gun-shy after reading them.

Well, what I found is scoping procedures/duties sure have changed since I last used one. I have met with: no filling in of blanks, exbt blurbs, no cover pages, editing w/audio, extra fees for this and that, all of which you mentioned. When did this happen? And editing along w/audio? Whatever happened to just spot-checking w/audio when something nonsensical came up?
I consider myself a very clean writer and find myself cleaning up an atty or expert wit as they speak. And I mean little things that can make a clean, smooth-reading transcript: false starts, yeah to yes, knowing when a comment is made off the record and not putting it in the transcript. All of this is done out of years of experience and is much appreciated by my clients. I certainly don't want these things added to the transcript because it's on the audio.
A videotaped depo is a different animal altogether. Although, I once had a reporter tell me in the early '90s, "I don't care if there's audio. I'm not going to spend hours listening to a tape against my notes. My transcript is the final record." O-kay.

Anyway, my new scopist asks lots of questions, leaves comment lines in the tran, and genuinely wants me to be happy with her work product. She encourages me to write notes or copy items from the tran and wants them e-mailed to her because, in her words, "It might be a pain right now but soon enough everything will work fine." And this scopist does not do cover pages, fill in blanks, and charges after so many exbt blurbs, but after having her scope about eight or nine jobs now, I can live without her doing those other things.Yea!!