Hey, Dawn! I haven't been ignoring you. I just haven't signed on here in FOREVER! Yeah, I work for Alpha. We have five reporters now. Things are going GREAT! I love it! I got married in October as you may see from my name change here, so I've been a little busy. We've been trying to move Kevin into my house and sell his house. It's been a little interesting trying to combine two houses full of furniture into one. But I'm doing great! How about you?

yeah, I did see that too this morning. I think they also were talking about having officials being licensed if they are going to take freelance jobs. I tend to think they should not be exempt...then we still hold the same problems in this profession. One of the Murfreesboro Circuit judges had a huge problem with his official wherein he had to go to her home and found official court tapes and records stuffed in a closet after she went AWOL. I agree.

I am not hearing anything that's making me very happy, that's for sure. I watched the live feed of the bill before the subcommittee last week and was utterly appalled!! The subcommittee members had no clue as to how the court reporting profession works. I also have a friend who has finished law school but not yet passed the bar..or at least doesn't know her results yet..but she's a member of the bar association and she sent me posts for members only from the attorneys and their thoughts in general about court reporters. They are under such impressions that all of us graduate from court reporting school and that the schools are accredited by NCRA and all have NCRA approval. TN Career College was eventually accredited by NCRA as I was graduating after four years and the school had already been open two, but not in the beginning when I was there. They also want to force us to change our page formats, character widths and margins. One attorney even said that we make $90,000 per year and work less than 40 hours per week. (Now we know that's BS! Any reporter out there making 90k is working his/her fingers to the bone!) There is controversy over whether or not our transcripts are our work product. I can tell you one thing, it is my work product until someone starts paying for and providing my equipment that I had to purchase. One attorney even said we should not be allowed to charge for copies. They also do not think we should be in court proceedings anymore due to the fact that we get paid upwards of $200 just for sitting for hours only to wait for the judge to say, Case dismissed. I think our $200 is a far cry less than their charge per hour. Oh, yeah, and they want all proceedings in court to be digitally audio recorded and videotaped so they can have them transcribed themselves. First of all, the biggest problem I see with this is the attorney still has to have an unbiased party to transcribe it. He can't simply use his paralegal or secretary. I persoally would love for anyone to challenge me on working less than 40 hours a week when it's busy. And you know as well as I do that if it's slow and we don't work, we don't get paid. Not to even mention the months and sometimes year that I've had to wait to get paid from some of these attorneys. I, like so many other reporters, have stayed up until 6:00 in the morning working my butt off to get pages done...and have definitely gone out and taken jobs four to five days a week and then had to come home every single night and work until 11:00 or 12:00...when it's extremely busy. They also seem to think we just come home and hit print and we're done. I'd like for someone other than a court reporter to transcribe on of their tapes and they'll see what kind of job they get. we have learned English, Court Reporting English, legal terminology, medical terminology and know how to put a transcript together. I personally have looked for items and spellings on the Internet for hours, trying in vane to get the correct word or terminology so the transcript would be complete. Anyway, all of this personally makes me a little scared and concerned for licensure to happen. I probably need to rest easy and just realize that this is what happens when the balance in nature is upset. It just seriously bothers me to know that attorneys really do not have a clue as to how much time it actually takes to provide their transcripts within 10 business days, especially if we are not able to scope and are out on other jobs all during the week. That means we are working on weekends, nights and any chance we get. Don't get me wrong here. I love this profession. It affords a flexible job opportunity and an above-average income. I am not complaining about having to work as hard as I do the majority of the time. I just wish attorneys would respect what we do and that this is not just easy money for us.

Absolutely I do! Great to hear from you! I've just learned of this web site to get signed on. I'm so happy to be able to communicate with everyone I haven't talked to in a while! What are your thoughts about this particular licensure bill? I'm a little indifferent to it and curious about how much the licensure will cost once it's in effect. Will we have to test yearly? I read it and I'm a little confused.

Thank you. HHHHEEEELLLLOOOO there! See, we can keep in touch better this way. I'll see you too.