Anthony D. Frisolone

FAPR, RDR, CRR, CBC, CRI

Official Court Reporter

U.S. District Court, Brooklyn, New York

Every court reporting staff handles daily copy differently. Procedures can vary from county to county within a state, or from district to district.

Do you work in a pool of reporters with a reserve of reporters able to help you?

Is there an assignment system in place to handle daily copy?

Do you work for one judge?

Can you get help if daily copy is ordered.

Most trial attorneys view daily copy as a necessary and valuable tool during trial.

The like having the transcript immediately available.

Many have come to depend on it.

Others view daily copy as an unnecessary expense.

Budgetary reasons.

They have to account for expenses – insurance company or a client.

How do you sell it to counsel?

The transcript is a valuable tool to prepare upcoming witnesses.

Why rely on your notes when you have the transcript.

Decreased waiting time when the transcript is used for post-trial briefing preventing unnecessary delays or incurring unnecessary expenses.

Speeds up the appellate process.

Convenient for Judges and Law Clerks. Decreased waiting time for juries who need

testimony read back.

Helps confirm what was said and clears up memory lapses.

Certified copy in hand.

Daily copy helps confirm what exhibits have been admitted.

Allows chambers staff to have the transcript readily available as reference tool in post-trial proceedings.

Have a paragraph included in the pretrial order giving your information to the attorneys.

Success starts with the right information.

The caption and the appearances.

Use other information sources to build a glossary.

Past deposition transcripts, grand jury transcripts.

Job dictionary from previous proceedings. PACER/ECF.

State court electronic database.

Courthouse file room.

Obtain witness and exhibit lists in advance.

Call the attorneys.

Sometimes they’re hard to obtain.

Especially in criminal cases.

Some judges have a paragraph requiring counsel to supply the reporter with a glossary.

Try to get these lists in an electronic format.

Easier to distribute to others.

What is your support system?

Alert your scopist a few days in advance.

Do you have a scopist?

Where to find a scopist.

Scopists.com; Facebook; LinkedIn; DepoMan; NCRA Forum.

How will you get the transcript to your scopist?

File sharing programs.

Send This File.

Dropbox.

Works great with Work Units (Case CATalyst).

Eclipse has Connection Magic.

Find out if another reporter or reporters can assist you with the trial.

If that’s a possibility, and you get commitments, make a schedule of who will be helping you.

Do this for every day of the trial.

At the beginning of the week or the Friday before the trial.

Avoids confusion and everyone knows what they’ll be doing each day.

Have phone numbers handy in case of delays or emergencies.

Put them on paper and in your phone.

Use a “Tally Sheet” to keep track of pages.

Sticky notes can be your best friend.

Helps remind you of the next day’s starting page number and anything else you feel is important.

There are electronic sticky notes, too.

Cnet.com http://download.cnet.com/Post-it-Digital-Notes/3000-

2351_4-10060027.html

Have the parties sign an order form Get a deposit from the ordering parties.

Check or credit card.

If public defender or CJA counsel, get prior approval from the judge. If not, have them state it on the record before the trial

begins.

Consult your court reporter’s manual on the rates to be charged. For daily/immediate transcripts – hard copy and/or

electronic copies; condensed transcripts and word indexes.

Realtime rates.

Schedule a meeting with members of all trial teams if possible

And talk to the reporters who will be assisting you.

A few days before the trial.

So everyone is still calm and can think rationally.

Advocating for the service.

Counsel may not know about the advantages of receiving a realtime feed.

Realtime is an instantaneous and searchable record of the proceedings.

Attorneys can make electronic notes in the software.

Attorneys can make sure all their points were covered with the witness.

Instant impeachment of a witness.

Ask the following questions:

Is counsel bringing their own computer?

Do they want you to provide the computers/tablet computers?

If counsel is providing their own...

Confirm realtime receive software is loaded.

If not, make sure computer is not locked down.

Disable any virus protection.

Make sure you know how to load the RT receive software or run it from a flash drive.

Test out the realtime on the laptop counsel will be using for the trial.

Find out if counsel have their own cables if they receive realtime serially.

Have a few USB-to-serial cable handy.

Possibly a spare laptop or two.

If counsel has their own computer, make sure counsel has the password for the laptop to avoid panic.

Establish contact with a person from each law firm.

Have a central point of contact.

Get e-mails to find out who will be receiving the transcript every night.

Create a distribution list in your e-mail account

Speeds up sending the transcript at night.

Realtime - Wired or Wireless or both?

Check courthouse security policy.

Some courts prohibits wireless RT for security reasons.

Do you have the proper cables and/or router?

Talk to your vendor and discuss your possible needs.

Never rely on the attorneys to be prepared.

Remote/streaming realtime.

Remote Counsel, LiveNote Stream. CaseViewNet Cloud.

Get an order from your judge allowing the parties to have this.

You may have to explain what it is and why it is needed to the judge.

Communicate with the vendor to set up streaming RT.

Streaming is also good for multiple, multiple connections.

What if realtime is not available?

Offer immediate copy instead.

Delivery of the final transcript two hours after the end of the court day.

Delivery of morning session before the afternoon session?

Things to consider.

Shortening the turns between reporters to ensure keeping of deadlines.

If using a scopist, you may want to have a second scopist to keep deadlines.

In that case, have scopist 1 do the odd takes and scopist 2 do the even takes.

Condensed transcripts.

4 in 1 is the preferable format.

Lightens the attorneys’ load.

Word indexes.

Master index.

Compilation of all witnesses and exhibits for the entire trial.

Helps locate witnesses quickly and speeds up readbacks to the jury.

CAT software and third-party programs can do all of these.

On the day of the trial, create a paper seating chart.

Make it large enough to be seen.

Keep track of who relieved each other.

Use a clipboard to pass off to each other.

Makes merging transcript files easier to do.

Use a chart such as this:

Find out what the trial schedule is going to be.

Full or half days?

Any days off?

Working past 5:00 p.m.?

Starting earlier?

This all should be outlined in the pre-trial conference.

Unexpected things can happen.

Jury Selection.

Will the judge do it?

Will a magistrate do it?

If your judge does it…

Will you report the voir dire alone or with your fellow reporters?

Is the voir dire reported?

If the magistrate does it…

Find out who will be reporting it?

Is it reported?

Find out if the attorneys want a transcript of the voir dire.

If it’s a high-profile case, voir dire may be ordered.

Capital cases.

High-profile civil cases.

Daily copy/realtime is an excellent tool for jury consultants during voir dire.

Switching reporters. Establish a protocol of how reporters will relieve

each other. At the mid-morning/mid-afternoon break.

Morning and afternoon sessions.

The “Silent Switch.”

The “Silent Switch.” The reporter takes over on the question.

With a nod of the head or a tap on the shoulder.

Communication

Establish who the parties can contact if you can’t be contacted.

If there’s an issue that needs to be addressed.

Establish a second person from each side to contact.

Four questions.

To whom will the transcript be delivered.

In what format? PDF, PTX, ASCII, hard copy.

If hard copy, full-sized or condensed?

By when? For daily, 9:00 a.m. For immediate, by 7:00 p.m. or

two hours after the close of the proceedings.

And where will the full-size version be picked up or delivered. At the courthouse or the attorneys’ offices.

Find out what’s in store for the next day.

Starting time change.

Hearings in the middle of the trial.

Will there be a calendar call before the trial day begins.

Decide who will cover the calendar call.

Usually the principal reporter handles the calendar call.

Merging the transcript.

Delivery of the transcript.

Merging the transcript.

Do you know how your CAT system handles this function?

If working as the assisting reporter, do you know how to produce an RTF file if needed?

Will each reporter print out their portions and then merge them at a central location in the office.

Create a distribution list for e-mails.

Sending out the transcript with just a couple of clicks.

Printing – is your printer fast enough?

Does the day really end?

Some trials can last weeks, even months.

Make sure to take care of yourself.

Eat right. Keeps healthy snacks around; drink lots of water.

Get some sleep. Helps with concentration.

Using a “Tally Sheet” to keep track of pages.

Do this as you’re merging the files together.

One less thing to do at the end of the week.

Don’t go beyond a day or two of not tracking pages.

Speeds up the invoicing process.

Give copies to each of your assisting reporters so they have a record of the work they did.

If it’s a long trial - more than 2 or 3 weeks - give the attorneys a bill at the end of the week for each week of trial.

Some attorneys will ask for a bill at the end of the week.

If they pay by credit card, be aware that there are fees associated with credit card payment.

Create a folder on your computer or Dropbox of all PDFs, ASCIIs, RTF files.

File access anywhere.

Two ways:

Each reporter signs a certification and attaches it to t the end of the transcript.

No certification.

Consult court reporter’s manual for clarification.

All reporters’ names on the cover page of the transcript.

Footers identifying each reporter’s section of the transcript.

For errata purposes.