Harnessing AI and Technology for Enhanced Court Reporting Practices

Hey, what's up everyone? This is Part 2 of Episode 77, "Scoping in the Age of AI." This is the second half of that conversation that I had with Rachel Harris. Today we're gonna get a little bit into hands-on coaching techniques to streamline scoping and editing. Stay tuned to the end to find out what's in the works for the future of court reporting transcript management excellence.

So tell me more about how you -- 'cause I'm still really interested in learning from you, like hands-on. How does that work when you teach? What does that look like?

So, I typically like to have a Zoom session and simultaneously like a FaceTime 'cause I wanna see your hands as well. Zoom doesn't let me see what you're tapping, you know, what you're clicking, what your mouse action is doing. So I like to get a feel for that. And I just ask the question, what aggravates you, you know, and they can't tell me off the top of their head unless they're in the environment. Do you know what I mean? Because it doesn't pop up in your head.

No, exactly.

So I just like to eavesdrop. I just like to be a fly on the wall and I take excessive notes about all of those things. And if there's something that you're doing that I know I can reduce three to five steps that you're doing, I'm gonna customize macros or customize your keyboard or make some quick adjustments. And we create like a test user and I let them play with it. And if they like it, we add it into their current workflow, their keyboard, something like that, and see how much time it saves them, you know? And I love doing that because that's the time that you now have to dedicate to getting all those annoying things out of your head and you can really focus in on something else.

And you're not juggling so much as you're editing, and it's, you know, you save time and you don't get the brain fog and all that kind of thing, you know? So I love doing that. So it's different. I don't have a flat answer because some court reporters don't use their EZ speakers. 

I don't even know how to use those.

 Yeah, so some some court reporters tie their steno to a global instead of an EZ speaker, though if it's like left one or right one or whatever steno they might use to identify the attorney. It's tied to a global instead of tied to an EZ speaker, which would really, really cut down on their editing time, cut down on their prep time.

You mean if we did the EZ speaker instead of the globaling?

Exactly. Yeah.

Wow. I wish I, I don't even know like what that means.

See, that's the thing. I feel like there's so many things that I don't --

mm-hmm.

-- know how to use because I never want to take the time to figure it out because it feels like there's too many things to learn.

Yes. So I like to tell you what, how I started doing this. I was working with a scopist. She was my mentor. She's the one that was responsible really for helping me. In my scoping career when I first started, because I'm largely self-taught, but when I discovered by mistake a shortcut, my first goal for myself, and of course I have ADHD as well, was to just keep stacking those shortcuts so I can remember a time specifically when I lived in the Philippines, I was trying to train myself to not use my mouse at all while scoping, like I didn't wanna touch.

Yeah. Right. And I literally --

And that's cool that you lived in the Philippines.

Yes. I literally disabled the trackpad for 20 minutes. Wow. And I actually had like a corded mouse that was plugged in. And because I kept reaching for it, because I saw it, I literally wrapped it up and tucked it. I was like in a hostel and I tucked it behind the toilet and I was like, okay, for 20 minutes I can't come in here unless I have to go to the bathroom.

And then I'm allowed to grab the mouse and bring it back if I wanna use it now, that was just my own way of gamifying the process so that I could stop relying on the mouse. The mouse slows you down. And so taking the time for me, what I realized was, and those 20 minute exercises that I would do, I cleared more pages.

In 20 minutes, I would do, let's say eight or nine pages. Right. And then when I brought all those things back, my mouse and I turned on my trackpad again. Those same 5 to 10 pages were taking me double the time.

Wow.

So I was seeing in very realtime the benefit of it. And I just, I literally did not stop until my whole keyboard was remapped how I needed it to be remapped, and I didn't care how much time it took because I, I saw that when I fixed it, I was getting through the pages faster, way faster.

It's, it's amazing how the things we know are so -- would be so important and save us so much time, and then somehow we don't do them. I think me and you, we were, we were going to do a session one time and then we never, I never did it. I think I was like afraid to because maybe I felt like it would be awkward. Like that someone's watching.

Yes. That is awkward for a lot of people. It really is awkward for a --

Or like on the spot or something.

Yes, yes.

Or that I would just be wasting time or the, or we could just do like a focusmate session, but then, or think of it that way even though it's not because we would end up talking about, talking about the, the things that would come up.

Yes. Well, so lemme tell you what I did one time, a few. I've kind of, I've gotten creative with getting court reporters to let me watch them scope and, so one of the things that I did was last year at NCRA me and another reporter hung out and I let her watch me scope.

Now I've scoped for over 10 years. So what happened was she's like, "Wait, what are you doing? Wait, why is that happening?" And that was how I kind of discovered what she was doing by what she was stopping me from every time she saw me click something. So I kind of reversed, like -- So I was like, let, let me be the punching bag a bit, right? But in exchange for that, I can really get out what it is they're doing, you know what the reporter's doing. And so I can discover, oh, well this is why I did this, or this is how I did that and this is why I am using this shortcut. And so I let them critique me and in critiquing me, I'm able to discover what could be slowing them down.

That way it doesn't look like, you know, it doesn't feel as awkward because I can still in front of anybody. It doesn't matter to me. Um, well, yeah, 'cause you're like a pro at it, but for me, I'm like, I would be so embarrassed 'cause I'd be doing everything manually and not doing the things that everyone is supposed to know how to do.

So, let, let me say this, let me just kind of debunk this. It's, I don't know where the, how this all started. You know, I'm still a baby in the industry, so to speak, but. It depends on what school you went to and if your school gave you a trainer. If you hired a trainer and if there were modules or there were classes that really focused on this, you are not supposed to know all the things in Case Catalyst because where was that stop pit stop in your journey to become a court reporter?

There were no pit stops for me. Exactly. Exactly. So I wish any court reporter that's listening to this, please let yourself off the hook because there is no intersection. Wouldn't it be nice? Oh, it would be beautiful. It would be a beautiful thing. I actually think people would graduate faster.

I really feel that what holds people back sometimes is what they don't know and. How labor intensive getting through school is without knowing your software is, I'm not saying it's the issue, but I'm sure it's one of the big ones. So there would never have been a time in your career, Brynn, to actually know what Case Catalyst is supposed to do.

And if you wanna look at it even more simply. Take a word processor that we use all the time. It could be Google Docs, it could be Microsoft Word. When did you ever have a pit stop to actually learn what word is capable of? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's the same thing, but to a greater degree, you know, with the software that you use, you know, as a stenographer.

So my knowing the shortcuts and things that I know is just because I had a special interest in figuring out how to be faster at something specifically. But as I scope, I have time for that. You know, court reporters have less time, you know, than a scopist does in a sense, you know? Do you have online courses that we could take in realtime?

I mean like not live, but watch videos or something?

I don't, but that's a cool idea.

Yeah, you should. I do that.

Yeah, I don't, but that's a cool idea. Yeah, because those, like I think if I were to narrow it down, there are probably about 10 shortcuts that I could teach in 20 minutes that would be life changing because they're so repetitive, you know, and it happens all the time.

And that's another thing I hate to cut myself off, but a lot of times what one court reporter needs as a shortcut, the other one doesn't. So it's also me seeing what is repetitive for you as a court reporter. I hate to use the, my last year at NCRA event, but my friend and court reporter friend, she has an issue somehow along the way in her career, counsel comes up, capped all the time. And the only way that she has found out to do the workaround is to scan-stop it and scan-stopping it doesn't automatically cap it, and we literally spent, i'm gonna say at least two and a half hours trying to dig through like all of her different dictionaries and globals trying to find this one issue.

Right. And this is CaseCAT. And this is CaseCAT. Yes. And we didn't fix it. We didn't solve it, you know, it was just like, we're just gonna have to live with it, type of a thing. Right. But. I'm sure each court reporter has those little things that they're doing something repetitively based on something like that.

Because of that issue, now they're doing something else. You know what I mean? To try to solve it. So yeah, the things that would make your life easier are probably tied to some of those little things. If there was five to 10 of them, just even five, let's just, let's be dramatic. Five of them. It would change your life.

Wow. It would, because what changed my life as a scope is the shortcuts that changed my life are cycle contractions, number conversion, word swap, and inserting text in the conflict box instead of directly into the transcript. Mm mm-hmm. If I had to just say off the top of my, oh, and of course, EZ speakers.

Of course, of course. With, I think we're gonna, we'll probably have to do another episode about that because I wanna, I wanna, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those things. So, I wanna circle back, because you were saying that as you were thinking about your VTM and what your offering was and how it felt when you were looking at, and it kind of felt 2018 to you, it didn't feel as sustainable.

You asked me the question about, you know, tools, right, that scopists could use in kind of advancing. So I didn't fully get your complete thought process on that, were you, what was your question?

Thank you for bringing back it back full circle. Yeah. So that I guess I. What I'm working on right now is finding a way to make it more sustainable and less expensive for court reporters because I really do, I'm, I'm really passionate about helping court reporters to ease that burnout and like stress and just have more life balance and more ability to spend their time doing what's meaningful without having so many things in their mind about, oh my gosh, I forgot to do this. Oh my gosh, I should be doing this. I should really be managing my transcripts right now. And they like, really can't enjoy their, their lives if, you know, if they're working the way that I was at that time. So I'm in the process of building an app that has courses in it, and I just felt like that's where I felt like, okay, something, something is not completely streamlined.

Something is not right. Like I know there's a better way to do this. So I kind of put a pause on that and then, and then I started experimenting with other app builders and just trying to create an app that really gives you like a dashboard and the ability to see, I, I think really the issue, the main issue, at least for me, the biggest pain point is the bookkeeping and tracking billing and, and deadlines and all that.

So, the reason why I was asking is to just get your insight as someone who is so tech- savvy and advanced with technology and I guess, you know, AI is maybe a whole different ball game, but just your opinion on that process that I had going, and maybe, I don't know if you even have a full picture of what my process was, like training a person to do everything.

Mm. Yeah. Which probably wasn't even to you it might not even seem like it's really necessary, especially because I do write really clean and I should be doing realtime, and that's what I should really be focusing on.

But maybe the solution after this conversation, is more mastery of software. It's, yes, it's, and I say that because I'm gonna kind of introduce a little. Different topic. I hope you don't mind, but there's just been so many scams lately that I have seen on Facebook with scopists and court reporters, and I'm actually gonna be covering it in a blog later this month and also in our drop-in coaching session.

But you have to get mastery to separate yourself from the scammers. I had a call last week with a scopist. Who was being hired as a scopist, and when I asked them what their job and their role was gonna be and how much they were getting paid, you know, they were not in the court reporting industry.

They were scoping and proofreading and being charged or paid, excuse me, less than half of what a scopist gets paid for regular turnaround time, full audio scoping. Okay. So they found me, they sent me a message and said, Hey, you know, I saw you're a scopist and I'm about to start a new job as a scopist.

I'm working for a company. And they kind of gave me a rundown. And so I had a call with them and I really spent a lot of time with them, not because I wanted them to work for me. I was like, I just needed to give them vocabulary words. I needed to give them like a glossary of what a scopist is. And so I was trying to explain to them that you are not a steno scopist, and I hate to have to use that word, but we have to use that word now. And if you look at some of the postings and ads and things like that lately on Facebook, I really encourage court reporters to put that they're looking for a steno scopist. And for scopists to say that they are a steno scopist because what's happening is that companies are hiring quote unquote scopist to scope behind or scope a AI transcript. There's such a thing now as digital scopist courses or AI scopist courses where they're teaching them how to do this, but they don't have the foundation of court reporting. Their foundation is, I got hired to do this job.

I'm fixing the mistakes they're telling me, and this is what I'm getting paid by the page. And as I said, it's less than half what it, what you would pay me, Brynn, to go full audio five day turnaround time. So when you, I always, I hate the word scam because to me it just covers up the fact that we need education about what actually is going on.

Yes, there are legitimate scam, but a lot of times a scopist is holding themselves out as a scopist because somebody paid them and told them they were a scopist. Right. And then when they see a court reporter put an ad out and say, I want a scopist, and it's paying double what they got paid being a scopist for another company.

Yeah. They're gonna jump at it and the court reporter's gonna say, I got scammed. You know, and that's not really what happened, because both parties are ignorant. You know, not to say it in a disrespectful tone, but the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. So I really think that as far as making things easier for ourselves, you know, in the space that we're in, yes, is gaining mastery over what we do.

Making it more efficient, making it more streamlined, and understanding all the moving pieces. Because if you don't understand all the moving pieces yourself, you don't itemize them, you don't kind of have them cataloged. You're ripe for the picking, so to speak. Do you know what I mean? Because you can't tell the scopist why they're not a scopist, you know what I mean?

If you're not really sure all the little steps you're doing, it's just all in your head and you'll just fix it as you go along and you're kind of burnt out from that perspective, not gaining mastery over the things that you can, when you are looking for solutions to make your life easier, you will be scammed, especially now when there's just a lot of confusion in the marketplace.

So that yeah, isn't just my, my, that's, that's my hot take that I just kind of wanted to talk about because it's so, it's so sad. And the scopists aren't even being trained by people in the court reporting industry. You know what I'm saying? So what they're being told is a good job, we would scoff at, do you know what I mean?

Right.

Because the, let's say the people that hire them are so impressed by Wow, AI got all these words right. Right. And the formatting is very nice and neat and pretty. So it kind of dulls their senses as to what errors look like and how many there actually are and what to check for. So if a person that's impressed by the technology is the oversight for this scopist that never heard the word scoping prior to two weeks ago, they're gonna tell 'em they're doing a great job, and they're gonna send that final out as though it's great and it's just peachy.

Everybody thinks it's fine, but if we were to look at it, we would be like, oh, absolutely not. You know, this is, this is not good. So, you know, those are just some of the things that kind of been swirling around in my head the past couple of days. Is that, yeah, I think the answer to your question is I think AI tools for like the VTM that you described or that system, yes, it would be spreadsheets, bookkeeping. If you can outsource those types of things, end to end, kind of develop a workflow and train someone to use that workflow, absolutely.

And I guess there's just, there's a lot of talk about about AI, so it's kind of like, I guess you start to feel like, am I missing something? What is really going on? But, but it doesn't necessarily have to be AI, it's just more about like streamlining workflows and finding the most efficient way to do things like what you were talking about with finding ways to save time.

Yeah. And I think when you think that way, you know, it makes, but like the first thing I said was, I think we need to understand what the AI is doing. What are we calling AI, number one, what's the difference between a digital platform for like digital recording or digital reporters. Right. What's the difference between that and AI? I don't, I haven't even seen that defined online yet. Oh, yeah.

So we need to know what it's doing, you know, and then get excited about, wow.

Well I'm already there. Like I was telling you, you're already there. There would be no reason for you to use any of those tools. You know? Whereas another reporter might look at what the software is doing and absolutely go buy that software 'cause they're like, this is gonna save me an incredible amount of time.

And you know, I think that's a conversation we're not having. We're blaming, you know, whoever. Right. But a lot of the software is being purchased by stenographers. A lot. A lot of the software is being utilized, purchased, and they're excited about it. They might be. Well, yeah. They just say it out loud, but they are excited because it's saving them time.

Yeah. In the Supreme Court. They were all using it, and that's why I started using it. But mine only lasted one day, but I'm like, what is so great about this thing?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you, I think what would be interesting, Brent, if you get a chance, is just in your travels and in your experiments and things, you know, if you get a mentor, you get someone that maybe, I'm sorry, a mentee.

Look at raw transcripts. Just look at the raw end of the day. Yeah. That will tell you why they're excited to use it, you know, and, and see what it's doing. So I think taking a good inventory of your process will definitely be able to assist, or look at ways to, you know, streamline things as much as you can, and then you'll know where AI is gonna fit in for you.

Because you're gonna know exactly what your pain point is and you would've gotten rid of everything else. And then you can accurately say, okay, here's where I wanna use these tools. So I think if I was a court reporter, I absolutely would have a VTM. Absolutely. If I was a court reporter and I know that I wouldn't, I don't even think I would branch out if I didn't have one. So it, it's definitely valuable, but I think knowing what each reporter's process, pain points, workflows, and all of that is, would really make it more curated for 2026. So where can people find how to, like where can people sign up for your, your courses and your coaching and what's the best way to get involved with that and to uplevel their software skills?

Okay, so the best way is reaching me on Facebook. My name is Rachel Harris on Facebook, and that is probably the easiest, fastest way. I'm in the middle of a little bit of a rebrand, so my Instagram page is no longer @scopingcoach.

So Facebook is the best place to reach me, and if you wanna send me an email, my email is rachel@sopherimandassociates.com. Those are the best ways to get in touch with. That's S-O-P-H-E-R-I-M and associates.com.

Yes. Mm-hmm. And what about scoping International? Is that still--

Yes. Scoping International. That's our scoping course, the complete scoping course. I co-founded that with Heidi and Corley. You can find us at Scoping International on Instagram. We teach scoping and we're teaching Case Catalyst currently, and we're in the process of building the Eclipse portion of it.

So if you're interested in learning how to scope on Eclipse, I am a little bit, I'd say I'm like one quarter of the way through. 'cause I'm taking my time on building out that part of it, part of our course that we're gonna be rolling out. So we do some really exciting things at Scoping International when it comes to teaching you the software.

All these things that we discussed today. Our scopists don't know that that's a problem because they're taught those shortcuts to begin with in the software. So we focus on software a lot at Scoping International. So you can find us at Scoping International on Instagram and yeah.

Awesome. Okay, so I definitely will be in touch with you about doing a one-on-one. You should create like a certification. Do you certify or you do, you probably do. Right? So what I do is if someone has completed the training, mainly for scopists, court reporters really doesn't apply to too much, but with scopists, they get a certificate when they're done, you know, and of course if anyone wants to reach out to us and say if they completed the course and what they did and what was involved, then we let them know. There is no official certification yet, and I'll just say yet, yeah, there could be one soon, I believe, and then maybe you, I feel like there should be like a higher level certification because I would totally pay more for someone who has completely mastered the art of scoping and all those time- saving tools, that would just be so worth, you know, working with someone like that so that I don't have to go from square one. And yeah, a lot, a lot of reporters feel that way and I hope that we can, the industry can do that very, very, very soon. You are probably the only one that I know of that has reached that level of mastery.

There's, there, there's a, there's quite a few of us. I know sometimes when we have different calls and I'm talking to the people that I look up to in the scoping industry and I'm like, man. And how did you figure that out? There was one, just real quick, one shortcut that, and I hope she doesn't kill me for shouting her out, but it was Lisa Hall Head over at Triple Threat Scoping and she has a shortcut for opening up a or what she wanted, we, we were looking for it together and then she found it. But it was a shortcut for opening up the next hidden text below where you are. So like if you're like doing indexing and you're putting in descriptions or things we have, we found a shortcut to open the next hidden text or scroll up and open the previous hidden text.

And I was like, I didn't even think about how beneficial that is. 'cause sometimes when I leave notes for reporters you have to click the thumbtack. Some people call it a flower, but you have to click the little thumbtack and open it, right? That's one way. Or you have to have reveal codes open so you can read it.

But if you wanna edit it, you have to use your mouse and click the thumbtack. But if you use the shortcut to open the last hidden text or open the next hidden text down. You can actually hit that shortcut, type in that sticky note space, right? Press enter and never touch your mouse. And yeah, I love that one.

So yeah, there's these, I'm always baffled by everything I learn when I talk to you. So thank you so much, Rachel, for coming on again and being, my co-host and bearing so much amazing insight. And for everyone who's listening, check out Scoping International and check out Rachel's Facebook profile. Rachel Harris. Thank you again and everyone have a great evening or day, wherever you are in the world and we will see you in the next episode. Bye.  Imagine opening one app and instantly seeing exactly where you stand financially this month. No guessing, or scrolling through emails or spreadsheets, but actually knowing and seeing a visual. Imagine setting your income goal for the year and having it broken down into monthly milestones, weekly targets, and real strategic options for how to hit it. More realtime, higher value jobs, smarter rate decisions, all mapped out.

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If you've ever felt like you're working hard, but not strategically if you've ever missed income because you weren't even tracking it, if you're ready to run your career like a CEO instead of a stressed-out freelancer in the weeds, this is for you. Email brynn@courtreporterpodcast.com and I'll send you the full breakdown.