Module Two: Business Strategy and Implementation

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the second conversation in the Transitioning to Digital Court Reporting video series. Here, court reporting expert Liz Dwyer and former voice writer Kaci Hardin discuss business strategy and implementation.

Need to catch up? Watch module one on embracing digital court reporting and then check out the Rev YouTube channel for more great conversations.

Kaci Hardin:
Okay, now we're going to go into developing a business plan and strategy for a court reporting agency to really dive into the digital evolution. What steps can a court reporting agency take to integrate digital reporters into their business model from your experience?

Liz Dwyer:
Okay, so number one, my advice would be to make sure you know the laws of your state. The laws vary from state to state, and I can't give you even a generalization. There are some states that have title protection, so you have to call them a digital recorder. There are states that—it’s, I don’t want to say a free-for-all—but that are very open to digital reporting, and it's been happening for years. So that would be number one.

And number two is: know the offerings you're going to have. Are you going to offer summaries? Are you going to offer streaming? Are you looking for a company that can possibly give you real-time? Know the offerings that you're going to have for your digital reporters, and check out your competitors. See what they're doing. Are they hiring in your area? Is there a market in your area for digital reporting? So those are the things you need to check out.

Hiring Digital Reporters: Strategies and Certifications

Kaci Hardin:
That makes total sense. So now that we've agreed that, hey, digital does look like a viable option in my area, I'm excited to dabble in it because my competitors are. What type of hiring strategies would you suggest when looking for digital reporters?

Liz Dwyer:
Sure. So hiring strategies—we're going to take this in two parts. One is who should I hire? And the other is what model should I hire them under, either a 1099 or a W-2? So it's actually not even hiring under a 1099—should I use 1099 freelance workers?

The traditional model has usually—I'm sure there's a few exceptions—always had 1099 workers who work for several CRAs. You can call them. They can say they're busy. They can refuse a job. So that’s great if you have ebbs and flows, because we all know feast or famine. If you need five reporters one day, one reporter the next day—it’s difficult if you have employees to keep everybody busy all the time.

On the other hand, you always have your jobs covered if you have employees. You have that level of control where you can say, “I need you to cover this,” not begging people, “Please, please, I need this hearing covered.” So that's a huge part of it.

Now let's go to who should I hire as a digital reporter? My main advice—and I think I said this in the other module—is to join AAERT as a professional member.

Kaci Hardin:
And for those just hearing this for the first time, what does AAERT stand for?

Liz Dwyer:
The American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers.

Kaci Hardin:
Okay. So it’s comparable to NVRA and NCRA?

Liz Dwyer:
It is. And it's a certifying body, just like NVRA and NCRA.

Kaci Hardin:
What type of certifications should I be looking for?

Liz Dwyer:
So there are three certifications that they issue:

• Certified Deposition Reporter (CDR): specifically trained to take depositions (not court).
• Certified Electronic Reporter (CER): certified to work in court and take depositions.
• Certified Electronic Transcriber (CET): someone who has had rigorous training in preparing transcripts.

Skills to Look for in Digital Reporter Candidates

Liz Dwyer:
What do you think the essential skills are to look for when hiring a digital reporter?

Kaci Hardin:
Oh, that's interesting. From my business experience, I take what the reporter gives and produce the transcript. Someone in my mind who's going to be successful has to be able to navigate and troubleshoot computer problems. We're talking beyond basic internet skills. They need to understand their platform and know what to do when it breaks.

Everyone knows the “blue screen of death”—it shouldn't put fear in your heart. You should be able to navigate that. You also need to listen and type at the same time. We're talking about annotations. Even if they don’t know what that means yet, multitasking is very important.

Adaptability and pivotability are huge. If something is happening with their tech, they must still get the record. So they need to know how to navigate that, even if you’re going to train them further. They should understand what it means to be certified and be ready to take those next steps. 

It’s not just “I’m going to take a test and pass tomorrow.” It’s a competency exam. So that's where, as an agency, you can help navigate that with them. What do the tests look like for you? What’s the best one in your mind?

Liz Dwyer:
If you go on AAERT, there’s an approved list of schools. These schools will partner with you. If you tell them your state, your equipment, your needs, they’ll help train these reporters—especially with legal terminology and how proceedings flow. They prepare people to be test-ready for certification.

Supporting Certification and Confidence

Kaci Hardin:
Yeah, the barrier to entry might be smaller, but the certifications are still in place to ensure the integrity of the record. And confidence matters. We always say, the best reporter in the room is the one who knows when to stop and say, “I can’t hear you.”

Liz Dwyer:
Absolutely. That’s hard to teach. People feel uncomfortable doing that. I know I did in the beginning.

Kaci Hardin:
Right?

Liz Dwyer:
But it’s essential. They need to monitor the audio and stop things when needed.

Kaci Hardin:
I think you suggested to me years ago that every reporter should type at least five minutes of their own transcript.

Liz Dwyer:
Absolutely. I’ll admit it—there were times where I did not stop a room when I should have.

Kaci Hardin:
We’ve all been there.

Liz Dwyer:
But I paid for it later—listening to it over and over. After that, you stop the room. You learn quickly.

Kaci Hardin:
You learn really quick.

Liz Dwyer:

Because this is going to ruin my weekend.

Kaci Hardin:

Exactly.

Continuing Education and Certification Support

Kaci Hardin:
So we talked about CER, CDR, and CET, where the AAERT falls into that process. I know my certification is not one of these. I'm a different type of certified reporter. I do have to take my continuing education classes and my credits. Does the AAERT help support that for their certified reporters?

Liz Dwyer:
Absolutely. All three certifications require CEU credits—Certified Electronic Reporter, Certified Deposition Reporter, and Certified Electronic Transcriber.

Operations and Workflow: Structuring a Digital Team

Kaci Hardin:
Now that we've established who we hire, how we hire, and what the training looks like for them, I want to dive into the operational aspects of it for the CRA. I know you had touched on earlier, independent contractors or employee models. I know that's going to replicate itself into the business model, the operational back end of it.

Can you walk me through what that looks like for a court reporting agency when adapting to digital?

Liz Dwyer:
Sure. So at the beginning, I kind of talked about how the job is broken into two parts. So we just went over the part where the takedown is. We've taken the proceeding, we have the proceeding, we have the notes. Now we have to decide how we're going to get that transcribed. So we would either have to choose a third-party vendor or an in-house team, and that comes down to cost, quality.

Kaci Hardin:
Scalability.

Liz Dwyer:
And you need to keep in mind that for your in-house team, you're going to need a supervisor. You're going to need a scheduler. You're going to need somebody to oversee all this.

Kaci Hardin:
HR for all the people that you're hiring.

Liz Dwyer:
Even if your transcribers are 1099, you still have to manage them. They can say no last minute, just like reporters. In my experience, I’ve found hiring a reputable third-party vendor is much easier—especially one with legal experience.

Kaci Hardin:
Some companies do both. In-house for consistent work and outsource for chaos and overflow.

Liz Dwyer:
Dailies, expedites—those are hard to cover. Even with an in-house team, having third-party support is a huge benefit.

Kaci Hardin:
Because the cost of a third party isn’t just “one person”—it’s a whole team and infrastructure.

Liz Dwyer:
Exactly. If you want to calculate the true per-page or per-minute cost, you have to factor in management too.

Budgeting for the Transition

Kaci Hardin:
Let’s address the elephant in the room—budgeting. What key factors need to be considered when moving into digital?

Liz Dwyer:
Court reporting technology. Mixers, microphones—those are startup costs. 

Kaci Hardin:
Right. And where this is going to differ from the traditional court reporting model is you're going to support the digitals a little bit more here.

Liz Dwyer:

Absolutely. I mean, technically, if they were 1099s, they would supply their own equipment. I do find that most people go with the W-2 model for digital. 

You're going to need to supply equipment, and you're going to need to train on that equipment. So there's going to be the upfront cost of buying it. Then you have software subscriptions, training expenses. You're going to need to hire, either outsource the training to a school, or you're going to have some in-house training on your SOPs. So there are some significant startup costs that you have to budget for.

Kaci Hardin:
Yeah. And they tend to leverage out as the cost of employing or gathering digital reporters is significantly less than the sonographers. It's just that immediate upfront cost of getting everything set up. And software here we're talking about file transfer, the ability for them to take the record down at traditional CAT softwares as reporters would use, right?

Liz Dwyer:
Sure. And then there's things that you might not have thought of. They have to have a way to get the information to your operations team. So is there an online form you're going to subscribe to that they can upload audio and all their notes and annotations? You have to try to streamline things. You don't want things coming in through email. That really causes a huge chaos if you just have people emailing you all sorts of stuff. 

So you have to think: how should I set this up? There's tons of online forms that you can subscribe to or look into where it would keep everything nice and neat in one file for each job with the audio, the annotations, who took it, and so things like that you need to consider.

Choosing Technology: Keep It Simple

Kaci Hardin:
So you're really looking at the evolution in the lifecycle of the job as total, going to take it down, getting it to who's going to transcribe it, where traditionally a court reporter would be the one to house that, and send it out to a Scopus, a proofreader.

Liz Dwyer:
Absolutely.

Kaci Hardin:
And that's where the upfront costs come from, and it is just a startup cost. So knowing that, hey, this might be a bit of a bear in the beginning, it's definitely going to leverage out and give you better margins on the back end.

Liz Dwyer:
Sure. So it's a startup cost for the equipment, but when you think about the online form, or maybe some takedown methods are subscription-based, right? You're not buying the whole thing. They want a monthly fee. So it all depends on what you choose, but there's so many to choose from. I would suggest trying at least three or four of them before making any decision to see what's going to work for you.

Kaci Hardin:
What I love about digital versus more traditional methods is this software is ever-evolving and always adapting. It's essentially a race to be the best in the technology field. 

So they're going to be at the forefront, and that ties back into finding people who are computer savvy and able to navigate this. It's kind of quite exciting. So, as a CRA owner, I could say confidently, if I invest in the right technology here in the long term, I don't have to worry about it anymore. That company and that technology are going to evolve, and I'm going to be right there with it.

Liz Dwyer:
Absolutely. And some advice I can give about picking out software: go as simple as possible. Especially if you have a third-party vendor. If you can make your takedown software very simple, recording and annotations with timestamps, that's the bare minimum that you need. 

I've seen some software with all these bells and whistles, and a lot of times it's developed for a reporter who is going to do their own transcripts. Some business models have the digital reporters doing their own transcripts, but I feel like simple is better in this case. Let's not give a whole bunch of buttons everywhere that confuse somebody. There's less room for error.

I also think an important feature of digital software is to be able to record while playing back. To me that is key because I can't tell you how many times I’ve experienced software that did not allow that, and there were a lot of times I went to backup audio to look for what was said.

Looking Ahead

Kaci Hardin:
I'm so excited for what we covered in this segment. We know how to find and support people. But next is my favorite: technology and operations—the nuts and bolts of it all.