#77 - Scoping in the Age of AI with Rachel Harris

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 Brynn Seymour, 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 Court Reporter Podcast. Today's episode is one I'm very excited about because I'm welcoming back a guest.Well, actually she's more like a co host. Rachel and I are both obsessed with workflow, automation, productivity and building systems that actually support high performing professionals.Maybe because we're both ambitious, neurodivergent women who refuse to accept inefficiency as the status quo.In Nigeria, she's leading the Steno Africa project focused on transforming access to justice by retraining voice reporters into steno reporters and building sustainable court reporting infrastructure where it's needed most. If that raises questions for you, I highly recommend you pause here and listen to episode 75.Rachel has spoken at national conventions on top topics including productivity systems for reporters, software mastery, scoping efficiency. Most recently, she was interviewed by the Journal of Court Reporting in an article titled Life as a Professional Scopist.Rachel is also the founder of Scoping International, a global scoping school that trains scopists to work at an elite level while teaching reporters how to build long term trust based support systems. Rachel, I'm so excited to have you back again. Welcome to the Court Reporter podcast.

Hey Brynn, how are you?

How are you?

I am, I'm good. I'm overwhelmed.

So my voice stays?

Yes, I'm in the States. My voice may sound a little low, I'm good and I may warm up, but I'm exhausted at the moment.Like not, not physically exhausted, just like mentally exhausted. Working on so much stuff, trying to. I'm trying to get so many things done while I'm here that I'm probably spreading myself too thin.But I just feel like I have to get it done because, you know, I'm not sure when I'm going to come back and all that kind of thing. So I'm exhausted.

Are there, are there any specific projects you can share about that you're working on?

Not as of yet. I'm having early talks.

Just figured I'd check.

Yes, yes. I'm not exactly sure. I know. I don't think I can talk about any of them right now. Okay, no problem.

Well, yes, I'm so Eager to ask my questions.So, yeah, so I reached out to you today because lately people have, people have been asking me about like my course and the VTM and how that's going and wanting, like, inquiring about it. And I just feel like.And so I started to reflect on it and think about how it just feels like something about my program feels like it's from 2018, which is when I did it. I did, you know, I created a job description and it was called Virtual Transcript Manager. And I hired hosted interviews and hired someone in person.And her role was basically to manage all the deadlines and all the transcripts and all the, make sure that everything was submitted on time.And I'm sure, you know, you've probably remember me sharing about this, but the main purpose was to create a more sustainable workflow so that I wouldn't have to be chasing deadlines and pages and tracking invoices and billing and bookkeeping and all that. So. So yeah, I hired someone. But I was thinking like, you know, the way that I did that at that time was very unsustainable for a few reasons.I mean, number one, I was paying half of my salary or, well, it wasn't a salary, but, you know, half, like, pretty much half of my income was going to her.And now that technology has advanced so much, I have just been thinking a lot about, like, how can we make sure that we are keeping up with workflows, automations and working smarter. And do scopists have any kind of tools that they're using to speed up the scoping process? What about proofreaders?Like, I've heard there's something in the works where someone is creating something where, like, you know how like in chat GPT, you can just upload a document like a PDF file and it can, I'm not talking about a transcript, but you could upload like an agreement or ask it to summarize something for you or to point out any or to proofread something. Like, you could technically do that. So, okay, like, you get the point.It's like there are so many tools and AI and technology and like, how are scopists? I guess let's start with scopists. Yeah. How, how can that be applied in the scoping industry?

So my answer would be that we, and I'm, I'm talking about court reporters and scopists need to understand how the AI softwares are working. And I think that is number one.I think instead of the messaging or the call to action being put, a real court reporter in the room, you know, no digitals, no AI. We need a stenographer. That pov. I understand it, I do.But we can't improve what we're doing and we can't compete if we don't understand what's happening and what it's doing and how accurate it really is or how, you know, what processes are actually being accomplished.So that would be the first thing I would say, is that we need to understand what it is doing, what it's capable of, how accurate it is, and what amount of work is left over for the scopus to actually do. So I'm sorry, what do you mean by tools?

Like for example, check it in casecat. I tried it once and I didn't like it, so I only used it once. My usage of it stopped that day. It tried to change the word address to dress like.It didn't really have any intelligence, so not even artificial.

So if I can reveal this as a scopist that has worked with you, I will tell you why. Check it didn't work for you. Check it didn't work for you because of how clean and accurately you write, number one. And how little you drop, really.However, and I'm not, I'm not saying this to blow smoke or anything, but you're probably in the top 5 to 10%. Check it is for the other 90. The other 80.

Oh, wow.

Okay, so. And I'm using a lot of different reference points to say that you're in the top 5 to 10%. Now when I say top 5 to 10%, let me be clear.I'm saying the top 5 to 10% of court reporters that I have worked with in 15 years and I think approaching 350. So I'm not talking about every court reporter, but the average court reporter that is looking for a Scopus today. Right.Would use those tools and they would be very helpful to them. Oh my goodness.

I had no idea.

Yeah, so one of the reasons that I say that we need to have a understanding of what the software is doing means that we also need to understand what the average court reporter is actually capable of producing and not. Okay, okay, so then that's going to shape the tools that a scopist would use.So off the top of my head, there are no AI tools that would help me scope your transcript better that I know of.

Okay.

It would actually be more time consuming and create more work for me.

Okay. So I, I'm not really missing anything. Like I shouldn't be looking for anything like that.

I don't Believe so. No.

That's good because it's. It felt like exhausting kind of it. Like I was missing something.

No, you're missing something because you don't have the awareness of how other court reporters are writing. I can give you an. Kind of an example of what I mean by that. I got an email or an inquiry to scope a couple of weeks ago to my agency.And this was a request from a court reporter that had emailed us maybe three or four times in the past five years asking for help. Okay, scoping. Now, we replied to each email over the course of time. Right. And of course, I think we all have that in business.You'll have somebody reach out to you. It doesn't really work the first time.Scheduling or they got it covered, whatever it might be, you know, and then before you know it, you kind of have this trail of conversations that span maybe four or five years. Yeah.And so if I can be transparent about my opinion, when I went back to look at those messages, those emails, the request to look for a scopus was that, you know, they really needed a lot of help. They were backed up.Now, I never worked with them, so I never saw the transcript, but I find it ironic now that the request is that they are using an AI type software and they need to know if we can scope to that. So that gives me a couple of clues. Right. There was something about their writing when they were using stenography as their method of capturing. Right.That wasn't meeting the mark to the point that they were interested in switching over to an AI type software to do it for them.And then have a scopist, though, that if, if someone was a stenographer 10 years ago and now they're interested in using, you know, AI assistive type, digital recording, you know, technology, that means that their editing was super labor intensive, super labor intensive. So then that was really helpful to them, really helpful to them.

But it's still. I mean, no matter how clean you write, I feel like it still takes so much time. Maybe I just go too crazy, like verifying things, I don't know.

So I think that this is what I think. I think we might have discussed this one time before. I feel like somewhere between 25 and 40 pages per hour, it should never.You should never be faster than that, in my opinion. And that's how long it should always take you.So if you're doing 35 to 40 pages an hour and you're the court reporter scoping your own work, there's no tool that is going to allow you to move faster than that to come up with the type of final draft that you're looking for.

Okay, well that, that clarifies a lot. I think it's.

Yeah, but if you're editing between 10 pages per hour and below. Yes. Get all the AI tools that are out there.

Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know. I think, to be honest, I've never even measured how many pages per hour.That's probably going back to our ADHD conversations. Like I never took the time to actually figure that out.

It's imperative. It's so important to know. And I. We might have covered it, but I can go over it again.The fastest way to know that without sitting there scoping for an hour straight is set a five minute timer. Scope what you can in five minutes, whatever that sum is, multiply it by 12. That's how many pages you scope an hour.

So we're talking about like a reg. I mean, because I feel like so many different parts of the.Even in the same proceeding, different parts of the transcript are going to be much faster than others, depending on the rambling and the technical terms and whether it's intros and yes and no questions.

If you want, if you want those variables, then time yourself in each of those areas. However, you still will develop an average. You're not using that as like finite data to do anything.What you're trying to understand is what is my average? Now what I recommend to scopists and court reporters is divided by the type of case.Is it a motion, is it sentencing hearing, is it, you know, what type of transcript is it? And then put it in a certain category. Is it technical or is it not? You know, and then that should be your average.And that's just your knowledge that way, you know, am I missing out or am I not?

Got it?

So I feel like right now for Scopus, most tools that I would say are helpful to us don't have anything to do with making changes in the software yet. I would love to see that. But for nothing in the software. I use ChatGPT to understand court reporters thinking on their preference sheet.Sometimes that's really cool because I kind of get analysis paralysis sometimes. Court reporters communicating to me what they want because sometimes it's very contradicting to my brain.

Oh my gosh, don't even get me started on preference sheets. Like, yeah, I won't say anything on that.

Yeah, so I love AI for that. And I can also throw things at it. That maybe aren't on the preference sheet, Right.If they use quotations in this way, I'm kind of giving you the idea of a prompt, right?If they use quotations in this paragraph in this way, in this scenario, following Morrison's or following whatever the authority is, what would they prefer? And then whatever that answer it gives me, what I use that for is to then go and have a conversation with those suggestions to the reporter.Hey, I noticed you use quotes this way on page five in this area. Here's a screenshot. I'm down here on page 12, and I'd be like, know what you do? Would you prefer this or that? And they love it.It's like they can easily pick it. You know what I mean? They can easily select what they want. I can understand it now because I know what I'm asking.One thing that's so hard about scoping is just knowing how to ask what you want to ask because it's in your head, you know, and how to formulate it into a good email. So that's some of the things that I use as a scope, is that those are the tools that I'm looking at for AI.I would also say things like just creating spreadsheets for spelling lists. Those things can be really helpful, assisting in that way workflows, what I'm going to scope first, second and third.So it's not necessarily in software AI tools that I'm aware of that make my job as a scopist easier or faster. But like I said, even for a court reporter or a scopist going faster than 40 pages an hour, you're looking to just miss and overlook things.So I actually think in this time of AI, it's important that scopists actually hone their skills and be able to identify what the highest and best use of our time is when we're editing. Yeah.

What is. What would that be?

Well, it depends on the reporter you're editing for. So, like, for instance, I had a previous court reporter that did video depots a lot and they were synced.So one of the major things they really, really cared about was the placing of dashes for interruptions and resuming. And did this person actually get interrupted? Did they start over? Did they pick up from where they left off?And that was something that court reporter really, really cared about. And during my time with that reporter, I got really, really good at that.And that's an in software change that I don't believe, you know, AI is addressing at this moment. Those are the types of Things that I think scopists should really get good at that as of this time, can't help you. AI can't help you to do that.AI can't decide where a change of thought is when you're using colloquialisms and understanding the speech pattern of that particular judge, using all that other information to decide, okay, they really changed their thought right at this moment.

Do you find that most reporters try to do verbatim or intelligent?

Verbatim, I would say, I think it's a 50, 50 split in my experience.

Like some. Some of them want every single thing to be completely like every stutter, every filler word. And then some want it like that sometimes or just don't.Or just want it more like only if it's videotaped. Is that the pattern you notice.

So I would say the reporters that are super verbatim, it's not that they want all the stutters and like, and it is that they want all of the false starts, all of the words in the false starts. They want all of the changes of thought they want. And they want it chronological. Super chronological.Like if the witness is saying, okay, every sixth word that the attorney is speaking, they want that okay in there at the right time that they said it. If the witness is saying, you know, in agreement, following the line of thought of the questioning attorney, they want that in there.So I wouldn't say that verbatim. Verbatim is more of the stutters and the filler words, like the. No, not those. And they also want half words.

Oh my gosh, you know what? I have to share an experience I recently had, because this is very related.So I always thought that was kind of unreasonable to require all those things. I always just preferred intelligent, readable. But I realized that it's not unreasonable to want half words and stutters and false starts.It's actually really important to include those things because.And I only realized this because it happened to me in a trial recently when I started taking per diem work in the White Plains Surrogate Court, which is not even a common court to have trials. But there was a trial last month or at the end of 2025, and there was a. A word that the witness said. Half a word the witness said.But I didn't write it down because she changed her thought so quickly before I even got to write it down.So sometimes, you know, if they stutter and change their thoughts and I'm not exactly writing on top of their words, which usually is not even really. That's not Possible, you know, we're always a couple words behind. So I didn't get that word, half the word.And the attorney heard it, heard her say it, and it was like, I guess it proved his point or whatever point he was trying to make in the trial, like to try to prove that she's hiding something or whatever. So he was like, he even at one point he asked to go back and read and he was trying to.It was one of those situations where they were trying to get me to find a specific part of the transcript. I was searching through the transcript for the keywords and like, could you just, could you tell me like a few phrases or words?Because I'm not, I'm not seeing what you're looking for. And, and then they like, it's. They wanted to like come and look at my screen and help me find it.And so it turns out that I, and I told them, you know, when, when I go, when I scope and review everything, I will be able to play back the audio. And that's when, you know, if that word, if it was said, then I'll, I'll let you know, or something along those lines.And so then he emails me and he's like, could you send me the audio recording? Which was a very strange request and I've never had anyone ask me to do that before.So I, I was asking my mentor, Joshua, I was asking him, like, what do I, how do I respond to this? What do you, what do you think? And he.Anyway, we had a whole conversation back and forth and I ended up sending him a small, like a portion of the audio and he directed me to exactly where it was in the transcript and I found it. So then what I did. So the word was. I don't know if I should say the word. I don't want to give away any. I don't want to give anything away.But the word was a, it was a four letter word and only the first three letters were heard. And what she said. So when I listened, when I re. Listened to the audio very carefully, I heard the first three letters, not the fourth letter.So I wrote in the transcript the first three letters with a half dash, like right attached to the first three letters. This is what I learned from one of my proofreaders when I first started working with a proofreader. And then a dash.So it was like a half dash plus a dash with the half word. I sent him a screenshot of that and said, this is what I hear and this is what I wrote.And he, you know, he was a little upset about it because he wanted the full word.But anyway, the point is, that whole experience made me realize, like, how important it is because you never know what word that seems insignificant might. If any portion of a word is spoken, I mean, that is our duty to take it down.

So what you're describing is something that I think scopists need to understand and court reporters need to understand that that is what I am servicing. Those experiences shape your career.You know, it shapes the decisions that you make going forward from that moment, however small or big or medium, whatever size issue it was for you, you know, and however much I don't want to use the word pain, but maybe discomfort you might have had in that moment, right?It's been that a reporter was embarrassed and called out by a judge on the record, and they just swore that that will never happen again, however it may be. So those types of things, you know, are things that scope is balanced when they're scoping with different reporters. And it shapes also how we scope.So if you could take your situation, right, and let's say I've scoped for you for 10 years and based on that you said, if there's more than a full syllable, put it in, right? And do you know the suspended hyphen and then a dash?If I did that, then when you retire or when you don't need me as a scopist anymore, or when you go on vacation or whatever it might be, and I start working with another court reporter, I'm going to do that and they're going to think I'm insane if they've never had that situation shape their decisions, right? And so what they're going to reflect on is the teacher that told them, this is our job.It's the person that was giving them their RPR test to tell them what to focus on, you know what I mean? They're going to pull from their resources and their bank of knowledge to decide why they disagree with that or why that's not right.So those types of things, for me as a scopist, when I'm looking at AI and tools and all those kinds of things, I don't think we. There's nothing that can speed that up. That's decision making based on experience. So no tool that can replace that I'm pulling from.You're pulling from our real world. Examples that aren't coded into the editing tools that we use right now.When I say editing tools, I mean like Case Cat or Eclipse or Digital Cat, things like that. Those real World experiences aren't coded yet. And engineers and developers, we are not the engineers and developers for the most part.So thinking in that way to be able to assist us in the software is not what's happening. So those. That's the skill that you can't speed through.So when I go back to say 40 pages an hour should be maximum in my opinion is because of having to think about those types of things and make those types of decisions. So yeah, I would say that's my opinion. But that's a great example because that's what shapes how I scope.

Yeah, I would. So now I'm. I'm never gonna think that it's unreasonable when people do that.Although, I mean I think that was a very interesting situation and it was definitely eye opening, every word so important. So now.Okay, before I move on to asking about Eclipse and casecat, like has anyone built an AI tool for preference sheets or for like these types of workflows?

So I know of. Yes, I hope it's okay. I don't know how deep they've gone recently and I'm literally searching her.

I think I know who you're. Yeah, I don't know we can ask her for permission if both can ask.

Her permission, but that's who I know of. Okay.

Yeah, I remember we talked about this like yeah. A while ago.

Yes, that's who I know of. So yeah, I haven't made the time to work on any bots myself. Any, any, any. Is it called GPTs? I don't know inside of ChatGPT.You know, you can create your own customized agents or LMLs.

I think that's what I learned from Matt Moss when we did our episode.

Okay. So yeah, I haven't given that any serious thought that Costa go about it but.Or as you know, like I haven't really thought about it because like I said, in my opinion right now until the only software that I know and the audience can correct me if I'm wrong, the only software that makes it simpler for users to tweak things is Eclipse. Okay.

And that's what I was going to ask about next because I was just.

Speaking to.

David Ross who is the CEO of Transatlantic and he told me to reach out to. I think his name is also David from. From Eclipse. Yeah, I haven't yet but I've been wanting to switch from Case Cat to Eclipse for that reason.Like if they're better and more advanced technologically. And just like I've heard that the waiting time is less when you call support do you have any thoughts on that?

I do. So this is my experience when it comes to editing.In my opinion, editing in Eclipse is so much easier, but not for the reasons that everybody would think from the editing side. So it's not like Eclipse has functions that Case Catalyst doesn't have. No, most of the functions are the same. The issue is or not the issue.Sorry, I'm not able to sort and find the right words I want to say at the moment.What I'll say is that court reporters that use Case Catalyst is a very labor intensive type of software to learn compared to Eclipse for the court reporter. So there's a lot of unresolved issues that happen all the time with a Case Catalyst stenographer versus an Eclipse stenographer.So obviously, if they aren't fussing with the software as much while they're writing, there's less changes that I as the scopist have to make. So that's kind of a tick or a point for Eclipse in my book in that way. Yeah.

Yeah. I can't remember what it. What it was in our conversation, my conversation with David, but definitely it was.I was leaning towards switching to Eclipse or just at least exploring it to see what it's like. So I think I'm going to do that now.

I have a tick for Case Catalyst. To be fair, when it comes to Real Team versus Connection Magic.

Oh, yes.

Real Team is way more stable consistently now.The experts that have been using Connection Magic since its inception and those that use it every day and all the time, they have workarounds, they understand it, they have solutions, they know what to do, they know how to troubleshoot and get through those obstacles.But if you were to be a part of a Connection Magic group or an Eclipse group on Facebook and a Real Team one, and you just sat there and watched side by side the issues that are coming up through the day and how frequently the same reporter or the same scopist is complaining about the same thing side by side. I see that Real Team has less issues.

Okay, that's good. That's important.

Yeah.So I would say if you are doing dailies and immediates and you're in trial and you really want your team of scopists and proofreaders in the software with you getting things done on time in a timely manner, and you don't want glitches and all of those kinds of issues as much, there are less complaints on Real Team. Got it. However, if it goes back to kind of the foundation of how the stenographer is Interacting with the software as a whole.Even if you do have some delays, it doesn't take as long to catch back up because there's less to change, you know, on the Eclipse side of things. So that's just me trying to be balanced about my responses.But I do think that I enjoy editing in Eclipse way more because I'm not concentrating on things that I have to concentrate on Case Catalyst, that slows me down.

Okay, got it. That's really good to know. Yeah. I'm still going to explore Eclipse just to see, you know, if I'm interested in switching over and comparing them.

I think you'll like it because of. If I can save this. You're mastery of Case Catalyst.

So I feel like I don't know any I like. I definitely don't feel like I've mastered it.

What I mean by mastery, I mean to write as clean as you write in case from your writer means that all of the. I shouldn't say all, but a majority of the things that hold stenographers back, that really struggle in case catalysts, you don't have those issues.So because you don't have those issues and you've probably found solutions. Right.And you actually remember what it costs you to solve this problem and solve that problem and fix, you know, taking all those things off of your list, so to speak, to get your transcripts to look as clean as they do as you're writing, then you probably really would enjoy Eclipse because it would take less effort to get it to the state that you're at now. But if I were you, I think it'd be a nice experiment. But I think your.The results that you have in Case Catalyst, you wouldn't necessarily feel the differences that I'm explaining. If you switch to Eclipse because you're. You're where you need to be, you're not missing anything.

It's interesting because I don't feel like I've really done much to like. I feel like there's just so many little, I guess, inconveniences, like little tiny things, like a space inserting itself before the period.Like, so the period is kind of loading. And I. I'm like, I'm spending so much time fixing all these little, tiny, little space issues and I'm.

Yes, and that's kind of what I'm talking about. That's part of those little things that I'm sure there are solutions to.But I think collectively what I've observed is most stenographers on case just live with it. Yeah, you know, and they live with a very long list, whereas I don't see Eclipse stenographers living with any kind of list.

Yeah, I mean, I, that's amazing if they do make a list, because at least that means they have the list to refer to and they want to fix it. But for me, it's like I, the list is somewhere in my mind, but I. And like, I always really want to fix it.But again, probably going back to ADHD habits. I don't know why I just never got around to fixing it, even though, like, because sometimes it just, I guess, seems so small that.But it would probably save so much time.

Like those, they add up. They, they really, really add up. So that's why I would say those are the tools. That is the air quotes.AI Things that if a scopist or a court reporter got rid of their list, they would feel like they were using AI. I guarantee it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So. All right, I'm going to pause us right here and cap this conversation.At the halfway point in the second half of this discussion, we go deeper into how to actually implement that advice that Rachel just shared today. Because that insight is powerful, but execution is where everything really changes.We talk specifically about mastering your software and why that is the fastest way to feel like you're truly utilizing AI in your workflow.She said if you fully learn and use all the features that your software already has, or even half of them, or even like a portion of them, she said she guarantees you'll feel like you're scoping with AI. So, yes, my next stop on this journey may very well be trying out Eclipse.Until next time, stay curious, stay empowered, and keep building systems that work for you, not against you. I'll see you in the next episode.