The California Appellate Court in the Second District issued a ruling in the case of Serrano v. Stefan Merli Plastering Co. in which the plaintiffs in the case were objecting to the expedite fees charged them by the deposition firm that reported the matter, Coast Court Reporters of Irvine, California.

Coast Court Reporters had prepared a transcript on an expedited basis at the request of counsel for the defense, Stefan Merli Plastering Co. The depo firm then contacted the plaintiffs in the case, Porfirio Serrano, et al, asking if they would like a copy of the transcript. And that’s when the trouble began when the plaintiffs claimed in addition to being charged for a certified copy of the depo transcript they were also charged $261.56 for ““EXPEDITE CHARGE –4 Day.” Counsel fo the Serranos argued that they shouldn’t have had to bear any fees for expedited service as it was the defendants who requested the transcript to be prepared on an expedited basis and they wanted a copy of the depo transcript that had already been prepared.

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In addition to electronic recording another area of technology that court reporters have kept a wary eye on is speech recognition. This is a technology that uses sophisticated speech recognition software to understand what a speaker is saying and then transcribing it into text. One of the major selling points for these types of software is that it gets users hands off of the keyboard and promises to, as the product Dragon boasts, “turn talk into type.”

I remember when I was in court reporting school in the early ’90s people were talking about how speech recognition software would make court reporters obsolete. Courts would simply install microphones and the software and it’s off to the races they go while court reporters supposedly headed into the sunset to be used in Soylent Green products. Jump forward some years and now the idea of recognition software taking the place of court reporters in the courts seems as plausible as the jetpacks and flying cars we were all promised we’d have by now. It would appear that mastering the complicated nuances of human speech was a bigger challenge than expected as Microsoft discovered when they tried launching their own speech recognition software a couple years ago.

That isn’t to say that speech recognition hasn’t made it into courts. Speech recognition has made it into the courts by virtue of the fact that this is the very software that gives stenomaskers or voice writers the ability to perform their version of realtime reporting in the courts. And regardless of how you feel about stenomasking (e.g. it’s not real court reporting to some in the court reporting field because they feel they’re merely speaking into a recording device) at least there’s still a live human being involved in the process whereas early proponents of speech recognition envisioned not having a live human being there at all.

I was reminded of all this when I read an interview that Todd Olivas, a court reporter and firm owner from Southern California, had with Henry Majoue who owns and operates a speech recognition software firm. In the interview, which you can read here, Mr. Majoue is asked point blank by Mr. Olivas whether speech recognition software will ever replace court reporters:

Todd: Gotcha. So, here is the million dollar question then — as a court reporter, and I am asking this on behalf of all court reporters and the industry in general, I guess, do you see court reporters being replaced by speech recognition technology or artificial intelligence (AI) and if so, what is the timeframe?

Henry: Well, you know with AI, I don’t see it on the horizon. People always talk about it being 5 years, 10 years away, but in my experience in the arena they usually double or triple those numbers. So, if I was a court reporter today, I would not be too worried about it.

It’s a very interesting interview and I would encourage you to make the jump to read it.

Image courtesy of Dynamic Graphics

According to the online edition of the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, the state of Maine will be moving to eliminate official court reporter positions and replace them with electronic recording. Of the 16 current official positions, seven officials with the least seniority have already received “pre-layoff notification” letters.

Here’s what James T. Glessner, state court administrator, had to say about the elimination.

“We’re working with the employee union on this,” he said. “We have a dollar amount we have to save in our budget, so we wanted to clarify the process by which these layoffs go into effect.”

Mr. Glessner claims that the reduction of court reporters will result in a savings of $600,000 a year.

Speaking on behalf of the reporters was Tim Belcher of the Maine State Employees Association.

“Machines are not a substitute for human beings, in this case. Being able to turn to a live human being and having that person tell you what a witness said a half-hour ago is a very essential function.”

You can read more on this issue by clicking here.

COCRA is very proud to announce that we have launched a couple of new ways of keeping in touch with our members. The first is COCRA’s blog. It’s our intent with this blog to keep COCRA members and other officials informed of the latest news from the court reporting profession. In the coming weeks you’re also going to read posts from a whole host of writers covering topics that touch directly on the court reporting field as well as some other topics that might not seem like it’s court-reporter related, but we think they’re topics that you’ll find interesting nevertheless.

The second way we intend to get COCRA’s message out to the profession is via our very own COCRA YouTube page. Yes, we’ve bitten the bullet and we’ve gone YouTube. Granted, our videos may not be as popular or get as many hits as these guys, but we think that you’re still going to like what we have to say.

Our first video is up with President Janice Scott giving an update of what happened when a coalition of officials appeared in Sacramento to speak against the AOC’s latest moves to bring ER into courts. The great thing about our YouTube page is that we will be uploading all of the previous videos we’ve sent out to COCRA members so that we’ll have an archive which you can access at any time.

One great feature that I want to make a point of is that you’ll be able to leave us comments on what we post here at our blog as well as at our YouTube page. We want to hear from you COCRA members and of course we’re interested in what you non-COCRA members have to say as well. Tell us what you’re thinking or how we’re doing or what we’re not doing. It’s COCRA’s hope that with these two new ways of keeping in touch with our members, we can do a better job of serving our members, promoting the court reporting profession, and ensuring that the general public knows that court reporters are an integral part of ensuring justice for all.

Please print this form and submit to the COCRA Preserving Access to Justice (PAJ) Task Force if you know of an ER mishap in your area.

• COCRA ER Mishap Form
• New Jersey Law Journal Article about ER
• 2007 ER Failures