I am working on a case in which the attorneys have requested all transcripts be in final and emailed on the following day.  The depositions are videotaped, realtime, and streamed.  The attorneys have the prescribed Federal Rules seven hours, which means the depositions start at 9:30 end about 6:30 p.m.  Everyone wants to get their questions in by the allotted time, so the attorneys are averaging 275 words per minute.  The transcripts are all 300 – 350 pages. 

How in the world do I get the final transcript out by 6:00 p.m. the following day?

Here are some tips that I have found makes getting dailies out possible:

1. Write clean – no messing around being online, checking email, looking at your calendar.  Focus on the writing and create briefs for often-mentioned phrases
2. Mark questions, answers, or colloquy that need to be listened to.  Everyone messes up, so create an easy stroke that signifies to you or your scopist the last Q or A needs to be double-checked.
3. Have a trusted scopist.  I can send my CAT transcript to my scopist along with the wav file in timed intervals that I have set up with DropBox and/or Sugarsync.  So every hour she will get the portion of the transcript from the previous hour to work on.
4. I index the exhibits separately.  Some might argue I should be using the CAT software for the exhibit index, but I find it best for me to create a separate file, index all of the exhibits and copy and paste them into the final transcript once I receive it back from the scopist.  The scopist does not have access to the exhibits, but I do.  The attorneys are marking 50 exhibits a day.  The index takes time, and I typically create it early in the morning before the deposition starts.
5. Have your trusted scopist mark spots that need to be double-checked (reading from exhibits, spellings, awkward phrases).  My scopist writes *chk or something that the spell check will stop at.  I can do a final spell check and hit all of the marked spots.
6. Have a proofer follow the scopist.  Your scopist can send the final transcript to a proofer for a final proof.
7. Eat healthy, walk around and sleep.  Doing dailies means stress, stress, stress – hurry, hurry, hurry – concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.  It is easy to fall into the trap of sitting for 5 hours straight, not moving, taking zero breaks during the day.  At the very least take some deep breaths and stretch.  You will need your body to perform.

Good luck with court reporting  daily copy of deposition transcripts.  If anyone has more tips and tricks, please let us know.

rosalie@kramm.com

@rosaliekramm (Twitter)