#38 - Finding the Right Scopist with Scoping International

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 stenographer. Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Court Reporter Podcast. Hello and welcome to part two of our interview with Rachel Artis. In this episode, rachel delves into the world of scoping and provides insights into the intricacies of building a successful relationship between court reporters and scopists.

0:41 She shares valuable tips on how to source and select the right scopist, the importance of having a dedicated team to manage transcript production, which I totally am on board with, and the impact of scoping on achieving life balance for court reporters. If you're a court reporter looking to build a reliable team, or a scopist seeking to enhance your skills, this episode is a must listen. So let's jump into the world of scoping and transcript production with Rachel Artis, right? So you're also a public speaker and you're known for your expertise in simplifying complex concepts within the court reporting industry through teaching and coaching and making things easy to understand and implement with a down to earth approach.

1:24 So let's talk about Scoping International. Okay, what motivated you to start Scoping International and what is it? So Scoping International is an online scoping program curriculum school and I was actually asked to be a part of Scoping International by Coralie Osberry and she had heard of me and knew that I, you know, trained scopist and I decided to work on this project. That is now, you know, a school and we have graduates and students and all that good stuff, because I knew that the way I teach scoping, there was a need for it in our industry.

2:06 When I looked at how other scopists learn there's polls online that talk about how a scopist traditionally gets into the business and, after having trained so many people one-on-one, I knew that the way that I teach someone how to scope was really important and I knew I would never make a course on my own. I knew that about myself. So I said let me try to leave something you know for a person that learns like I do, which is very strange, you know. I think in any education system, one of the failings I could say is that we are never taught how we learn.

2:48 You know, we're just given information and expected to absorb it and when we don't absorb it, there's kind of consequences, maybe or not. Maybe you have the you know resources to have a tutor or have someone help you, but if not, you just fall through the cracks. Resources to have a tutor or have someone help you, but if not, you just fall through the cracks. So there's so many people that love would love to scope. You know that would love to do the work. I'm looking for an opportunity like scoping. But when they go online and just look at the way that the information is being presented, they shy away from it. And I have to admit, if I didn't learn scoping the way I learned it, I would have ran away too. So because there's so many away from it. And I have to admit, if I didn't learn scoping the way I learned it, I would have ran away too. So because there's so many layers to it.

3:29 So that's kind of why I agreed to help co-found Scoping International and I'm really passionate about teaching scoping and teaching it in a way that's relevant to the court reporters and what they want today. That's relevant to the court reporters and what they want today. A lot of what court reporters wanted 30 or 40 years ago is not what a court reporter of today wants from a scopist, and I like being able to teach people with different learning styles how to serve any preference, any kind of court reporter that they could possibly meet. Most scopists might work with one or two court reporters and stay with them, but then, when they want to move on to someone else, another court reporter is like yeah, I don't know what you're doing or why, and so they develop this style that's unique to the court reporter and it really doesn't serve them long term when they're looking to either diversify their clients or their court reporter retires and they still want to do the work, so do you teach them how to kind of quickly adapt to different court reporters or you just teach them.

4:35 Okay. Yeah, so we start out by teaching them once they get into the software portion of the course and they pass that quiz. Proofreading and grammar and punctuation is first, then software. But then when we get into, like the client part of things, which is really like my favorite part, when we get into that part of things, yes, it's about how to meet the needs in a professional manner of what a court reporter wants when they find you. If you're a court reporter, you find a scopist, you're not sure if they can actually give you what it is that you're looking for, and a lot of court reporters don't know what they're looking for. And so we teach them how to ask probing questions and develop a relationship that makes a court reporter comfortable enough to say well, you know what I really don't like that?

5:25 And they both just don't run away from the situation after that. Wow, that's that's really important and that's like a key, because a lot of court reporters share with me that they struggle because they know that they're trying to do everything, just like we talked about. You know, delegation is important. When we are a court reporter, we need to learn how to delegate certain things so that we can achieve life balance and we can not be so stressed out constantly with trying to play every single role of the entire production of a transcript. But the scopus plays a key role in relieving us from doing all these things that are unnecessary for us to to do ourselves.

6:06 But but a lot of court reporters are kind of afraid to entrust their transcripts, like to know who to entrust their transcript with, because, to be honest, there are times where I mean for me personally I have given, I've tried many different scopists and it's also very time consuming to try new people without first knowing for sure or feeling confident that they are the right fit, and then you end up having to re-scope your entire transcript, which defeats the purpose of paying someone to do it for you. So there's a lot of fear. People are afraid of that step, so that sounds like you kind of solved that problem through Scoping International by teaching them how to not only scope but have a relationship with the court reporter.

6:52 That makes the court reporter feel comfortable is peace of mind and life balance. Transcript is an afterthought really. So, if you don't know how. It's not an afterthought like don't take me out of context everybody, but that's really what the court reporter is looking for, you know. And if they know that you understand that goal and that's where you two are trying to get together, then you are going to have a client for life Like you just you. You really are as a scopus. And then a lot of what I do in my public speaking in the United States anyway, is really educating court reporters on why they get the results that they get and why they're so varied and what it takes to really develop that relationship and maintain it.

7:42 And I kind of say all the things that nobody else has said out loud about kind of the horror stories that they can have sometimes and why it goes that way. And then we work from worst case scenario backwards to help court reporters to have a great outcome and not just one scopist but a team. You know, if you think about it, like you mentioned the word production, a lot of firms have like transcript production departments, you know, and as a court reporter that's working. You know you might have a great scopist, but then what if that scopist wants to go on vacation, you know? Or what if they get sick, or what if you know you do need to reach re-scope the job and you don't have time?

8:26 Do you have a proofreader in your back pocket? You know those types of things. So developing a team is really, you know, important, and so that's what I love to speak about when I'm at NCRA or different state associations, things like that I love to talk about. Tell me your worst nightmare and let me tell you what happened. Yeah, I love that. Wow, so what is? So you ask court reporters to tell yes, I do. I do Even for my scoping and proofing agency. If I'm ever on the call like we're having a discovery call about what they want, I will say, without telling me their name, what were the top three things that drove you insane about your last scoping interaction? You insane about your last scoping interaction, and that just really starts the relationship off to a great start.

9:08 Because as long as I don't do those three things, we're great. You know. But a lot of times court reporters don't know and I know this because I also review transcripts that one pesky error that you just fix all the time because it's like, well, the majority of it was good, gets annoying after a while. You know you keep fixing that same thing but you don't feel like it's worth it to send it in the email because you want to get this out of the door and move on to the next thing. And so when I discover what those things are, I normally know what profile court reporter this is. You know, and I can pretty much tell them why they're not getting the result they want. Nine times out of 10, it's because another court reporter drilled it into their head to do the exact opposite all the time.

9:55 And some of those things just make no logical sense. To another court reporter, like why would somebody tell you to do that? And it's like, yeah, but somebody was paying my bills by me doing the exact opposite thing. That drives you up the wall. So I like to start from there and then just start like unraveling it and teaching. In Scoping International we teach our graduates and our students how to ask for feedback and also how to discover what the court reporter forgets to tell you. So I'll share one quick tip. That tip is send the scopist a transcript They've never scoped of yours with audio.

10:37 For me that is 10 times more relevant than a preference sheet. Wait, so you mean a transcript that's already completed, exactly, but with the audio, so okay. So then they're supposed to listen to the whole thing and see, like what. Yeah, not necessarily the whole thing, but like if I got a transcript from you and you gave me like the whether it's case catalyst or eclipse, but however you send it, I'm going to go in there and I'm going to look at how you clean up what. How do you leave out Okay, and all right, every time you sprinkle it throughout. I'm going to look at how many false starts you let an attorney have before you're like, okay, I'm just going to clean this up this way.

11:23 So I learned a lot about your decision-making and the finalizing process that way. Then I can just go to the transcript and look at okay, how do they, how do you quote? You know how do you use semicolons, who are who's? You know which punctuation and grammar rules are you following? How do you do your bylines? Those are things that outside of, like slashes or dashes for dates, how you do, is that correct versus right? And how you spell numbers. Those are some of the. I know I'm watering it down a lot, but preference sheets don't tell me all of those things I just said to you for the most part, right. Yeah, so having that file, I don't necessarily have to ask you much.

12:04 What I do is duplicate what you've already did, and then I'll even know. Hey, I saw in the sample transcript you sent me that you did it this way in this situation, so I did the same. Is that OK? And you may not have the time to respond to me, but I'm building trust with you as you're going through that transcript. When you get it back, Right and you're like okay, you know what? I think I can send this person another transcript. So that's my one tip. So I do think outside of the box about this relationship in a way that helps a lot of people it really does. That's so great, yeah, mean it's, it's overwhelming to us court reporters.

12:45 Well, at least for me. I remember I would use I used to work with proofreaders and scopists like different ones all the time. Yeah, and whenever they would ask me for a preference sheet, I would be like I don't, I don't know, like I don't. If I look at this preference sheet and try to fill it out, I'm like I don't know, like, yeah, as the proofreader, I would hope that they could teach me what it should be. But, yeah, for me what's most important is just that I want the transcript to be very readable and very easy to just like read through, and there have been some scopists that have that. I just, you know, tried them out and then I got the transcripts back and I realized I should really definitely not entrust like a large transcript but maybe just do it in pieces to try different people, because I had to re-scope hundreds of pages when the scopist was adding commas everywhere that were just unnecessary.

13:36 It was like not very smooth to read it. It just like the style just wasn't. I don't know, it just didn't work out for me. So, hearing you say that, I would say that the reason that it's probably hard for you to develop a preference sheet is a keyword you just said, which is I want it to be readable and a lot of court reporters don't want that. They will instruct the scopist or the proofreader don't want that. They will instruct the scopist or the proofreader. Just follow Morrison's or follow Margie. And that particular scopist or proofreader's understanding of that information may not always come out readable.

14:18 But if I looked at your transcript without you saying that word to me, I would know that I would see okay, she's not so much a stickler Like she doesn't want seven commas on one line, even if they're appropriate to use, whereas another court reporter might be like don't allow the amount of commas to distract you from following the rule. So you have a Scopus now trying to go back and forth with themselves, live in your transcript to make that decision and when in doubt, they're just going to defer to the last success that they had. And that success might be something that is cringe to you.

15:01 Do you know what I mean? Because it just doesn't feel like your transcript. So those are things. Some of those keywords tell me a lot without even looking at your transcript, which is how we try to educate Scopus when they're looking for their, you know, forever court reporter, you know, are you do you just love punctuation and grammar? Okay, so you're not really going to be a good fit for a reporter that wants something readable and wants to be guided on what they think is the best suggestion in that scenario, you know? So, yeah, I totally get what you're saying. Yeah, it can be tough, but the whole production process of a transcript is just.

15:41 There's so many different steps, so many different roles within that. There's the scoping and then there's the proofreading, and then there's the formatting and adding, the includes and making sure that exhibits are linked, and there's so much that goes into it. And I think it's so important to just have dedicated, like a dedicated team to help even just a single court reporter, like it, just for me at least it's too many little pieces to manage for one person without going crazy. I'm sure some people are really good at that, but definitely not. And that's why I think scope is as much as court reporters need to have a system. Scope is need a system, and I think that's one of the things that I noticed when Heidi and Corley and I were having meetings about certain gaps we wanted to close when it comes to educating a Scopus is that the average scopist does not have a specific approach to how they edit a file.

16:39 It's sort of like your eyes just may fall onto the first error and you kind of go from there. There really isn't a specific approach to when you're going to research Like I recommend researching every hour and a half so that you're not doing something wrong the whole transcript, if it's like 180 pages and give yourself breaks, have a target of how many pages per hour you know you can accomplish based on that transcript. You know when are you going to address their preferences, when are you going to address punctuation, what things can you do as you're listening to full audio and what things do you know you just cannot do. So one of the things that we try to educate them on is having a method You're going to do this first, you're going to do this second, you're going to do that third, so that all of those little pieces that go into our role as scoping.

17:23 We don't drop the ball and you don't get the transcript back and see that first out of whack thing and like, oh my goodness, it's going to be a long night. So that feeling I think everybody can identify with it if you've ever used a scopus unless it was like a match made in heaven right off the bat and never left. But everybody else can identify with that feeling. So it does need a system and there is a process and you know we focus on that, we focus on educating that, and that's why we think our graduates are successful. So if a court reporter is interested in finding a scopus, what do you recommend is the best way to? start. So I did a seminar back in, I think, 2021 now at NCRA about how to avoid the pitfalls of hiring a bad scopus.

18:11 And the first thing is, I guess I'll give five main tips. One don't look for a scopist when you need a scopist, because that's just setting you and them up for failure number one. Number two pay a little bit more on the first job as an expedite so you can get answers faster. So instead of sending them a job that is like regular turnaround time, you need it back. Send them like 10 pages of that job to them and say you want it back in two days or three days. You will pay a little bit more, but you'll learn what you need to know faster and it won't be as large of a job.

18:53 You know that you're waiting for results from what about the rest of the transcript? Yeah, so you can decide. If you're like you know what, I got it back in two days. I've still got a good enough amount of time on this left. Go ahead and finish it, or you can already plan yourself that this job was only 50 pages. I was going to do this myself anyway. This is an experiment. They're going to get those 10 pages back to me if they ghost me and I don't hear from them again. It's only 10 pages If they're great. I already had a plan for it anyway, and then I can decide what to do with them. On the next job. We have like a lot of deadlines to manage. Yes, yes, definitely a lot, but it's only for the first. It's the first job. So having that unique approach takes the stress off of you because you know the deadline, and it also teaches you do they meet deadlines, Because if it's 10 pages and you gave them two days to do it and there's some reason they couldn't get it back in that time, run for the hills.

19:48 So you can really learn a lot in that little experiment. And also ask the scopist what reporter? Not maybe the name of them, if they don't want to share, but like, do they work for freelance reporters more or official reporters more? That's really going to determine what you're going to get back. That's a great question to ask. And then, as far as far as like sourcing good scopists, we do offer a service at Scoping International. If a court reporter asks us for a reference on one of our graduates, we will reach out to our graduates and see if they're available. So we do do that. If you don't want to go that route, you can send me a message and I can you know I've worked with a lot of scopers in my time and, depending on what software you are, try to recommend someone that I trust, that I've worked with consistently, and sometimes I know this is going to sound bizarre, but if you look at the polls, a lot of the great scopists were just taught by a court reporter.

20:45 So if you're a court reporter that has like a kid, sister or a little cousin or someone else in the family or a friend that you know wants to learn how to do, learn how to scope, you can teach them that an option. I know that sounds really bad to say, but we only have. We have a limited amount of scopists, yeah, no that doesn't sound bad to say at all I did the same thing for me. In my experience, the best scopists I've worked with, the best scopists that I've worked with and continued to work with for a long period of time, were actually official court reporters that just had extra time. Yeah, that's also a great one. Yep, that's a great one.

21:26 And then my transcript manager, who I hired and I've spoken about her a lot on the podcast and I actually hope to talk to have her on the podcast in the future. I'm going to ask her. But when I was freelancing I had someone dedicated to not only scoping but scoping, proofreading and finalizing the transcript and even managing all the deadlines. Like because you know me with ADHD, it's it's been really difficult. You know, it's too much for me to manage so many different deadlines and to kind of like go back and forth with scopists and proofreaders to check for, like to have to check first and see if they're available. Wait for an answer without being able to just get it out of sight, out of mind, like just send it immediately upon completion.

22:06 That really causes a lot of problems and a lot of delays, and so I hired her to just manage everything and always be dedicated and available so that but she was not a trained scopist, so I I actually hosted in person interviews this is like before COVID and she was really good and she was well educated, intelligent, she had good communication skills, both written and verbal, and that's what was really important for me. She was able to learn it so quickly but she just naturally was able to make a readable transcript, kind of similar to the official court reporters that I've worked with as scopists. Yeah, and it worked out for a good three years until I became, you know, a full-time court reporter in court.

22:51 But yeah, that's awesome, but I, if I were in your shoes and I was a court reporter, I would probably do the exact same thing. I would also say legal transcriptionists can transition into scoping very easily. So if you know of or you have someone that's you know, know about a legal transcriptionist, you can always ask them, you know, would you be willing to learn how to scope? Because legal transcriptionists make the best scopists, because really all they have to learn is the software, but they understand the flow, the formatting and you know, they get the concept of it, you know. So that that's an option as well, because we have such a high demand. We need scopists, we desperately need scopists in the industry.

23:32 Yeah, I mean. What would you be willing to pay for your peace of mind, for life balance? A? Lot of like a lot of court reporters have side or even court reporting is their side thing. Like you know, they a lot especially the listeners probably you know entrepreneurial spirited and have hobbies and things that they're. They're artists and they're musicians and they do a lot of other things on the side. So if you, you want life balance, it's really priceless too. I think I mean it's really important to get your team together so that you can have your life back. Absolutely. We do a lot of brain work. So, even if it's not just about do I have the time, it's that. Do I want to spend that time doing this?

24:13 You know, and over time it you get burnt out a lot faster, you know, and it also takes away from you growing in your skill, you know, going to different conventions or taking classes or learning other skills, you know, to enhance your work product, your final product, is things that you could be doing with your time. If you decide to build a team, which that's the only way I can do, what I do is to have a team. Right, it's like do you want to be spending all of your time managing deadlines and scoping your work and going to proceedings and taking the record down and I don't know?

24:54 It's just. Yeah, I think all court reporters understand the importance of this, but you know like I said some are hesitant to actually get started on building their team, but hopefully through your business, scoping International maybe? Yeah, well, they can visit our Instagram and send us a DM. Our Instagram handle is Scoping International. Yeah, if they are not able to reach us that way which we're pretty good about, you know, responding pretty quickly to DMs you can reach out to me on Facebook as well, rachel artists, and you'll see we will probably have a lot of mutuals and just send me a private message. Awesome, awesome, okay. So hey, thanks for listening to the court reporter podcast. Just to recap, rachel discussed the motivation behind Scoping International, which is an online scoping program designed to fill the need for a teaching approach that resonates with diverse learning styles.

25:45 She also emphasized the importance of building a strong relationship between court reporters and scopists, highlighting the significance of peace of mind and life balance as the core services basically provided through scopists to court reporters. Rachel also shared essential tips for court reporters looking to find reliable scopists, including the value of paying a little bit more for an expedited job to gauge the scopist's efficiency. If you're intrigued by the world of scoping and want to explore further, reach out to Scoping International via their Instagram handle at Scoping International or connect with Rachel Artis directly on Facebook. Thanks again for listening, and if you ever need a little bit more help implementing things and you want to book a coaching consult with me, I would love to hear from you as well.

26:31 You can contact me through thecourtreporterpodcastcom, where you can also leave us a review and give us your feedback. So I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'm sorry about the sirens, I'm not in the best. I'm not in my studio right now. So well, my studio is my closet, which actually doesn't have sirens ever going off in the background, but right now I'm actually not in my closet studio, so I really apologize if you can hear those sirens. Anyway, see you next week at 8 am on Tuesday.