#85 - Transforming from Average to Exceptional High-Stakes Realtime Reporter: Session 1 with Joshua Edwards, RMR, RDR

  📍 📍 📍 Sorry, I, I just figured I should record this. That's fine. So auto indexing and, and more broadly use of format symbols, are definitely on the list of things, but that, that topic itself is gonna be at least one hour and possibly two or three sessions for even you to really master. Oh wow. Okay. And then even also macros and stuff, because I, there's just a lot of things that I feel like, oh my gosh, I'm doing all this manually, and it's so mm-hmm.

Time consuming. Yeah. And it's just like, it makes me hate it. Mm-hmm. And even, oh my gosh, my last, the one job that I'm doing right now that I'm like working on, I was listening as I was scoping it, and I remembered how terrible that job was because they made me the remote technician and they made me scroll around as they were looking at their exhibits and stuff.

Like I was the one that had to do that. And I told them, yeah, you should never, never agree to do that. I know I took like, you know, if I'm doing this, then we're not on the record. And they were like, okay, that's fine. Like, 'cause they didn't, no, no, no. No, that's different. "If I'm doing this, then we're not on the record" gives them a a plausible reason to say, okay, well then we want you to do it. What you need to say is, I am not the remote technician. You need to have somebody else open the exhibits and scroll through them so that I can create the record while you discuss the exhibits. Yeah, that would've been better.

Yeah, but I knew that they didn't have someone else. Well, that's their problem. I mean, I'm not trying to come down on you hard, I'm saying that it's not the court reporter's job to scroll through exhibits remotely while you're also. I guess I didn't, I didn't know what was the standard procedure 'cause I've been asked to do that many times in the past and I just never said no if they, because it's not like all the time, but once in a while they'll ask. And I just thought that was something that maybe lower end or less organized agencies do. Well that's not like an excuse to do something that shouldn't be your, your job.

It's not your purview. So, so what can you say? No, I didn't have a standard procedure for how to avoid that. So, okay. I'm gonna give it to you. How, when you accept remote work and you say, I'm confirmed for Monday at nine, whatever, please ensure there is a separate remote technician available to handle exhibits.

Mm-hmm. Okay. I, I do something similar. It has nothing to do with this, but I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a building in New York City and they don't have my name in security, and I have to sit there and wait for them to call the law firm and for the secretary to add my name, and then for the security guard to see me in the computer, and then they print me a pass.

So now when I confirm a job in person in New York City, I say, please ensure my name has been added to security before I arrive. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah, that, that happened to me that day that you covered the realtime job for me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is that probably you frustrating there? Frustrating?

Yeah, it's, well, I mean that it happened to me because that was such a last minute switch and I understand that, but it should not have happened to you because you were scheduled for that deposition, like normal, forgetting about what happened with your machine. It, you should have been in security so that you could show up, hand your id and they say, oh, miss, miss.

Reynolds or Seymour, whatever, you know, uh, here's your pass, have a good day. It should be seamless. But what happens is they schedule a reporter, they tell the attorneys, Hey, we got you a court reporter. And then they just kind of drop it and forget to, um, put the sec, the reporter in security, and then the reporter shows up and you get blank stares from the security.

Hmm. So. So going back to, to your situation as the remote technician, you need to insist not, you know, if you make me the remote technician, then it'll be difficult, blah, blah, blah. No, I am not the remote technician. Please ensure that you have a remote technician available to handle exhibits. Okay. And then if they push back and they say, well, other reporters do it, you say, well, I cannot do two functions.

I would prefer to have a remote technician. You have to stand up for yourself. Mm-hmm. I, I would, I, I don't care. I would actually decline a job if they, if they say, Joshua, you're really being difficult. You, you know, other reporters have no problem with this. I would say, well, you know what? I think you should get, you should assign this job to someone else.

I would, yeah, the level of like, I mean the discomfort, it just felt so frustrating in the job. Mm-hmm. I was like so unmotivated to be there and yeah. Just felt so frustrating and like it frustrated you. It, it made you, yeah. It deflated you. And this job is hard enough without feeling those emotions that were unnecessary to begin with.

Yeah. So what I'm trying to do as your, your coach, I'm trying to give you the tools so that you can avoid that so that you can be a better reporter, a happier person slash reporter and be able to do your job without having to feel this weight on your shoulders.

Yes. That's what I wanna do. So, so what I'm saying is cut it off at the pass, so to speak. Mm-hmm. When you, when you, the next time you accept a remote job for any agency, add that line to your confirmation email and say, please ensure there is a separate. Technician, e exhibit technician available. Okay. And they'll either say, okay, we got it.

Or they'll push back and they'll ask you why. And then, you know, if you want my help with responding, that's fine, but at least put it in there so that you're setting the expectation. You're not gonna be the one to do that. I've, I've heard stories of people having to scroll through exhibits and then they say, can you open the next page?

Oh, can you share your screen so I can see what's on your desktop? Yep. And that's like, my goodness, I, I would never subject myself to that. That's like torture by, by red hot pokers. Yeah. They had me scrolling through like Yeah. So many pages and going from document to document while they tried to figure out which one it was, the correct one.

It was just really, it was so, so frustrating. Mm-hmm. And I couldn't write anything that they were saying. 'cause I told them like, I'm not, we're not on the record if, if we're doing this Yeah. If I'm doing this. So I'm not, yeah. I'm not gonna say that anymore. Good. Very good. Alright. I think we've, we've beat that issue down enough, so, but there should be a list of those things that, those habits that I need to, like, I need to Well, that's break, that's what this conversation is.

I'm, I'm, I'm trying to pick your brain. What are the other habits? Ignoring the case cat warning that cloud storage is full, performing remote technician functions, not updating the spreadsheet, or not being the VTM. Yes. Just we're brainstorming. Just gimme some more. Yeah. It's just they come up naturally in conversation.

Okay. Not knowing how to use macros. Macros, uh, doing a lot of, of automatic things that could be automated. Doing them manually and knowing that they, there is a way to automate them and that I'm not doing it, that adds a lot of frustration and stress as well. I'm assuming that means the index, right? Yeah.

That's automating the, the index is really the biggest issue of automation, but also it's beautiful when you use it. Yeah. Also the start page and end pages, and that's a whole nother thing that I feel like school never really. I never really understood like the different types of proceedings and because you know how there's like depositions, but there's also things that have different names like, um, EO and like, do I have a separate?

Mm-hmm. I mean, I always just use the same thing, same type of, uh, same cover page usually, or just use what I last used that seems similar and kind of customize it. And then I end up doing it all manually. And re retyping the caption based retyping the, you know, even not just, of course, the case specific things have to sometimes be done manually, but I feel like I'm doing a lot of other things manually. Mm-hmm. And also a lot of questioning, am I even doing this right? Mm-hmm. Is this even the right page that, is this the right format? Like, and then the appearances. I know that in school they taught there was a way to make it like the, to kind of automate the people that you regularly work with.

Yes. I don't feel the need to do that 'cause I don't really work with the same people as often as I would like to, I mean, maybe I will in the future, but at this point it's kind of like, it feels like an extra thing to do to worry about when it might not be necessary. Um, what else? The end pages. My, sometimes I have to, like, my include files are all disorganized, so, and some of them I got from other court reporters and it still has like other people's names.

Yeah. Like I just need to fix on, clean all that up. Yeah, that's, these are all issues that are in the document that I had prepared because I know these are the issues that other people have have come to me and said, you know, I'm, I'm struggling with this. Good. I'm glad I'm not the only one. No, no, no.

Because that's what happened. People say, can you give me your includes? And then you just get a bunch of files and they say, back it up into your, uh, restore it to your system files. Yes. And you're like, what is all of this? Yeah. I have so many. It's never made clear like what belongs where and what goes with what.

And um, yeah, I understand the source of the confusion. It's like there's a, it is like there's a, there's um, a, well an aquifer somewhere that's, that's got poisoned water and that water has been trickling out for years and it's been tainting everyone downstream and nobody can seem to get to that source and fix it.

Yep. Love that analogy. Yeah. I think it's, it's paramount importance to understand you. You said the EUO versus what are things called? Yes. That's okay. And in the January 1st episode that I released this year on the podcast, I talked about how, like jurisdictional differences and mm-hmm. You know, different types of proceedings and all that.

I, I kind of feel like I never really mastered. Well, of course I don't need to master every jurisdiction, but you know what I mean, like what's really the core concepts of that? Doesn't, it doesn't matter what jurisdiction you're in or like what, you know, those little differences are. But like you, I feel like I've, I wanna feel like I've come to a point of mastery of just like the concepts of what we really need to understand.

Federal versus state. Okay. Okay. You, this is a gross oversimplification of course, but for the most part, you're gonna take depositions in either a federal court case or a state court case.

Okay. Federal is the United States government. Okay. So the federal courts are called District Courts, okay. I know. Well, yes. Okay. I know you know that, but I'm just, I'm trying to give you the most simple. Yeah. You never know what I, there might be things that I don't know that are really obvious, so Yeah.

But just give me the, the 5-year-old explanation. Yeah. Okay. When you get an email from an agency and it says, Brynn, are you available for this job? And you say Yes, and they send you the caption and the caption says, United States District Court, district of whatever. It could be Delaware, it could be New York, it could be California, it could be Texas.

Doesn't matter. If it says United States District Court, that means it's federal, the United States government. The United States Federal Court system. Okay. And, and you remember the session, I remember the moment that you were in my session at in NCRA couple years ago, and I talked about the constitution and the, the three branches of government.

Yes. And Article one, and I said, ledge, legislative, executive and judicial, LEJ. Article three establishes the federal. Slash united States Federal Court system, which are the district courts, the appellate courts, which are called Circuit Courts and the United States Supreme Court that resolves all questions of federal law and constitutional interpretation.

So that's federal. If it says United States District Court, it's, it's a United States Federal court case. And that's as opposed to a state court case. What's the difference? Well. Assuming somebody suing someone, if they're suing under the claiming that the other person vice. State law somehow it's gonna be a state court case.

Mm-hmm. And so the state is, for the most part, gonna be New York because that's where you live and work. Yeah. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't take a state court case for another state if the witness happens to be living in New York and you happen to be the court reporter, which is fine. But the, the case might be a state court case for any of the other 49 states.

It could be Florida, it could be Hawaii, it could be wherever. A state court case just means that the, the parties are suing and being sued under the laws of fill in the blank state, whatever state it is. And that's, those are both called depositions. The only court to that is that in New York, we call a deposition and examination before trial, EBT.

It's exactly the same thing as a deposition. Okay. Okay, so you have federal court cases, which have their own set of, includes their caption and the appearances and stipulations, and then you have the state court cases, which have their own caption and appearances, and sometimes stipulations, sometimes no stipulations.

Yeah, that, and that's another question. 'cause the stipulations are always different, even inside of New York State. Like each agency decides their own stipulations. Mm-hmm. I don't even know. I just don't even use stipulations sometimes. And then sometimes, that's what I'm gonna say. I think the stipulations are ridiculous to include in a transcript unless an attorney says, please include the standard stipulations.

And that's rare. They've been doing that less and less. Someone did that recently. Or Or they asked, they were like, oh, you, there's usual stipulations, right? Yeah. So I didn't even know So that, yeah, so if that was a New York State Court case, you would use the stipulations, the standard quote, standard stipulations, or the usual stipulations from the New York Rules of Civil Procedure, civil CPLR, civil Practice Law and Rules.

Those are rules that only govern practice of law in New York. Okay, so you would not use. Your standard CPLR stipulation in a district court case. Why? Because the CPLR is from New York's laws. It applies to the state of New York, but it has nothing to do with federal court, um, jurisdiction or, or litigation.

Now they have their own rules. Federal practice, uh, F-F-R-P-C, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. So, you know, the law loves these acronyms. So Federal has the FRCP and New York has the CPLR. Each state has its own version of that. I can't name them because I don't know them. You. Okay. Okay. But just if, if you think of a sheet of paper and you draw a line down the middle, the the 5-year-old explanation that you asked for federal on the left, state on the right.

Hello? Yeah. Did you hear that? Federal on the left state on the right? Yeah. I thought you were gonna elaborate. No. Oh, okay. Well, and all these little nuances go underneath each column. So under federal you would have United States District Court, you would have FRCP, you would have, um, uh,

you know, uh. Circuit court, trial court, circuit court, and Supreme court. All of all of these, I'm just saying these, these are all words or entities that, that fall under that category of federal. And then under state, you would have, you know, CPLR for New York, you would have the 50 states, you would have steps for each state.

Wow. A document like that would be so amazing to have. Yeah. I, I can create one. It's very high level. Very high level. And that's, that's really, but that's the level that I would like to be thinking at because that way I can have a basic understanding across jurisdictions of just like what we need to know and what applies to us, because I don't think that we have that into our education.

Like it's not really, there's a lot of things that I feel like I can't even ask that question 'cause I should know that, you know, Uhhuh. So, have you ever heard of a 30 B six witness? Yes. Okay. Do you have, uh, it is a pop quiz. What is a, give me your understanding of what that means. 30 B six. I've heard the term, but I think it's something with like workers' comp or some kind of workers'.

Okay. Excellent. That's an excellent response that, because what that tells me is we need to clarify. Um, so 30 B six. Is a rule from the federal rules of civil procedure. Okay. So which side of the piece of paper would you put? 30 B six on? Uh, the, the side of the federal court. I don't remember if you said left or right.

Yeah. Well under federal. Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't matter left or right. You know, state could go on the left and federal could go on the right. My point is 30 B six is related to federal court. Yeah. And a 30 B six witness is called a corporate designee. Most, um. Most qualified to testify on behalf of a corporation.

Okay. For example, if somebody sues Amazon, Amazon as a company can't talk. So it has to, it has to designate a human being. Mm-hmm. Who works for Amazon and who has the knowledge of whatever AR area that Amazon is being sued for, and then that person would be designated as a 30 B six witness the witness, the corporate designee.

Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. A designee is somebody who is designated Yes. So that basically, this is an example of what we would put on this. Document that we are going create. Exactly, yes. Okay. Okay, cool. So we need, so let's create that document that'll help me to navigate through all the things that I feel like I kind of don't fully understand and Yeah.

Um, yeah. Okay, good. Alright. So, um, I don't, I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. Okay. Going well. You do you mean issues that, uh, that you would like to resolve? Yeah, because that, I mean, that sheet covers pretty much like a lot, a lot of the things that I would like to cover. Mm-hmm. But, but I know that as we go through things thing, other things within Case Cat and with the software and with doing things faster, those types of things will come off.

But I just can't remember them off the top of my head. Okay. No, this was a very good start. Yeah. To disambiguate some of these confusing. Um, concepts. Yeah, and basically all the things that you've kind of tried to teach me in the past that I just, they didn't really stick with me for some reason. I, maybe I didn't, didn't do it hands on enough or just didn't really write it down and take good notes.

I never, because you did show me, you showed me how to do macros for some reason. I just didn't get it. And then you also showed me some other things. But I, so just so you know, going, when these things come up and you're like, I thought I already showed you these things, just just so you know to expect.

That I didn't remember how to do some of the things you showed me. Well, what's the best way for me to teach you slash hold you accountable so that you, you start remembering Because what, what the, one of the strongest ways for people to remember new information is blind review, where you review. Um, you know, a little piece of what you studied before.

For example, if, if a grade student is trying to memorize all 50 states, they would start with the anchor points. Everybody can find Florida. Everybody can find Texas. Everybody can find California. Yeah, but not everybody could point out Illinois versus Indiana because they're kind of in the middle and they have the same letter that starts the name.

So you, you blind review new information. So that you quiz yourself and you say, okay, do I remember what Joshua said about the 30 B six witness? And the best way to to figure that out is to explain it to someone. Mm-hmm. Or pretend you're explaining it to someone, you know, try to, um,

who's willing to listen to this stuff and say, Hey, do you mind if I, if I explain to you a concept, it's called the 30 B six witness, and they're gonna say, okay. Go ahead and then you say A 30 B six witness is, and then you fill in the rest. Okay. Yeah, that's, that's great. So I'll try to Yeah, we can create something like that.

Um, it's, it's so interesting that, you know, being a certified, can you hear me by the way? I'm driving through kind of a, yeah. A battery area. Okay. So it's, that's another thing I, when study. Or when a court reporter wants to study for the RPR or for like. Uh, the certification exam, these are not things that are on there.

It's not generally things that we're required to talk about or to understand or to learn. Instead, we're, we're required to study to become a notary, which is like something completely, well, at least in New York. It's the notary test. I found myself studying for eight hours, like for like a full day to prepare for the notary test.

And it just felt like, what does this have to like 90% of this? What does it have to do with being a corporate? If I were required to study this stuff instead, it would be so much better. Yeah, no, totally agree. And that's unfortunate that we, we spend so much time wasting time. We waste so much time doing things that are not germane to our job.

But in California, I think like their CSR exam covers all this stuff probably, and they feel more qualified. Um, but then in New York, you know, we're just studying this notary stuff. And I think that even the RPRI remember asking people what to study and how to study for it, and they're just like, I couldn't even tell you.

Like, I, I don't even know how I passed. Or, you know, things like answers like that or like the classic social media. Um, Stephanie and. Dene, they posted things about passing the RPR and it was like funny gif things about like when you ask me what to, how to study for the RPR. Mm-hmm. And, um, it's like, I don't know, I really don't know.

Like it was a funny, it was like a funny audio and it, but it was just like emphasizing over and over and over again. I have no idea what to study for the RPR. So it kind of, I dunno, it kind of gave me the feeling that like even the RPR might be a waste of time to study for if it's not covering the basics that we really need to know.

Understand. Understand how to be a good court reporter. Yeah, I mean, I feel, uh, that I feel exactly that way. I feel that this, this job really should be based on your skill and who cares if you know what a medical term means, if you can write it and you know how to look it up and spell it correctly for the transcript.

This job is all about skill and procedure. And, and, um, if you're a court reporter, your work product is the transcript. And if you're a captioner, your work product is the translation on the screen. It's that simple, right? It's that simple. So, yeah, I don't have a good answer for that. It's just if you want the RPR as a matter of personal satisfaction and pride, you just have to study everything and, um.

Do your best on the test? Well, I don't, did you have, I mean, I'd rather get the CSR than California. I just studied for the California test. Well, what are you gonna do with the California CSR? Well, I, I just generally wanna be like, I want to understand the, the things we need to understand to have confidence in navigating through all the legal, like all the.

Different types of transcripts, like what we were just talking about in the jurisdictions and Okay, what is the core thing to understand, you know, that type of thing. Well, that sounds like training rather than certification. I mean, I don't know. The CSR is is in California, is notorious for being probably the hardest Oh, in the country.

Well, I mean, I think it was, I dunno, I've never thought maybe it was more relevant. I thought it was more relevant, but still hard, you know. I, I don't know. I've never looked into it, so I really, I can't answer that. But, um, the stuff that's, that's relevant for our job is definitely at a basic level, the difference in jurisdiction, which is federal versus state.

Okay. And, you know, if you, um. You know, we can get into all of the different, like plaintiff and counter plaintiff and third party plaintiff and counter claimant, and counter defendant, cross claimant, you know, all these little nuances. Um, they're interesting actually. I think they're kind of interesting. Um, yeah.

But no one's ever gonna ask you like, the, the, the biggest discussion you'll probably ever have is when you ask an attorney, so which party do you represent when you're getting their appearance? And they say, oh, I represent the third party, uh, defendant. And it's like, okay, and then you note that down and you put it in the transcript.

It doesn't really even matter if you understand what that means. Right. Well, I guess, yeah, you're right. There's a lot of things we don't need to understand, but it could lead to us misrepresenting something if we don't understand it. You know what I mean? Like if. Well, no, we're not gonna misrepresent something.

We might just, you know, misrepresent is, is, um, kind of a harsh term for being, or like inaccurately? I don't know. I'm just, I just feel like there could be some, if, I guess we need to know why, what needs to be notated and what doesn't, what, why and why not. Like that type of thing would be great. Well, okay, break that down.

What needs to be notated? Obviously the, all of the testimony, the caption, the appearances, like in the, what's it called? In that little paragraph underneath the caption where it says, pursuant to. Uh, notice or Oh, yeah. Oh God. Uh, you, you're bringing back memories. You know, I, I, I wasted so much time worrying about that.

I just deleted it years ago. I have not said pursuant to anything. In years because, so Okay, so that's an example. Yeah. Yeah. So like, what is key to understand what's not, maybe if that's irrelevant, we don't need it. Like Yeah. But when, when those things exist in our training and then we never, we don't really know what it means or why it's there or how to identify what goes there.

It kind of makes it feel like. I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, no, I, I get that. That's fair. The pursuant to thing is, is, um, you know, the, the attorneys know what it's pursuant to and it doesn't matter, so who cares if you put that, it's pursuant to a notice and it was really pursuant to a subpoena. You, it's, you're better off leaving it out and not raising an issue.

Okay. The fir for the first time in my career, I had an attorney say, oh, I see that you. On the caption page and this transcript is actually just confidential and um, you know, I thought it was attorney's eyes only because they had an exhibit that was attorney's eyes only. And so. You know, I was like, well, that exhibit is gonna be discussed.

So when they said, just make it confidential, all they wanted me to do was change the caption and take out attorney's eyes only and write confidential. And I was like, okay, make an issue of that. Fine, no problem. I'll, I'll redo the transcript and send it out. It, it took, you know, two minutes. But I, I had never been trained to really understand the difference between those two.

Yeah. There was an attorney that asked me to make it confidential recently, or a few months ago, and so I was like, oh, okay, that's, this is kind of new to me. I don't, I guess I'll just put that on the, and I did a little bit of research to know where to, where I, should I put that in the transcripts? Should I put it in the header or should I put it at the top of the caption or the bottom of the caption or something?

And I ended up just putting it. I think I did put it in both the caption and the header, but I wasn't really a hundred percent sure, but it was one of those things that I just did and it was fine and I don't know. Yeah, I didn't hear much about it afterwards. Yeah, per, as long as it says confidential, if they ask for the transcript to be marked confidential, you put that on the, on the cover page under, in the, under the caption, and that's it.

Okay. So these are things I, I wish, you know, were included in some kind of a manual or some kind of like a training guide. Sure. The, the most, um, in the most extreme situation, they will ask for a portion of the transcript to be extracted. And this is where things do get a little complicated, I'll be honest.

So let's say you, you mark several exhibits and they get to a particular exhibit that is highly sensitive and it is attorney's eyes only. So they will ask you, can you mark this portion of the transcript confidential and um, bind it separately. So now. Let's say the transcript is a hundred pages and the portion that they want bound separately is pages 45 to 50.

Are you following me? Yes. So you're gonna have two booklets at the end of the day. The first booklet is gonna have pages one to 44, and then the next sheet of paper is gonna be page 51. Okay? Okay. And, and then the rest, and then pages 51 to the end, to page a hundred plus the era and all that stuff. The second booklet is gonna have its own a, a copy of the caption, and it's gonna have the highly confidential attorney's eyes only pages 45 to 50.

Okay. I'm just giving you the concept. I can actually teach you how to do that. Yeah. Later on. And I mean, if, you know, if this is all, like when I bring this kind of stuff up, it's kind of just, you know, if it's not relevant to discuss and if it's taking away from what we really should be focusing on, then you know, you can also tell me that, but, but I would just love to put something together, like a reference manual or like a study guide that would be important instead of the notary.

You know, something like that. Forget the notary. You have the notary. No, I know, but just the studying part. The, the preparing part and confidence part. Yeah. Well, confidence that, that's why being aware if they say, you know, this part, this next exhibit and all the questions pertaining to it are highly confidential attorney's eyes only, could you please separate it?

Or, or they'll say, extract it or bind it separately or. Remove it. They'll use some word to indicate they want it out of the transcript, but obviously you have to create that portion of the transcript so your confidence comes in knowing that, okay, no problem counsel noted you don't have to do anything right then and there.

Um, but, but when you edit the transcript, you do have to know how to separate those pages and create two files and, um, have the page numbers line up so that you know, like I said, pages one to 44. And then the, and 45 to 50 are missing because they're in a separate booklet. And then the next sheet of paper in that first transcript is page 51 and then to the end.

Mm-hmm. That's another thing that, um, okay, so that's, that's, this is so interesting. Like, it just feels like in school we learn how to write on the machine and that's what I love to do and I'm good at. But there's just all these other things, like when that does happen for a court reporter, the first time there.

Th there's a whole long list of things like that, that they just have to look it up or figure it out on the spot instead of Yeah. And there's, you know, so instead of having been trained Yeah. It's not fair, really. Right. It's just kind of confusing. It's not efficient and it's confusing and it's frustrating and it adds to the.

I guess the burnout that we experienced. Mm-hmm. You know, on top of everything that we're already doing. It's like we're trying to figure these things out. Um, so it happens a lot, but, but anyway, that's beside the point. I guess it's not nec I just dwell on these things 'cause I want to be like really confident that I know how to do everything and, um, but I don't need to dwell on everything.

Yeah. Yeah. And I saw you said you wanted to quit twice and that's really sad. I know, it's just that, it just, it's these things that keep coming up that just feel like, what is going on? And Yeah. But yeah, it's Okay. Well, that's, that's why you reached out. So I'm here to help and hopefully I'll make a lasting impact this time.

Yay. Thank you so much. I'm really excited. So I'm gonna review the document and review this call recording and maybe create, start creating that document that we talked about and maybe I'll turn this into a podcast episode 'cause I think it was a great conversation. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to help.

I can, I can probably do like maybe 50 or 75% on Sundays and there might be some Sundays where I have to reschedule it for a Monday or an evening, like a weekday evening. But I think we could probably make Sundays work. Okay. That so, um, evening time. Not like too late, but. Um, like 5, 5, 5 mm or later, or sometimes.

Alright, well how do you, just debriefing before we wrap up, how do you feel about this conversation?

I feel like it definitely brought up. A lot of good points that I've been wanting to ask about. And uhhuh, I also feel like it, it did, it may have gone well. I don't know, actually. I, I'm not sure if it was like rabbit holes that that didn't matter because I brought them up, or if it's actually necessary.

But I'll feel much more confident knowing and understanding the list. The, once we've created some kind of a. Court reporters reference manual, and I think that I'm really glad that those things came up, even if we don't need to spend time talking about them, but mm-hmm. Just so I had the chance to let you know all the, all the confusion that I've been experiencing and, and you know, it's like, it's little things, but they build up because mm-hmm.

It, it just makes you feel like, did I miss that? Like, when did I miss that? Like, if you, if you're feeling and asking that question. So many times then it kind of just feels like burn, like overwhelming, you know? Yeah. It's just like I want to be good at what I'm doing. I want to like reach a level of, of mastery where I at least understand what I should focus on and what I shouldn't.

And I don't know, I just feel so dumb, but it's okay. Well, I don't want you to feel dumb for sure you're not, and you shouldn't feel that way. Yeah, I guess just, you know, in certain things, certain areas, but let's just, um, we're, we're gonna break down the whole court reporting experience. You know, that's, that's what I put in the document.

We're gonna Excellent. Stenographic real-time writers are masters of three broad domains. Hardware, software, and writing skill, and then hardware, you know, I, I explain what each of those are and that's what we're gonna focus on and we're gonna make sure that, you know, each portion of the deposition. Okay, perfect.

Yay. I'm excited. Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. So have a great weekend and um, yep. See you on Monday. Let's do, let's do the iPad and case view on Monday. That's the, um, hardware part, like should I have them by then? Hopefully, ideally, yeah. Okay. I'll try my best. Okay. Okay. Alright, well, case B net. I can definitely have by Monday, but I don't know about the iPads.

I was gonna, I was gonna try to figure out like, what's the best way to get the, don't, don't, don't, I'm sorry. I don't mean to, don't buy like an iPad if, if you don't have one, just do you have some kind of tablet, a separate, you know, I even a separate laptop or, okay. All you need to do is have a separate tablet Okay.

Of some kind, because you're gonna connect each one to the router and you're gonna, um. Use, uh, case view net. Okay. To output. That's all. So, yeah, don't buy an iPad. Okay. So I'll have an extra device ready and I'll have case view net. Yeah. But should, are you sure I need case view net yet, or do we have a lot to cover before we even get to that point?

Well, it's kind of, I mean, I, I guess to be honest, we can, we can reverse engineer that, um. Maybe we should dive into case catalysts before. Yeah, I think, okay, that's a fair point. If you wanna start with the, all the case cat stuff, like the auto indexing and the captions and the thing, the macros and all that stuff, because those are, those are tools.

Of the trade. You know, those are part of mastery of the software. So that's the broad category, the broad domain number two that I mentioned. And then once, once you feel you have that down and you are a solid, real-time writer, which is the writing skill domain number three, maybe then we go ahead and move to the hardware, which is what you need to physically be able to stream your captions to somebody else.

Okay, perfect. Okay. Yeah, I just talking through that was helpful for me actually. Okay, great. Yay. Awesome. Yeah. Alright, so save some money for now. Okay. Thank you all. You're welcome. All right. See you Monday.

 All right. There you have it. That was session one. And even just that conversation showed me something I've been avoiding for a long time. It's not that I don't have the ability, it's that I haven't been operating at the level I'm capable of and there's a difference. So this is where it changes. I'm not going back to doing things halfway.

I'm not going back to figuring things out on the fly and hoping it all works out. I'm building real systems, real discipline and real accountability. And I'm going to document all of it. As I said, the wins, the frustrations, the moments where I wanna quit, and the moments where things finally start to click. I know I'm not the only one who feels like this.

If you're listening and you've ever felt like you're doing everything, but still not where you wanna be, I want you to come along on this journey with me. If something in this episode stands out to you, or if there's something you've been struggling with in your own workflow, I really would love to hear from you.

We are not just going to talk about this, we are going to solve it. If you have anything you wanna share, please go to courtreporterpodcast.com and on the bottom right hand corner, you'll see a little green microphone. You can click it, you can leave a voice message up to two minutes long. If you wanna talk more than that, just leave multiple, or you can send me a voice message on Facebook.

I would love to feature you on the podcast. . I wanna hear from you, so please reach out brynn@courtreporterpodcast.com.

Cool, and I'd love to get on a call as soon as possible, and I'm the type of person that likes to just jump right in. I was actually just talking to a court reporter today that I wanted to, that I want to interview on the podcast, and I was like, you know what? I like to just like jump right in from the beginning.

No pre-call. There's really, there's nothing to to plan out. There's nothing that needs any preparation because every 📍 conversation that I have with a. Another court reporter needs to be recorded. Literally every time I'm halfway through the conversation, I'm like, why didn't we just hit record from the beginning?

We're missing all the good stuff here. So please reach out if you wanna schedule your interview. I would love to hear from you and feature you on this podcast. Your voice needs to be heard. Let it out. All right, let's go See you in the next episode.