On Wednesday all the court reporters in the state got an e-mail from a member of the Iowa Court Reporters' Association (ICRA) letting us know that Chief Justice Marsha Ternus was considering implementing electronic recording in Iowa Courts and eliminating court reporters altogether. We have a mandatory furlough day on February 16th -- another way they're using to save money which all of us are happy to participate in because it's better than losing our jobs -- and on that day the Judicial Council is going to vote on this.
This obviously caused an uproar among reporters, and since Wednesday we've all been e-mailing back and forth trying to come up with a way to stop this from happening. I sent a very long e-mail to ICRA, and I also sent it to several attorneys I worked with when I was freelance imploring them to write letters to Chief Justice Ternus, and to the Iowa Legislature.
The support we've gotten from the legal community has been heartwarming, uplifting, and just downright fabulous. The entire Scott County Bar Association is livid that this is even being considered, and they're all writing to Ms. Ternus and to the legislature. The judges in the 6th Judicial District got together and wrote a letter to Ms. Ternus and other district judges are doing the same. In short, the people who work with reporters day in and day out recognize the value or our work.
ER (electronic recording) was implemented in Rock Island County, Illinois, when I was in court reporting school. It bombed, to put it mildly. $90k to install the system in one courthouse, and it's just a mess. I've gotten letters in the mail seeking reporters to go work there now.
Among the problems with ER in the court systems is the fact that when a decision gets appealed, the audio from that hearing or trial is sent to a transcriptionist of some sort to prepare a transcript. Generally, court reporters will refuse to transcribe these audio tapes because, one, it's just plain insulting, and two, theyu're a pain in the ass.
Since there was no one there live to stop people to let them know they were speaking too fast, mumbling, that a word of phrase wasn't heard because papers were rustling or someone coughed or whatever, you have big spots in the transcripts that come back that just say "inaudible," which is obviously a problem.
Other problems include the fact that court reporters don't just take down the spoken word in trials and hearings. We have other responsibilities that I guess could be described as "secretarial," but which really are much more complicated than that. We have to have a vast understanding of legal jargon not just in court, but out of court when we're typing decisions for our judges or preparing jury instructions. You'd have to hire someone to replace us in that capacity, as well as hiring someone to run this equipment. Plus, you'd have to put the equipment in EVERY courthouse. In smaller counties in Iowa, there is not always a jduge and court reporter present. So you're going to pay to install and hire someone to run equipment in a county where it will only get used once or twice a week. What a waste!
I don't have the energy to type out all the problems with this, but the main point is this: Court reporters are an integral part of the judicial process, and eliminating them will do more damage to the system than most can imagine.
Today I as well as two other reporters drove to Muscatine Community College to attend a Town Hall Meeting where approximately six of our legislators appeared and took questions. To explain, even if the Supreme Court of Iowa decides to implement ER, they still have to have it pass through the Legislature. They are the ones who ultimately decide if this is good for the judicial system. I got up to speak to them about this issue, and while none of them actually said, "We won't pass this," the response was very encouraging. One of the legislators there will actually be sitting on the committee that considers this, and he seemed to be angered by the mere consideration of eliminating court reporters.
I made sure they knew that this was going to cost about $100k per courthouse to install, and WHEN it fails -- and I reiterated that I was intentionally using "when" and not "if," because it WILL fail -- and the state needs to hire live reporters again, there won't be any to hire because we'll all have moved on. I told them that this wasn't just an issue of us wanting to keep our jobs, that this was a threat to the public as a whole, and our main concern is for the integrity of the record. This isn't just some random job we've all taken; we all really care about the judicial process. I told them that court reporters graduate from a program with a 90% dropout rate, and of the 10% of us who actually do graduate, maybe half of those get certified to work because it's just so difficult. You can't replace that level of skill with a glorified tape recorder. The technology is just not there yet, and I don't see it getting there in my career, which has essentially just started, as I have only almost seven years in.
The legislators at the meeting asked that I forward literature to them regarding this. A wonderful member of a court reporters' forum I'm on sent me a link to her association's website. They're dealing with the same thing in their state, and have commissioned four expert studies regarding ER vs. live court reporters. The reports all essentially state that ER costs as much if not more than having live court reporters, but that the quality of the work product goes way down. One of the other reporters in the state, who I actually worked with in Cedar Rapids, is compiling information, so I'm going to contact her to see what she has so I can send as much as possible to these legislators. The more they know and the sooner they know it, the better.
So that's what I've been up to the last few days. I'm not terribly worried that this will pass, but I also don't think that sitting back and waiting for someone to make a decision will help. I have learned that in life you have to be your own advocate, and this is an issue that I'm very passionate about.
1 comment:
So glad you're taking a vocal, proactive approach to the issue. Too many CRs are all too willing to let other stand up and do the talking.
A little public opinion on the matter might be useful as well in the form of a letter to the editor of your newspaper. This post is an excellent framework for that. Including a sample transcript full of multiple speakers and inaudible parens at critical moments would illustrate the differences, don't you think?
I rarely enter myself into the record unless I've made repeated requests for someone to speak up, wait for the full question, or if attorneys are bickering and fouling up the record.
You could do this in your sample transcript, though, showing how much better the second sample turns out when a CR is protecting the record instead of a tape recorder.
Shoot, the NCRA has probably done something like this already and could give you a copy.
Good luck!
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