Are your court reporters certified?

We hear that question quite often. Are your court reporters certified? The short answer is no, not in the state of Pennsylvania. Anyone – and that includes you – can go out and not only call themselves a reporter but attempt to perform the services of a court reporter. Which is kind of scary when you consider the implications of that. What will the transcript contain? Will there even be a transcript?

Many states have a certification process and reporters must be certified before they can hold themselves out as court reporters. These certifications include tests that a court reporter must pass as well as continuing education requirements. This is not the case in Pennsylvania.

But there is another way that you can be assured that your court reporter is trained and competent and able to provide an accurate transcript. The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) not only approves court reporting training programs but also provides certification designations for court reporters who choose to take their profession to the next level. So if your court reporter has attended an approved training program or has letter designations after his/her name, these are standards that you can be assured your court reporter worked very hard to attain.

There are a several NCRA certification designations, the main ones being Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) and Certified Realtime Reporter (CRR). Other certifications a reporter can achieve are a Registered Merit Reporter (RMR) and a Registered Diplomate Reporter (RDR).  Court reporters who possess these designations have passed both a written knowledge test and a test involving skills and accuracy. For instance, an RPR must achieve a 95% accuracy on a testimony Q&A skills test at 225 words per minute to pass. Also, reporters who carry these designations adhere to a professional code of ethics which includes among other things, integrity, impartiality and confidentiality.

So you can be confident that while we don’t have a state certification in Pennsylvania there are ways you can verify that your court reporter is skilled and professional.

Are You Being Cheated?

A court reporting firm from somewhere – anywhere but where you are located – calls your local court reporting service and asks them “network”. This firm – we’ll call them Acme Reporting – has a contract with XYZ Insurance Company to provide court reporters nationwide at specific rates. And XYZ Insurance Company instructs all their representing attorneys – regardless of where they are located -- to call ACME Reporting when they need a court reporter. Now, Acme Reporting doesn’t have reporters in every city of the United States, so what do they do? They call a local reporting service and ask to them to provide a court reporter and send the transcript and invoice for services directly to ACME. Does any of this sound familiar?

Why should you care? Because you are being duped. Bottom line: It costs you money. Here’s why:

• ·       If Acme Reporting calls and “networks” with a local firm and the local firm sends Acme Reporting their invoice for services to Acme Reporting with their normal rates, do you think Acme is going to turn around and bill XYZ Insurance Company the same rates? Maybe. And maybe not.  One could argue they have to make money somehow, so they’ll upcharge and the cost of litigation goes up. It’s the classic example of why we as consumers always want to skip the middleman.

• ·       Acme Reporting has a contract with just XYZ Insurance Company for certain rates so if you are adversarial counsel, they can charge you whatever they want. And they might. And if they do, the cost of litigation goes up.

• ·       Acme Reporting may call an agency that is less reliable, less experienced, less trustworthy that will agree to work for reduced rates. That agency might not even use verbatim stenographic court reporters. Your transcript might take forever to receive and may not be up to the standards you are used to.

• ·       Here’s the hidden cost: Transcript bloat. It’s possible to shrink margins, increase font size, include extraneous pages and add blank lines so the transcript you receive can have 25% more pages. And when you pay by the page, the cost of litigation goes up.

What can you do? It’s hard to fight city hall, we know. The first step is awareness and knowledge. Know that this is what is happening on the business side of litigation. Then, look at the invoices you receive.  Call your local firm and compare the rates on your invoice with your local firm. Then decide, is it fair or not? If it’s not, you may want to bring this to the insurance carrier’s attention – or even insist on using your local firm who you trust and rely on.