Numbers Are Important

Did you ever stop and think how important numbers are? I mean numbers as they relate to our profession and how our profession appears to our customers. It's interesting that COSCA would use our numbers against us and how that can affect how other people perceive what we're all about.

As an example, we all know there are many reporters who do realtime on a regular basis. But the fact remains, there are only a little over 2,000 Certified Realtime Reporters. That low number gets used against us. Our opponents can say things to the effect that, yes, they can do realtime, but there's only a couple thousand court reporters in the entire country who can do it well enough to become certified, which I think we can all agree is a negative. We're also hearing a lot about how there is little need for realtime in many situations, and to an extent, I can agree with that. But that does not mean that we shouldn't all try to provide realtime and become certified in realtime.

I like to tell a story about how I took a trial in a small municipal court many years ago. The plaintiff was Kodak, the film and camera company. Kodak used to have little kiosks in shopping mall parking lots, and one mall was trying to kick them out so they could expand the mall. But Kodak fought hard for their rights under their lease because they had these kiosks all over the country and they sold a lot of product out of them and people dropped off a lot of film there to be developed. The lawyers representing Kodak wanted that transcript on a daily basis, and had realtime be available at the time, they would have wanted realtime. The question is: If a case like this came up today in a small municipal court, would you be ready to provide realtime to the attorneys involved? It's important that we are always ready to provide the best product in the market, realtime, and that we all be able to provide it for any type of case.