Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Misty here from LearnLegalTranscription.com, and I want to talk today about the differences between a court reporter and a legal transcriber. So they are actually two different things that a lot of people get confused. So let's start with court reporter, because that is what most people actually think of in their head when they hear legal transcriber. They immediately conjure up an image of a court reporter sitting in a courtroom, listening to what everyone is saying, and typing it as they go. That is a court reporter. So first of all, we have a little bit of history of court reporters. They were all trained on stenograph machines way back when. I honestly don't know the first year that they had court reporters. Should probably look that up. It's a nice little trivia question. But at any rate, that is what most people see in their head, and that is what you see in courtrooms that is changing a little bit now, because it takes a long time for people to learn a steno machine. It is not a standard keyboard that you know, and you also have to learn all of these shorthand. So people talk about 300 words per minute. People type at the top about 100 words per minute. So they can't keep up because they have to get everything verbatim as it is being said by every single person in the room. So in order to learn how to do that, they have to learn all of these shortcuts and how to get fast enough to do that. So most schools take about two to four years. Okay. Now, as you all know, we are in a digital revolution, and that is changing court reporting as well. So if you think back to the court reporter using a steno machine, the paper coming out of there is all of those shortcuts. So you can't just look at it and read it as the English language. You have to know what those shorthand writings mean to be able to transcribe it. So in the past, traditionally, court reporters did their own transcribing, or they hired a scopist who was trained on their shorthand and could look at it and turn it into an actual transcript. There are also some computer programs that do this as well. Okay. Now, because the schooling takes so long and everything has been changing in the past decade, court reporting schools are not graduating enough court reporters to fill the roles that the ones who are retiring are leaving. So there is currently a big shortage. So I think this year there's like 8,000 openings that will not be able to be filled because there just are not enough new graduates. So what is happening is digital court reporting is becoming popular and there are now courses on how to do that. So the digital court reporter kind of does the same thing. They are sitting in all of the proceedings. Okay. So number one, you can't work from home as a court reporter. You have to actually be there. Okay. So they are sitting in on all the proceedings. They are setting up microphones for each person. They are listening to make sure that everything is getting recorded onto digital tape. And they are also, if they're good at their job, taking notes. So just like the old standard court reporter, they're sitting there usually on a laptop now and they are taking timed notes. So as they are typing, the time on the audio is showing up next to it. And this is going to help when a transcriber is now hired. Okay. So court reporters can still do their own transcribing, but most of them send it out because the court reporter is sitting in the courtroom or the legal office all day long. So they don't want to go home and have to continue working to actually get the transcriptions done. Okay. So they are hiring hopefully you as a legal transcriber. So you now get the audio and you get the notes and you sit at home in your pajamas, at your dining room table, wherever, and you transcribe. So you have the audio you're listening to. You also have their notes, hopefully, which will help typically now, instead of typing everything, because they are typing in normal English, not the shorthand. They can't type everything. They can't type 300 words plus per minute. Okay. So they are typing maybe things that they think might be hard to hear. Names of people, names of important places, things, maybe that is a medication or a doctor's office or a business that they are mentioning, something like that. So you'll be able to refer to the notes, hopefully to help you in maybe an area that was hard to hear or something like that. But this is now opening a ton of options as a legal transcriber, which is you. So you are coordinating with the court reporter or the attorney's office to get these files. And then you are transcribing at home and sending them back to them. Okay. How much time does it take to learn legal transcription versus court reporting? So as I said earlier, it's about two to four years for a court reporter to learn the whole thing, the stenography, the machine, the court process, what they are responsible for, all of that stuff. As a legal transcriber, you have a much shorter course. Most people finish our course in two to four months. Okay. Now, you do still need to be good with software. You need to know how to use Word. If you're not very computer literate, it can be very difficult to start. That's usually the questions we get from most students. We know kind of right away if they are not computer savvy. But if you are, it's going to be much easier to start. So those are the main differences and what most people think about, but it's not actually a legal transcriber. So I'm going to be back later for all of the different jobs that you can find, people you can work for as a legal transcriber, and more information. But don't forget to visit our website at learnlegaltranscription.com and comment any questions you have, and don't forget to subscribe. Bye, guys.