Tag: court reporters

Court reporters seem to pop up in all sorts of professional settings.  Most people think of them as only being found in courtrooms and/or in other legal settings, but court reporters or stenographers whose job is to record every word stated are needed in many different contexts.  Public meetings, public hearings, proceedings where statements are given and other situations are all tremendously aided by having someone there who can keep an accurate record of what is said.  Few people probably realized that this is a role that is also important when it comes to interviewing athletes after NCAA Tournament basketball games.

That’s exactly what happened last weekend when Nigel Hayes, a basketball player for the University of Wisconsin Badgers, had a bit of fun with the official NCAA stenographer who was present during his press conference before the Badgers took on the Oregon Ducks in a third round game that Wisconsin ultimately won 72-65 to advance to the Sweet 16.  Hayes decided to test the stenographer’s ability to keep up with him by saying some words that would be difficult for anyone to type, let alone on a real-time basis.  A description of the playful exchange can be found here.

Hayes and some Badger teammates apparently talked with the stenographer the previous night, as they were curious about her role.  During his interview, Hayes paused before answering a question and stated, “Before I answer that question, I would like to say a few words: cattywampus, onomatopoeia and antidisestablishmentarianism” before deciding to answer the question that was asked.  Hayes’ tangent led to some questions from reporters who were wondering what he was doing.

“She does an amazing job of typing words, sometimes if words are not in her dictionary, maybe if I say soliloquy right now, she may have to work a little bit harder to type that word,” Hayes said according to Time magazine, “or quandary, zephyr, Xylophone, things like that, that make her job really interesting.”  Hayes made sure to pay tribute to the stenographer’s talent later that night by stating via Twitter that she was doing a great job.  A link to that Tweet can be found here.

The entire episode was a lot of fun for everyone involved.  Sometimes it’s difficult for people to remember that those professionals typing away in a courtroom, in a public meeting or even in a press conference also have personalities.  Hayes made sure that we all remembered that, and kudos to the stenographer for making sure that, like people in these positions do, all of the words were recorded accurately.

The Georgia court reporters at Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting, LLC would also like to congratulate the stenographer on a job well done, as this lighthearted moment shed some light on just what type of responsibility professionals in this position undertake when they do their work.

There are certain things that people tend to think of when they envision court reporters: someone who is sitting up straight in a courtroom, the relentless tapping away at a keyboard that looks a bit different than what we’re used to, and piles and piles of paper. The court reporting industry is synonymous with the usage of paper, as that’s what we do – we keep an exact record of what happens in courtrooms or meeting rooms and we make a record of all of it. Unless you’ve worked at a court reporting firm, it may be difficult to fully understand just how much paper is involved with providing our service.

That’s why our decision at Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting, LLC to go green is actually a very big step for us and for everyone who works with us. Our Georgia court reporters have all embraced this change with enthusiasm, and we hope that our clients continue to do so as well. In furtherance of this effort, we’d like to put some very basic numbers out there so everyone can perhaps gain some perspective on the difference that just one court reporting firm can make by moving as far away from using sheets of paper as possible.

Estimates Regarding Paper Usage

Most current estimates indicate that the average office worker in the United States uses approximately 10,000 pieces of paper every year. Considering that the average worker spends approximately 250 days per year at work, that’s 40 pages per day, which is an astounding number. 10,000 pieces of paper is roughly equivalent to one entire tree. Not to mention, that’s a very low number when one considers what court reporters do all day. Industry estimates state that it’s not uncommon for a court reporting firm to use several million pieces of paper every year.

Estimates Regarding Paper Avoidance

In addition to the massive estimates regarding paper usage in the United States, other estimates indicate that a dedicated effort towards eliminating this waste can cut paper consumption by upwards of 80 percent in a single office. That not only cuts way down on waste, but it cuts down substantially on the costs associated with this resource. Many court reporting firm owners have looked at their paper costs with horror at the end of the year. Some court reporting firms are changing all of that.

How We’re Adapting

The Georgia court reporters at Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting, LLC have moved away from paper quickly. We now provide all of our transcripts and our invoices in electronic form. We don’t require all of our clients to handle things this way yet, but we’re hoping that before long everyone we work with sees things the same way that we do. Not to mention, and as is always the case, we are passing the cost savings we’re realizing directly on to our clients.

If you’d like to move towards the elimination of paper waste, contact us to find out how you can make use of our services without having to pay for paper, printing, storage and every other wasteful expense associated with the printed page.

The media is quite a creature in the modern United States.  Media members reporting on media members has in itself become a spectacle, as our media stars have somehow become as much a part of the stories on which they report as the stories themselves.  We have seen this play out more than once recently, what with the suspension of NBC’s Brian Williams after it came out that he was allegedly dishonest with regards to old stories in the Middle East.  Williams’ suspension was for six months.

On the immediate heels of that ‘story’ came another ‘story’ regarding Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.  O’Reilly has been under attack for more than one alleged exaggeration in recent days, and there is no telling how this situation will play out.  What does any of this have to do with court reporters, you ask?  Well, one of the specific situations that’s been dogging O’Reilly in recent days concerns his assertion that he heard the gun shot of a man who committed suicide as he was researching his book on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  That story involved a court reporter.

Let us explain:

The man that O’Reilly claimed to have heard commit suicide was George de Mohrenschildt.  He was known at the time of Kennedy as a staunch Dallas conservative.  However, it was ultimately revealed that prior to the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt sought approval from the CIA to contact Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested for killing Kennedy and who was killed himself a few days later.  As was explained in this article, there would be no reason on the surface for a conservative such as de Mohrenschildt to want anything to do with a known communist such as Oswald.  The theory that emerged was that both were intelligence assets of some sort.

The question of whether Oswald was an intelligence asset was actually addressed by the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of Kennedy.  The commission called what was supposed to be a secret meeting to ask the FBI and the CIA whether or not Oswald was an intelligence asset.  Both agencies denied this, and the matter was never pursued beyond that point by the commission.

If that hearing was supposed to be a secret, then how did anyone ever find out about it?  Because a court reporter did not destroy her record of that hearing, that’s how.  A transcript of the meeting was found and the American people eventually heard what was said during that gathering.  This should once again reinforce just how important court reporters can be whenever someone wants to review the record of just about anything.

To be clear, we are not taking any position with regards to the matters relating to Brian Williams or to Bill O’Reilly.  We just find it interesting that seemingly no matter where you look, court reporters are present on some level preserving an accurate record of what happened.

The Georgia court reporters at Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting, LLC all have several things in common, but the easiest way to boil this down is to say that we are all good people. Every industry is about its people, and that’s no different in the court reporting world. The people who work with us understand their roles and they fully understand and respect their importance to the whole legal process. There have been many times in the past and there will be many times in the future when the performance of a court reporter can make all of the difference in terms of an ultimate result.

Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting, LLC tends to look for certain characteristics in our Atlanta court reporters, but below are five qualities that anyone who works with our firm can fully expect to experience when one of our team members handles a case:

1. Organization
Court reporters have a lot to handle with every case that they work. They need to make sure that their equipment is set up properly, that they have everything in place to perform and that they are able to fully deliver the transcript as promised. That means that our court reporters need to be extremely organized, as a lack of organization slows everyone down.

2. Punctuality
Even those of us who are not connected to the legal world have seen television shows and movies where a judge gets angry when an attorney is late for a proceeding. That is especially true for a court reporter, as nothing can be done unless an official record is being kept, and that record is dependent upon the presence of that court reporter. Our people are on time and ready to go.

3. Focus
Anyone who has seen a trial can relate to the observation that there is a lot going on at any given time in a courtroom. Witnesses are being questioned, evidence is being offered, objections are being made and arguments are being advanced. All of this needs to appear on the record, which means that court reporters cannot be distracted by anything.

4. Objectivity
The legal community in Atlanta is like it is anywhere else in that people tend to get to know each other over time. While friendships can be formed and often are, that should never affect the performance of a court reporter. Our court reporters approach every case in the same manner regardless of who else is working on it.

5. Friendliness
Litigation is stressful for everyone involved. Jurors are not completely familiar with what needs to be done, attorneys are concerned with the result, witnesses are trying to make sure that they give proper testimony and the parties to the case have a lot on the line. That can lead to tension, which is why a good court reporter simply needs to be pleasant and friendly.

If you’d like to learn more about the Georgia court reporters at Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting, LLC and what we offer to our clients, feel free to contact our firm at any time.