Time Management

It's a skill that's so important, and so many of us just don't have. In court reporting, a profession defined by deadlines, we really need to have a better handle on our time - and a keen understanding of our personal abilities.

Speaking from the standpoint of a working official reporter now, if you're in court all day, the last thing you want to do is come home and transcribe. ANYTHING. I would strongly suggest you find someone to scope for you. Doesn't matter how bad you think you wrote; your concentration at the end of a long day is shot, which means your editing skills will more than likely suffer. If you hand it off to a scopist, they can take the time to listen to your audio (all the way through, if you like) and give you a pretty clean document to proofread. They can check your case cites for you. Look up funny words. Run spell check. Think of all the things that you could do in the time that they're working for you!

The best thing that a scopist can do for you, though, is keep you on task. Meeting those deadlines is of paramount importance. Our legal system depends on us to do our part to keep the train running along smoothly. Too many extensions, by too many people, slow the wheels of justice and in the end make us look bad.

We must, both for our sanity and for our profession, learn to delegate some of our transcription duties so that we can actually have free time to relax and so that we can better manage the other aspects of our lives.