Deposition Reporters– Audio Amplified

Realtime Reporter Jessie Waack

We have all had deposition participants we struggle to hear for various reasons.  You actually have a couple options for monitoring audio during a deposition.

In a video legal deposition, the videographers of Brown & Jones Reporting can run a line from their soundboard which you plug headphones into.  You then have the same audio feed as the videographer does, running through your personal headphones. 

If you tend to be particular about headphones, I would advise carrying your own for comfort.  We have all seen people forget they are wearing microphones.  A sudden sneeze or cough can blow up your eardrums.  A random shuffling of paper can drown out testimony.  By wearing your headphones to the side of your ears, you can diminish the effect the extraneous noises will have.  For this reason, I would recommend avoiding ear buds.  The biggest benefit is that the videographer can turn up a soft spoken person and turn down the loud person so the audio will come out at the same decibel level.

Another option is to monitor your audio through your stenograph machine.  I have an Élan Mira® A3.  On the back of the steno, there is a jack for a microphone and headphones.  I place a glass upside down on the table with Post-Its on top.  I would not recommend putting the microphone directly on the table.  Not only will you hear all the tapping on the table, but you will undoubtedly get paper piled on top of it making this step useless.  The Post-Its are a handy item which prevent the sound from traveling through the glass. 

After the mike is set, I plug my headphones into the back of the steno.  With an audio-capable steno, you can change the steno settings to monitor audio.   I know with the Élan Mira® A3, I can only activate this audio option when I am at the home screen.  For this reason, I always have the steno set with the monitor audio option as “yes.”  You will not use card memory by having this option turned on, although you may use your battery faster.  The downside is I can usually only amplify one person instead of all deposition participants.

After weighing your options, I hope you are able to find one to work for you.  Perhaps this can also inspire you to update an outdated steno to make your depositions a little easier.

Submitted by:

Jessica Waack – Specializing in Realtime Reporting
Registered Diplomate Reporter
Certified Realtime Reporting
Brown & Jones Reporting 

Realtime Reporter – Conquering Your Fears

Rachel Gwidt, RPR

To my pleasant surprise, I didn’t freeze up and write badly.  I wrote exactly the same as I would have written with nobody being able to see it.  Actually, I feel like I focused harder than if no one was watching.  Everyone was able to read it just fine.  Did I have some things in my favor?  Absolutely.  It wasn’t super fast and technical (just a nice, short, easy car accident-type case).  I thought to myself, what a stroke of luck to be able to have my first real time experience be so easy and stress free.  Do I feel this automatically qualifies me to take a real time patent case with 12 attorneys hooked up to me tomorrow?  Absolutely not, but what I got from the experience was huge to me.  It was validation of my writing skills and confirmation that I CAN do it.  Most of all, I came away with a new confidence in myself that I didn’t have yesterday (or all the days before that for that matter).  Those of you that know me fairly well know what I’m talking about! 

Smile

Roger Fish Speaks To Wisconsin Court Reporters About Work-Life Balance

WCRA

Roger Fish spoke to the Wisconsin Court Reporters Association about how the demands of life and work are greater than ever today.  This seminar focused on helping professionals achieve better work life balance that leads to greater personal and professional success and satisfaction.  Here are a few of the golden nuggets that he offered.

Does anyone ever ask you how you’re doing on Sunday, and you say, “Okay, but tomorrow is Monday!”  The message was:  Don’t “awfulize Mondays.”  Stay positive and don’t be negative about what is to come.  Enjoy the present.

The average life span of American men and women is 77 years.  The average American works a 55-hour week and takes an average of 11 days of vacation.  On four of these vacation days, there is still contact with the office.  Enjoy your life.  We all have only so many weeks of life left to live.  Make the most of them.  Create a bucket list.  Do the things you want to do before it is too late.  Don’t let money always be the overriding factor of what you can do with your life.  

Who are the warm, fuzzy cocoon people in your life, the ones who make you feel good?  Spend time with those people.

Are you celebrating life?  Is life an adventure?  Visit a kindergarten class or play with a child.  Soak in their awe, their curiosity, their wonderment.  Children are great teachers.  Ask yourself – am I celebrating life?  Is it an adventure?

What if there were no longer “anymores?”  What if you’re not going to be here tomorrow or maybe a loved one is no longer going to be here?  Make sure you always tell your loved ones how much they mean to you, just in case there is no “anymore.”

Exercise – Take care of yourself.  If you exercise and eat right, you are going to feel so much better and have so much more energy.  Be as good as you can be for the age that you are.

Avoid negative, energy draining people.

10 percent of life is what happens to you.  90 percent of life is how you react to it.

Use your vacation time.  Many Americans do not use their vacations.  You need to use them so you can re-energize.

If you’re on a plane, and you have your 2-year old on one side of you and your 10-year old on the other side of you, and the oxygen mask comes down, who is the first person you need to put the mask on?
YOURSELF!  You can’t take care of your loved ones unless you take care of yourself first.

LAUGHTER.  Laugh as often as you can!  Laughter is good for the soul and for your health!

For all the menopausal women out there, the next time you’re having a hot flash, don’t think of it as a hot flash.  Just say, “I’m having a tropical moment!”

IT’S YOUR DAY, IT’S YOUR ATTITUDE.  MAKE IT A GOOD ONE!!

Wisconsin Court Reporters Association –  Spring Convention, Blue Harbor Resort & Spa, April 27-29 2010

Stenographer Breah Madson, offers her advice on what it takes to be a Supreme Court Reporter.

It may seem like common sense to be polite and courteous to customers, but it is surprising that something that seems so common sense is not commonplace.  Successful business comes down to successful interactions with customers, and a happy customer is a repeat customer.  Being polite can go a long way in ensuring customers are satisfied, and not only come back to the business, but look forward to working with you!  I am fortunate to work with people who are not only polite, but kind and considerate as well.  However, it never hurts to brush up on your skills.  Here are some tips on being polite and professional to better your business interactions:

• Greet others courteously and with energy.  Coming across as apathetic can be interpreted as being impolite.
• If you do not know someone well, be one step more polite and formal than you assume is necessary.  Adding “Mr.” or “Ms.,” “Sir” or Ma’am,” gives the other person the opportunity to say, “Oh, please, call me (name).” 
• Be attentive and listen when someone is speaking with you.  Making eye contact, nodding your head and smiling can go a long way.
• Stand up, extend your hand and introduce yourself when you are meeting someone for the first time. 
• End your interaction with things like “Thank you, it was great to see you.   Have a wonderful weekend,” anything to let the person know their time spent with you is appreciated.
• Say “please” and “thank you” whenever you can. People are more likely to respond to a request if they hear “please” at the end of it.  Also, when someone does something for you, say “thank you.”
• Keep your voice at an appropriate level based on your situation.  A loud voice can feel abrasive.
• If you have met someone before, make an effort to use their name when speaking with them.
• Along the same lines, bring up something you may have talked about previously.  Was your client telling you about their kids at your last meeting?  Ask them if they have any fun summer plans or how coaching their daughter’s basketball team is going. 
• SMILE!

 Thank you for reading this, and have a great day!

 Breah Madson,  Registered Professional Court Reporter
National Court Reporters Association 

Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks?

When I was in court reporting school, I was taught that once a stroke is ingrained in your fingers, it was hard to undo.  I’m assuming this was emphasized to promote accurate practice or something.  I don’t really know. 

Then I went to work for Brown & Jones Reporting.  When I first started out as a court reporter, I was unhappy with my “messy” writing, but I didn’t know how to go about changing it.  I wanted to write cleaner.  Jane told me about how she had changed her writing years ago in an effort to write real time.  I was very impressed, but I scoffed at the idea at first, thinking it would be too hard to do.  I figured Jane was just an exceptional writer and probably out of the ordinary.  I thought, well, she may have been able to do it, but there’s no way I can.  Then she suggested a pretty straightforward way to go about it.  Basically, I just printed out a weekly list of things I wanted to change and taped it to my laptop.  During my jobs, I would stare at the list.  I would try and really THINK about what I was doing instead of just writing in auto pilot.   She also told me to take the old way out of my dictionary and enter the new outline.  That way, whenever I screwed up, I got instant feedback.

Even though the theory I learned in school was real time, a big thing for me that I wanted to change was I had been taught to write all my numbers out.  Eleven was LEFN.  Twelve was TWEFL, and so on.  We were given the option of whether or not to use the number keys.  I opted not to, and found that later on, I felt like I would be better off utilizing the number keys after all.  It seemed much handier for dollar amounts and dates, et cetera.  It was difficult to adjust to at first, but now I’m completely used to writing my numbers from the number bar.  Once I mastered that change, I realized with the proper effort and attention, I could continue to make changes to my writing, no matter how big or small.

Obviously, changing anything about one’s writing is an individual, personal choice, but I guess the long and short of what I’m saying is no matter how or when we learned to write, we have the ability to keep honing our skill.  Real time is definitely the future of steno, so I will continue to work on passing the real time test and becoming a certified real time writer.  I am really lucky to work for a company that has so many talented writers that are such great role models.

Rachel Gwidt, Certified Wisconsin Court Reporter

Andrea Reichle’s Mission Trip To Haiti

On January  12, 2010, a 7.0 M earthquake hit the country of Haiti, near the Port-au-Prince, which is the capital.  By January 24, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded.  An estimated 3 million people were affected by the quake.  The 2010 earthquake has been rated as the third deadliest in history. 

In June of 2010, I was able to join a group from Elmbrook Church who were going to Haiti for a week to learn of some opportunities to be involved with doing mission work.  Our group split up once we arrived in Haiti.  I was on the team that went to Jeremie, which is at the western end of the Haitian peninsula.  It is a 45-minute flight from PAP or around a nine-hour drive from PAP due to the road conditions being so poor in parts.

While we were there, we worked with a doctor, Dr. Katie Wolf, and a nurse, Cherlie Severe.  Their non-profit organization is called Friends for Health in Haiti.  They currently have a small clinic that is located around 11 miles outside of Jeremie in a village called Gatineau.  It takes about an hour, hour-and-a-half to drive there due to road conditions.  Their patients are generally within a four-hour walking radius of the clinic site.  On clinic days, which is now Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, there are around 40-50 people that come for treatment.  One of our goals was to figure out a solution for designing a bridge over a creek to build a bigger clinic facility.  There were a few medical people on our team, as well, that got to help in the clinic one day.

Over the last year and a half, plans have been in the works, and the construction has begun on the land.  I recently got to return to Haiti with a group of nine men.  The men had various degrees of experience in construction and were put to use right away.  We built a hut to be used as a temporary pharmacy, chairs and benches that will be used at the clinic, shelving, etc.  There will be future teams going with construction and medical experience.

It is important for Americans to remember those around the world that don’t have as much as we do and to help in a way that will be beneficial for the people and the country.  Little has been done with the money that got donated to the country shortly after the quake.  There is still much poverty and devastation from the earthquake in Haiti.   Do your research before donating to an organization.  Consider taking a mission trip to a third-world country to open your eyes to cultures around us and how you can make a difference. 

FREELANCE COURT REPORTER – What’s It Like Being Married To One?

Long before getting married, I met a humble woman for a first date and that same night, I asked her what she was doing for a living. She answered, “I’m in school right now, and I’m going to be a stenographer.” Being an appropriate answer at our age, I looked at her and thought distinctly of two things; the first was “you’re beautiful, I don’t care what you’re going to school for,” and the second was “what on earth is a stenographer?!!” Well, I must have talked to her more that night, because a few years later, this humble woman is now my wife (lucky for me!) and I now have the knowledge of not only what a stenographer is and does, but more so, what it’s like being married to one!

To be completely truthful, I love being married to a Stenographer, a.k.a. Judicial Reporter or Freelance Reporter (as I believe the position is also titled). I have married a woman with an honorable career. I have married a woman who holds a degree of value, true value, in that Judicial Reporting is a very niche market and there is demand for it. And finally, I have married a woman smart enough to earn that degree, a degree which I’ve learned doesn’t come easily, it doesn’t come by simply passing a class or test with minimum requirements or standards, but it comes by becoming truly skilled and proficient. You can’t graduate with a C average, it’s A+ or you’re staying in school longer!

Beyond this, there exists a bigger picture. For our relationship and household, not having to worry too much about my wife’s career stability is great. Yes, there are busy weeks when I don’t see her, and slow weeks when there’s just a job or two, but in the long haul, it seems there will be more and more need for the services of court reporters.  And even with the threat of new recording technology, (something she’s shared with me in industry news), my gut says that there will never be a substitute for a good reporter. (Did I say good reporter? I mean GREAT reporter!)

The simple truth for me is that I don’t care how good the technology gets, it won’t be a human, and it will never offer the adaptive nature required and necessary for doing this job. That’s a nice comfort for us to have. From day to day, being married to a court reporter brings days of triumph, where “taking down” a hard case is done well and we celebrate the joy of that performance. There are also days where things don’t go perfectly well, or let’s be honest, the job assignment was with someone rude or challenging to understand. It happens. Yes, I’ve seen some tears, and yes, I’ve had to reassure my wife that she does an impeccable job, but I always figure those hardships and doubts are a part of any career or human experience and certainly a part of being a good husband. And then there are little day-to-day things like when a job finishes early and my wife makes it home early to make me lunch. Who would complain? And then there are times when a job goes late, not only do I get to work a little later too, but I get to cook dinner for her –- doing what I can after her long day.

In the end, my wife has stability, an honorable job, a flexible schedule, and as a result, she also has balance in life. I love all of that! She works hard; there is no doubt about that. And this career offers her great earnings, while allowing time to be a wife, a family woman, a caring member of the greater community. This balance brings great joy to my own life, and it benefits so many of the people we know. And at our dinners, or even our lunches, I can assure you that when we say our prayers, when we acknowledge our blessings, my wife’s career is always amongst our list.

Michael Madson      
Color Wheel Painting, LLC  
www.remodelandpaint.com 
 

Having attended the Stenograph Forum in Savannah, I’d like to share with you some of the interesting information imparted to us from John Wenclawski and Fred Middlebrooks.

Did you know???  Enrollment in court reporting schools has dropped.  There are now 84 court reporting schools in the country, with about 8,700 students.  In the early ‘90s, there were 20,000 students.  Thus, the number of machines sold to schools has also dropped.
–  Number of Diamante machines sold:  5,647 Professional models and 1,134 student models.
–  Number of Miras sold:  14,000

Have you considered replacing your writer?  Diamantes have been on the market for 2-1/2 years.  Over 6,000 have been sold.  All the kinks are out.  Stenograph generally has a seven-year cycle for new machines, so this is a great time to invest in a Diamante.  Stenturas were introduced 19 years ago.  At the end of this year, there will be no more trade-ins for Stenturas.

On the Diamante horizon: more WiFi features, brief it, shorter stroke, 2.0 coming, make J Defines on writer.  They will go to your CAT system and vice versa.  Routers will be replaced with a virtual router, which will work with Diamantes and Miras.   WiFi features do drain the battery at a faster pace, so a high capacity battery is now available.

YOUR WRITER IS A PRODUCTIVITY TOOL.  KEEP IT UPDATED, JUST LIKE YOUR SOFTWARE.  Visit www.stenograph.com to update your writer.

The average age of a court reporter is 48 years old.  Yikes!!  This not only affects a company such as Stenograph, who markets to court reporters; but it also affects all of us court reporters out in the field.  We need new court reporters in the profession if our industry is to remain viable.  Stenograph is trying to solve this problem by opening the Prince Institute, which is comprised of three court reporting schools in Westminster, Colorado; Montgomery, Alabama; and Schaumburg, Illinois.  60% of the students at Prince take their classes online.  24 students have graduated from Prince this year.

Case CATalyst Version 12.51 is available, along with the E-Key.  Too many reporters have not yet taken advantage of the E-Key.  All of the STAR attendees in Savannah agreed that the E-Key is great, so get going.  Call Stenograph and get it.  You will now be able to update it automatically, and it can be loaded on three computers; however, you cannot use it simultaneously on more than one computer at a time.  If you get the E-Key, you will be able to keep it, even if you do not continue to update your software on a yearly basis, which I do not recommend, by the way.

Version 13 will be coming out by the end of the year.  Some of the new features are:  New logo, Enhanced Drag/Drop With Steno X-Ray 2 (Diamante/Wave), Export to Exhibit Linker, Integrated Video Training Pane, Email PDF’s without zipping (which is great when you’re emailing a file to an attorney.  Sometimes they have trouble opening up a zipped file. )

CaseViewNet:  Free software product to attorneys – Realtime viewer.  Version 2.6.0.   Starting page number will reflect the starting page number in CaseCATalyst.  CV Net training video clips are available on the Stenograph website.

Will we ever get Case CATalyst on an IPad?  Not in the foreseeable future.  It’s a different operating system.   Is Stenograph still offering new computers with CaseCATalyst loaded?  No.  There was not enough demand, so it is no longer offered.

It is sometimes difficult to get Stenograph to make a recommendation when we are in the process of buying a new computer, but Fred Middlebrooks gave us some advice.  If you are purchasing a new computer, Windows 7 Professional is recommended.  Don’t go to Best Buy for your new computer.  CDW, Computer Discount Warehouse, was mentioned as one possibility.  Fred recommended three computers:   Toshiba Tecra, Sony Vio, and Acer Travel Pro.  The Acer has two different keyboards, so make sure you check into that before buying.

Well, that’s all for now.  I hope some of this information was useful to you.  Thanks to John and Fred for a wonderful presentation!   Please consider coming to the Las Vegas STAR Convention in March.  You’ll never leave without learning something, you’ll meet new friends and business acquaintances, and you can have a great time in Vegas!  There’s gambling, shopping, superb food and great shows; something for everyone.  If you have any questions about STAR membership, please contact me.  I’d love to talk to you.

Jane M. Jones, RMR, CRR
Brown & Jones Court Reporting
Managing Owner