#33 - Are we on the record?

0:01 Court reporters hold one of the most important roles in the justice system. We're entrusted with the official records of the courts and we also have to run our own businesses, which is not something most of us were prepared for. I'm Bryn Seymour, freelance court reporter and life coach, and I invite you to join the discussion about the problems we face and the solutions we create on the unique journey of a stenographer. Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Court Reporter Podcast. There are certain things that happen when I'm in the middle of a proceeding that make me feel really insecure and make me question myself and doubt myself and doubt my education. There are so many times that things happen where I'm not sure what to do and because we have to make a decision so quickly like we literally only have a split second to decide whether we're going to ask at that moment, like clarify something or interrupt, or to just figure it out later and give ourselves that heavy burden, making our jobs more difficult later, kind of taking the easy route in the moment of just ignoring it and pretending it never happened or thinking, okay, I'll deal with this later, because I don't want to suffer the consequence of interrupting right now.

1:01 I don't want any attention on me. I don't want to draw attention, I don't want to say anything, I just want to be a fly on the wall. So I think that's the tendency that I started to get into of just kind of being a fly on the wall. And I know that when I was an intern at the end of court reporting school. When you start sitting in with people to kind of observe and see how they do things, most of the people that I sat in with they didn't interrupt, even when I couldn't. Like, even at a point where I was like wait, did they get that? I couldn't hear what he said, I didn't understand that or I don't know if I got it right, and they wouldn't interrupt. So I kind of learned to just be a fly on the wall and just be quiet and just deal with it. Later, as I'm going through my life as a court reporter and experiencing more and more moments like this, it's getting to the point where I'm just like, okay, let me deal with this Now, let me sit down and think about why don't I just speak up when I need to?

1:50 I mean, granted, yes, it's true that many times later it's like there were times where I have interrupted and clarified something and then later on, as I was like scoping and reading through it, I was like why did I interrupt? That was so obvious what the person was saying, even if I misheard him or if I questioned whether I heard it correctly. But later on, when you're reading through it, it's very, very obvious from the context, because maybe it's a name that they had been talking about that whole time. But because I was maybe daydreaming or not fully focused and paying attention and fully in the story of what's going on, I wasn't aware and then it made me feel really stupid.

2:31 So things like that make me also hesitate and question whether or not I should interrupt when something isn't clear. Today, when we were on the record, and almost every day, this happens a lot of times. This happens even whether you're in a deposition or you're in court. I will say that in court it's actually much more difficult when this happens, just because of the amount of different speakers and different colloquy designations that you need. In a deposition it's still annoying, but in court it's more difficult. But what happens is the judge or the attorneys start making side comments or jokes or like they start a conversation. That's clearly not a part of the record but they don't say to go off the record.

3:12 So technically we are required to keep typing as long as like if they don't say to go off the record, then we're not off the record, we're still on the record. But sometimes the attorneys would look at me and be like you know we're not on the record, right? And they would look at me like why are you still typing? Why we're not on the record, clearly, like as if I'm an idiot. Okay, so let's break this down. So the circumstance is that attorneys are having side conversations with the witness or with each other that they don't actually want on the record, without saying to go off the record. Or the judge is having a side conversation with her clerk without saying to go off the record, and some judges actually want those side conversations on the record and some don't.

3:57 So that makes it a little bit difficult for us and makes it like, okay, that's the okay. So that's the circumstance. This is what's happening almost every day. This is going on. What's my thought about that? My thought is I don't know if I'm supposed to be taking this down and how do I feel when I think that so insecure? And what do I do when I'm feeling insecure, I try to hide the fact that I'm typing, but I type it down anyway, just in case it's needed later, and then I just think I'll deal with it later, creating a habit of not asking questions and not speaking up. And then I judge myself, I blame myself, blame other people, like my educators in college for not teaching me what to do in these situations, even though, like the reality is, they probably did go over this.

4:42 And also the reality is that we're not nobody's really taught every detail of every thing that's gonna happen before they go out into the field, even attorneys, they're kind of trying to figure things out as well. I've spoken to many attorneys and there's a lot that school doesn't prepare them for. They also just focus on memorizing the law and technical things like that, and there's a lot of things that they have to figure out too. So, like I don't wanna get into the habit of victimizing myself. So, yeah, that's what I do. So trying to hide the fact I'm typing, feeling insecure, typing just in case, even though I'm like hiding, trying to hide the fact that I'm doing it because I'm worried that they're gonna think I'm, that they're gonna be like upset that I'm taking down what's clearly not supposed to be on the record and that they're expecting me to make that decision and make that call when it's really not my job.

5:32 Which also makes me feel insecure because it's like why is my job so like? Why is it so robotic? Why is it so like black and white? It makes me also feel like do I really like this career where I don't even get any say in anything, I don't get to make my own decisions, and then I also, so the result is that I hate my job and I never learned how to create and enforce boundaries for myself on the record to help. It's like taking the easy route in the moment and then making it harder to deal with later. So I'm sure most very experienced court reporters have gotten to the point where they have built that habit of speaking up on the spot, because they've spent so many years probably dealing with this extra stress later on that they decided that they were not going to do that to themselves anymore and that they were going to build a habit of stopping the proceedings immediately, pausing when they need to and not worrying about asking stupid questions because, let's be honest, they're not judging us the way that we're judging ourselves.

6:29 So, as I'm looking at the action line of what all these things that I do when I'm feeling insecure because of the thought that I don't know if I'm supposed to be taking this down or I don't know what to do in the situation, all the things that I'm doing are not actually what I want to be doing and that's not creating the result that I want. So what result do I want? I want to love my job, I want to feel confident and I want to actually enforce boundaries on the record, rather than suffering later and just like taking the easy route in the moment. So how can I accomplish that result? I have to change my actions. So, in order to change my feeling of insecurity and my actions, to speaking up right away, like deciding ahead of time that I'm always going to ask are we on or off the record?

7:12 Like, does everybody want this on the record or in court, just ask the judge judge, do you want this on the record? And not being afraid to ask that question. So I want my action to be immediately just ask are we, do you want this on the record or not? And in order to ask that, I need to feel secure instead of insecure. I need to feel confident, which is interesting because actually, if I look at the thought again, the thought is I don't know if I'm supposed to be taking this down. Okay, that thought could actually I could actually produce the feeling of confidence with the same thought. But I realized that the feeling of being insecure because of that thought, it's not really that thought, but it's.

7:57 What do I think about? The fact that I don't know if I'm supposed to be taking this down? Because in reality, there are many circumstances where it's okay if you don't know if you're supposed to be taking it down. What is the answer to do? What is the solution? Ask. It's okay to ask, because every judge and every attorney is different. They may or may not want this side conversation on the record, so that. So I realized that what I was thinking about, the thought, is what's really causing the insecurity. It's not the thought that I don't know if I'm supposed to be taking this down, not that thought itself, but the thought I have about that thought is I am like my education is inadequate or I'm stupid, or like I should know if I'm supposed to take this down.

8:42 So I'm telling myself that I should know and that it's bad that I don't know. But now I'm realizing like, no, it's not bad that you don't know, it's okay that you don't know because you don't. You don't know this judge. And even if you do know the judge, it doesn't necessarily mean that every single time it's gonna be the same result. Like every time a side conversation happens, they don't want it on the record. There might be times where they do want it on the record, or this you know these attorneys. Maybe you're working with a different attorney that you don't know. Like in every situation, it's gonna be different. So the thought that's really causing me to feel insecure and causing me to hide and not speak up judge myself, blame myself, blame others, blame my college, blame my education like be overwhelmed.

9:25 The thought is that I should know this and I don't. I should know what to do, but I don't. So that is key. Figuring that out is key because now I can change my thought about the fact that I don't know whether I'm supposed to take down what they're talking about. I can change what I think about that. I can change it to it's okay that you don't know, just ask. It's not a problem not to know something. You're learning Every experience, every deposition, every proceeding is a chance to learn something new and not to assume, based on prior experiences, just because one person prefers it one way, or just because you got in trouble or looked at or treated like you're weird for taking something down, or treated like you're stupid, that you should apply that to every single case.

10:16 Now, every case is gonna be different, like we should allow ourselves to ask without feeling stupid. That is our job. It is going to be different every time. So from now on, I'm going to practice being confident enough to decide ahead of time that I'm going to just not wait and hesitate to speak up, since we only have a split second. The moment you hesitate is the moment that you decide not to speak up. So I'm just going to decide ahead of time, so that there's no need to make a decision because the need to make a decision delays it, and just already decide that I'm going to speak up the moment something's not clear, if it should be on the record, and I'm gonna try that. I'll see you next week. Bye.