Sending a 'Clear' message to business
I'm sorry, could you please repeat that? It's what you ask when you aren't entirely sure that what you heard is actually what the person speaking said. And you only ask it when what is being said matters.
You'd be amazed how easy it can be to mistake one word for another. It's a reporter's worst nightmare. Anyone who relies on a voice recorder to do their job knows how important clarity is. The conversation needs to be clear, not just to the people involved while it is taking place, but later on when it is being transcribed from digital recording to print. Nothing said can be taken for granted.
Gloria Scheerer at Clearly Spoken Inc. is well aware of the stakes. After working for the Ministry of the Attorney General in Waterloo as a court reporter for a little over twelve years, recording and transcribing court proceedings, she decided to "take the plunge" form her own recording and transcription business towards the end of 2006. The doors officially opened February 1st, 2007.
Like any good business person, Scheerer was paying attention to the demands of her potential clients and took action. "Towards the end of 2006, I was hearing a lot of grumbling from the civil lawyers about not being able to get meeting rooms for doing their discoveries and the turn-around time for transcripts was so long - so I took it one step further and decided I could provide that service," says Scheerer. So far, the company offers two board rooms where clients can conduct their examinations for discovery and employs two certified reporters, including Scheerer, to record the process. She employs people to transcribe the recordings on a contract basis.
The recording or reporting process begins and ends with technology. The days of the steno-typist, which Scheerer calls a "dying breed," are long gone. It's all about the latest and greatest recording devices, the sort of technology that you can depend on. "We're using digital recording, which provides and awesomely clear recording. It's such a far cry from what I was used to in the court system," says Scheerer.
But if technology is such a key part of today's court reporter's job, why exactly is this service relevant? Why do lawyers need to hire people to press the record button? Well, it just isn't as simple as all that. Recording has to be monitored. Take for instance voice writing technology, which is the most popular form of recording at the moment. Software like Dragon Naturally Speaking transcribes what a person says directly to print as it is being spoken. You might think this eliminates the necessity for someone to monitor the discovery process, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
To ensure accuracy, voice writing requires a certified reporter to wear a steno-mask and repeat everything that is said within the board room into the mask. You have to listen and speak simultaneously, without missing what is said next. Scheerer readily admits that, "there is a little bit of knack to it. Not everybody can do it." Perhaps that's a bit of an understatement. "You're listening to people talking and sometimes people over-speak so it gets a little confusing, but the job of the person doing the voice scribing is to interrupt the proceedings and have people repeat their comments so that what is said is accurately recorded," says Scheerer. On top of that, there is a backup digital recording made of each meeting so that a reporter can go back and proof the transcript.
If you're going to go into reporting legal proceedings, you had better be a perfectionist. It's not just about doing your job properly and efficiently. These transcripts serve a critical purpose in our judicial process. These discoveries, or "depositions" as they are referred to on American legal shows like Law and Order, can serve as important pieces of evidence in court cases. As a seasoned court reporter, Scheerer is acutely aware of her importance to the legal process. "The transcripts are a huge part of the business. I do not want anything going out that wasn't said," she says.
So while Scheerer has plans to hire more reporters as Clearly Spoken Inc. builds its clientele, she's also not going to settle for anyone sub-par. Recording devices are wonderful, but they can't do it all. A machine can't ask, "excuse me, could you please repeat that?" Not yet anyway.
(This article originally appeared in the Business Times, February 2008.)
