This post is in answer to Governor Schwarzenegger’s comments regarding court reporters being machines and easily replaceable.  Lisa Michaels, President of the Deposition Reporters Association of California, did a fantastic rebuttal to our Governor’s remarks about the record and how “court reporters are typists and old fashioned.”

I am proud of Chris Jordan who runs our legal video department (and my dear husband) for the production of the video. 

Check out the video: 

http://bit.ly/bs1tUG

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (Twitter)

Let’s pretend Dorothy was a court reporter, the flying monkeys and witches to be firms/individuals/attorneys who take advantage of the working court reporter.  Red slippers?   Kansas?  Is there a court reporting analogy?

Characters in our analogy:  Dorothy (court reporter); Toto (steno machine/CAT software/laptop); a Scarecrow; Lion; and Tin Man. 

Toto:  Dorothy took care of and protected Toto.  When the witches went after him, she found the courage to chase after him, grab him, and hold him tight.   Our steno machines and CAT software needs to be protected, watched after, and respected.  I just know Dorothy would keep her software up-to-date, pay maintenance fees, and know the technology.   Toto is the court reporter’s best friend.      

The Tin Man wants a heart:  I have met court reporters who want to love their profession, but have become discouraged, angry, and apathetic.  Something happens on their journey wherein either no one wants to train/mentor them when they get out of school, or perhaps an attorney was particularly mean or disrespectful on a particular day.  These scarecrow court reporters yearn to love the court reporting profession once again, but are lost.  I believe they are searching for a fellow court reporter or friends found in a state association to help teach them the ropes, someone to commiserate with, and give advice on how to move forward with pride and excitement.

The Lion who wants courage:  I personally know court reporters who are scared of new challenges and opportunities, scared to hook in even though they are CRRs.  I wish in my heart of hearts they could just step out of their fear, respect who they are, and showcase the skill they were given.

The Scarecrow wants a brain.  This character I would analogize as court reporters who are scared to think for themselves.  I have met court reporters (young and old) who tell me, “It has been four months since I did a job for X firm.  When do you think I will be paid?”  I reply, “Have you asked the firm you worked with their payment policy? Before you took the job, did you ask what their pay rates were?”  The answer usually is, “No.”  Court reporters have to know they are business people and need to know they have a right to think for themselves and ask questions.

The Wizard:  I can’t come up with a wizard analogy for our profession.  Please leave me a comment if you can come up with something.

Monkeys and Witches:  In the Wizard of Oz, the witches controlled the monkeys.  The monkeys were forced to do evil while under the control of witches.  All of us know court reporting firms who represent the witches, firms who don’t pay their reporters, don’t respect a court reporter’s hard work, and we know great people/court reporters who are under the witches’ control.    

Let’s think about what ultimately sets everyone free:  heart, courage, brains, and a simple wish with red slippers clicking together. 

As a profession, we need everyone to have heart, courage, and brains, or we will not survive.  Let’s all click our heels and make a wish.  Dorothy’s mantra was, “There is no place like home.”  What should be the court reporter’s mantra?   

rosalie@kramm.com

Twitter:  @rosaliekramm

The focus of this post is to talk about hitting a speed plateau, and what to do next, in my opinion.  My speed plateau was 140 – 160.  I got out of theory in four weeks.  The rest of the speeds, 100 – 120, 120 – 140, every speed I was out of the class in two or three weeks.  I was intense, competitive, and determined.  Then I hit 140 – 160.  Ugh.

My typical day during court reporting school was to wake up, get to school by 8:00 a.m., then at 2:00, when school got out, drove straight to Terra Title Company and type title reports until 5:30.  After work I would go home, have dinner, get out my machine and write for two to three hours.  That was Monday through Friday.  I refereed soccer games all day Saturday and Sunday.  I was obsessed with getting out of court reporting school.

So when I got to 140 – 160 and week one, two, three, four, five, six – month two, month three, month four went by, I was frustrated, angry, and scared.  Every Friday we would get our speed tests to allow us to move on to the next speed.  Every Friday I failed.  I remember vividly the first week of month six, it was a Friday, the jury charge was given, but I missed by four.  That day when I heard I didn’t pass, I got into my peanut butter-colored Opel, drove out of the parking lot, crying.  Rather than driving straight to work, I drove to Harbor Island, parked my car, and looked up at the downtown San Diego skyline.  I remember saying out loud to myself, “That is where I want to be, working as a court reporter.  As God is my witness, I am going to be a court reporter.”  (I loved old movies and Scarlett’s great line about never being hungry again.)   I made up my mind at that moment I was going to pass the jury charge the following week.  It was a new mindset that I had not experienced before.  It is a knowing I can pull up even today when I am in a deposition and everyone is talking 300+ WPM.  I have read about sprinters and marathon runners hitting the wall during a race or in their workouts.  Great athletes, I believe, know how to re-focus and get into this zone, their “Wa.” 

My advice to court reporting students stuck at a certain speed, do the work.  Go to class.  Practice, practice, practice.  You can’t cheat the school or the system or yourself with excuses about missing classes and not practicing.  No one cares if you are too busy, too tired, too distracted, or too…  Reaching the speeds necessary to pass each speed test takes discipline and hard work.  It also takes a mental mindset, a feeling that is difficult for me to put into words. 

I suggest when you are tired, frustrated, and angry just stop.  Find an inspiring and quiet place to sit.  Focus on what you truly want, who you want to be, and make up your mind you have the ability to get there.  Then be at peace with yourself and court reporting school.  Be conscious of that feeling at that moment.  You will need to draw on that feeling to get through school, testing, and work.  That feeling is something that needs to be practiced and strengthened. 

You might think it is a little crazy, but I gave that feeling a name when I went through school.  I called it “Wa.”  (I don’t know how to spell it, since I have never written it down before.) 

During the taking of the California CSR, the CRR, I remember putting my head down and saying to myself, “It is time to be in Wa.”  To this day when the testimony is out of control, I go back to the state of Wa. 

Maybe in a future blog I will try to explain Wa more.   It’s a tough subject.  Being a great court reporter takes tremendous skill, but more importantly it is a mindset that comes from within.   

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm

I saw a transcript this week where the court reporter didn’t know how to pluralize a name.  The sentence read, “The Smith’s are coming over for dinner.”  I could tell there was a lot of guessing on punctuation.

I am speculating a little, but it seems to me no one is proofing some new reporters’ work.  I have heard from some San Diego court reporters that their firm owner requires them to hire a proofer and get their work proofed.    I believe others are left to their own devices.  A newly licensed court reporter might think they can’t afford a proofer.

If there is one thing I know for sure, you don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

Having a second set of eyes look at your work is imperative.  You may be making the same mistake over and over again without realizing what you are doing.  For instance, there is the famous “Norman Clature” example.  A court reporter didn’t know the word nomenclature, so all of a sudden a new person appeared in the transcript.  Another example is a “blue collar worker” became a “blue color worker.” 

At this stage in my career I use a scopist, not a proofer.  I do the final proof.  I am lucky enough to have a scopist who has a degree in biology and knows science/medical terminology. 

Remember your name is on every transcript you produce.  The fact is every new reporter needs someone to look at their transcripts.  There is no getting around it.  If the firm you work with won’t provide you with a proofer or someone to read over your final transcripts, you will have to find someone to do it for you.  Otherwise, you are going to have mistakes on your transcripts. 

Don’t let the economy, the apathy of the firm you work with, or a “whatever” attitude ever stop you from putting out excellent work.    It is your name I am concerned about as well as the future of our profession.

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm

One of the themes that run throughout my blogs is the fact that I liken court reporters to great athletes.  As a new reporter just licensed and beginning a court reporting career, you might be good enough to be licensed and good enough to do simple litigation, but I promise you in four years you are going to hit a new milestone and become suddenly much better.  That happens again at eight years and even twelve years.  I was shocked how much better I was in year twelve compared to year eight.  One would think after eight years of doing something, you are going to be about as good as you are going to get.   But surprisingly, there was a whole new level of greatness that wasn’t just from learning new briefs.  I became a much faster, cleaner writer. 

Where do these new heights of ability come from?  I believe confidence and anticipation are factors.    The more you report, the better you can read the room and understand when an objection is going to be made, a read-back is going to be asked for, and when to hold on for dear life when someone is talking at 300+ words per minute, knowing they are going to have to take a breath to allow you to catch up.

As athletes, court reporters can never stop striving to be better.  We cannot become “good enough,” or we will never make the World Cup team.  I have a tremendous amount of pride in the reporters who work my calendar.  I brag to my clients about a court reporter’s special certifications, the fact that I have national and international speed champions covering depositions for me, and that all of my court reporters truly care and want to be the best. 

When a court reporter is reporting a high-profile, tense, huge litigation, it is very exciting.  Being in a room full of some of the greatest minds in the legal industry, making the record, having the attorneys consider you to be “the most important person in the room” is like being in the World Cup.  You have to be the best you have ever been on that given day and during the whole case.  The tricky part is you might not know when you are walking into the World Cup.  You might think you are covering a last minute doctor deposition, and it turns out you are reporting a patent case for the sequencing of the human genome.  Court reporters always have to be in top shape, ready to go.

I wonder if in four years, during the next World Cup, I will be even a better court reporter.   I think the answer will be “YES.”  In 2011 I will celebrate my 30^th year as a court reporter.  Can I get better?   Faster? I sure hope so.  I love competing in the World Cup of Court Reporting!!!!  “GOOOOAAAALLLLL”

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (twitter)

I am getting older, almost 50, and my writing style has changed.  I don’t pound as hard as I did when I first got out of school, and I look for shortcuts whenever possible.  If I am building a job dictionary, my tendency is to write Mr. and the first syllable of a person’s name, and that becomes my brief.  I used to wait until a break to create briefs so attorneys watching my writing through interactive realtime would never see any of my briefs written on the fly or shortcuts.  As a seasoned court reporter, I know the attorneys will not freak out if I create briefs before their very eyes, and they know how to read through them.   My stress level is nothing compared to when I was a new court reporter.

So what does that have to do with golfing?

When Chris first began playing golf in college, he says his tendency was to whack the ball with all of his might.  It was not a game of finesse or laying up shots.  It was a game of hit the ball super hard, get to the next shot, and end up being frustrated by the 18^th hole.  These days, as a 51-year-old, Chris has slowed down his stroke, is more conscious of form, and the ball goes a lot farther and where it is supposed to go. 

As a new court reporter, one might have the tendency to pound the keys, worry about every stroke being perfect, and by the end of the day be exhausted.  My advice is to remember to take deep breaths and focus on stroking fewer keys (use briefs).  Especially learn the briefs for objections.  The attorneys say the same thing over and over, for instance, lack of foundation; calls for speculation; not reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence.  A court reporter can do some dramatic catching-up learning the briefs for objections

The less pounding, the fewer strokes a court reporter makes, the less stress you will place on your body and your mind. 

By the way, my new sport is going to be golf.  It will be a great escape from the day-to-day court reporting world.

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (Twitter)

I have been a big producer in my career, writing on the average approximately 2,000+ pages a month year after year.  For most of that time I did my own scoping and proofing (more hunching over a computer). 

I became a licensed court reporter in 1981.  By 1991 my neck and shoulders were in constant pain.   I was taking eight Advils a day.   One of my girlfriends suggested I start getting massages.  I thought of massages as something rich people get when they are on vacation.  My first masseuse was Renee’, a holistic South African woman.  She suggested yoga.  In those days I was very driven, worked all of the time, and thought of yoga as something limber people could do, but wasn’t for me.  I was really insecure about my lack of limberness and my posture.  So I didn’t take her advice, but I would get massages here and there and kept up with my Advil regime.

But then in 1996 I started to lose the ability to write a final S.  My right pinky finger was getting really weak.  Then I had trouble with my final T.  My right ring finger didn’t work right.  Both fingers were tingling.  I was getting scared.  Another friend of mine recommended I go see a man, Steve, who did “sports massage.”  When I went to him, I was desperate.  After looking me over, Steve recommended I get weekly massages and simultaneously go through a Rolfing program to expedite loosening me up.  The Rolfing and Steve’s massages were super painful, but I loved every minute of it.  My fingers came back to normal within a couple of weeks.  It turns out my neck muscles were so tight the nerves in my fingers were losing power. 

I have been receiving bi-weekly massages for the past 19 years.  My neck and shoulders are pain free, and I haven’t a low backache with spasms since I started my massages.  Now, I play soccer, do a boot camp, and lift weights at the gym.  My goal is to improve my posture, so I do a lot of shoulder, chest, and low back work. 

I will always have lordosis/scoliosis, but if I can slow it down and have fun, I am happy.  If I could go back in time, I wish I would have been doing yoga, Pilates, weight lifting, dancing – anything – parallel with going to court reporting school and kept exercising throughout my career.

The reason I am writing all of this is to advise young court reporters to pay attention to your bodies.  It is imperative to exercise and stretch.  Hopefully, you have fun and enjoy exercising.   Keep thinking of yourselves as professional athletes – and your sport happens to be writing super fast and being incredibly accurate – your sport is court reporting.   Keep your body fit for your sport.

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (Twitter)

When I went to court reporting school, I went through too fast and didn’t pick up many briefs.  I was a pounder and stroked my way through the syllables figuring I would decipher later what I was trying to write.  Luckily, I did learn the number bar and never had to write out numbers.  When I started writing realtime in the late 1990s, my writing was a mess.  I had conflicts and over 160K dictionary entries. 

One day, thanks to my dear husband, Chris Jordan, legal videographer and perfectionist, I saw the light, deleted my main dictionary, and started all over again.  I went through the Tabor’s Medical Dictionary and put in suffixes and prefixes, went through Webster’s and added words.  I got out the Yellow Pages and added proper names of businesses and took out my Thomas Brothers to stroke out street names. 

Life with a new dictionary has been empowering – and allowed me to pass the CRR.

I love briefing phrases.  Here are five that I use all of the time:

1. board of director(s) – BOEKT(S)
2. promissory note – PROET
3. first amendment – FAEMT (second amendment SAEMT) et cetera
4. fair characterization – FAIRKS
5. motor vehicle accident – MOIT

The bottom line is using briefs is liberating.  Learn them.  Use them.  As an older court reporter, I am always pushing to write faster with fewer strokes.  I don’t want to be stagnant in my writing.  There is a great book called “Brief Encounters” that is available in electronic format or as a book.  If there is a word or phrase that stops you in your tracks over and over again, create a brief and practice it.  Don’t struggle.  I used to freak out if I heard the word “entrepreneur” in a deposition.  Once I learned the brief “PREUR” I couldn’t wait to report a deposition about entrepreneurs. 

This post is meant to inspire court reporters to write cleaner, faster, and have less editing time.  It is so much more fun being a court reporter having a bundle of briefs at your disposal to help you fly through the testimony. 

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (Twitter)

 My answer is, yes, court reporting is an excellent industry to invest in and pursue.  But I do worry about people being taken advantage of.  Going to a school that is state certified or has a certified program, such as the schools certified by the National Court Reporters Association, I am confident a court reporting student will get the program they need to graduate.  Since I live in Southern California, I know that Sage College, South Coast College, and Bryan School of Court Reporting have excellent programs. 

 In California, we have a licensing board, the Court Reporters Board of California.   Our CR Board has a list of schools that are certified by California.  I would trust all of the schools on the list to have a realistic program that will get you where you need to go to pass the California CSR and become licensed.

 What concerns me is I received an email from a student this week who is attending an online school asking me to be her mentor, writing that the school she is going to requires her to find a “mentor” to dictate live dictation to her at different speeds.  She was hoping I would dictate testimony to her while she was at school.  I wrote her back asking for details and didn’t hear back.  I understand schools wanting their students to find mentors.  I would encourage students to find mentors.  I am unclear why a school would expect a student to have to find live dictation. 

 I am sure the majority of the court reporting students in the United States are making smart decisions, going to schools that can take them to the finals.  (I liken court reporters to athletes.)   

 Our profession is like all professions.  If you are really good at what you do, you enjoy being a court reporter, you decide you want to be the best and participate in continuing education, spend money to ensure you have the best equipment and software, and are eager to learn, you will be successful.

 If you look at the glass as being half empty, that the economy sucks, you are going to have a hard time.  Court reporting is a competitive, tough field.  There is a reason that the top reporters make six-figure salaries.  It is not because it is super easy, school is pass/no pass, or because you are certified you made it.  Like anything in life, being a successful costs time, energy, talent, and attitude. 

 My advice to anyone wondering about court reporting as a profession:  Go to a credentialed school. Work hard.  Be great.  Be determined.  Be the best.  Being a court reporter is the best profession ever.  It is not easy.  It is not simple.  You need to understand that this is a tremendous profession not to be taken lightly. 

 I dropped out of my first year of college to go to court reporting school.  My friends were scared for me.  Why would I leave two semesters of college to go to a trade school?  I received phone calls and letters from my dearest friends, begging me to graduate from SDSU with my business degree.  I ignored all of them because I knew I found my passion.  That was in 1979.  Sure, I wish I had business classes to help me run my court reporting business, but the bottom line is, court reporting has been the most fantastic career for me.  I have no regrets. 

 My advice:  Pay attention.  Go to a great school (online or not).  Work hard.  Don’t take the classes, speeds, or anything for granted.  Be great.  You will not regret it.

 rosalie@kramm.com

 @rosaliekramm (Twitter)

First things first, if you are stuck at a speed, it might be a good idea to shift strategy.  If you have been practicing with fast speeds, always pushing, maybe it is time to slow down the tapes and practice accuracy and having perfect strokes.  LEARN BRIEFS – ESPECIALLY PHRASES.  You will save so much time.  If you are trying to use a brief that you struggle with every time, KNOCK IT OFF.  Choose a different brief or write the word out.  Briefs should flow through your fingers and come naturally to you.  If you have been listening to tapes that are at the speed you want to pass, get some super fast tapes and push, push, push.  Tire your brain out.  Spend at least an hour a day practicing with tapes.

If you always sit with your machine at a certain height, lower it or raise it an inch.  If you typically sit straddling the machine, practice with the machine as a side saddle for a couple of hours.  Then when you take the test, go back to what you are used to.  Switch things up just for a little while during practice.

I understand that athletes force themselves to use different muscles other than what they might be used to using for their sport.  For instance, you hear about football players taking ballet.  They are taught to use a different muscle group and learn flexibility.  Cross-training is in vogue as the best way to get in shape.  Athletes are taught to “confuse their muscles” to build strength so the same muscles don’t get used to doing the same thing all of the time. 

If you are stuck at a speed for a long, long time, I believe you need to change things up.  Your mind and body will get lazy if they are allowed.  Spending hours practicing, doing the same thing over and over, and not advancing is going to kill your spirit and seep into your concentration and speed.

I believe court reporters are very much like athletes.  What we do is a sport.  We are incredibly fast and accurate.  When it comes time to perform, whether it is a test or out in the field with a fast witness and volatile attorneys, we pull it together, know it’s show time, and take off.  Practice is where we can make mistakes, learn new techniques, and memorize briefs.

The next time you take a test, think to yourself, “It’s show time.”    Sit up straight in your chair and get ready to razzle dazzle.  Make up your mind that you are going to knock the test out of the park.  If you don’t pass that test, look forward to the next show (test) where you get another chance to be great.  Being a court reporter, interactive realtime court reporter, CART writer, or captioner, it is all about Show Time and being the best.

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (twitter)