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The second quarter of the Total Immersion Pilot Program began on June 15.  The students were writing in speeds ranging from approximately 40 to 80 words per minute at the start of the quarter.

Unfortunately, we lost two students in the second quarter.  They voluntarily left the program in July, due to personal reasons.

On July 28, Lynette Eggers, a member of the NCRA Education staff, assumed the instructor position for the pilot.  The students were given a series of speedbuilding tests to determine baseline speeds, and drills were created after each test for the students’ specific errors.  A structured daily assignment sheet was created, which includes a practice log for both StenographU and Realtime Coach. Students are writing between six and eight hours per day.  Included in their daily assignments are speedbuilding practice and drills on vocabulary, numbers, challenging material, word families, and high frequency words.  Additionally, legal terminology dictation and word drills have been developed and structured within the course site.  Legal terminology is also included in short dictations during class time.

Class is held five days per week, with an additional hour-long class at the end of the week.  Fridays are test days.  Attendance remains excellent, with few absences.    Individual coaching sessions are ongoing, with discussions about student progress, writing issues, day-to-day commitments, and anything else that might be relevant to the training.  Various guest speakers have joined the class to share their knowledge, including freelance and official reporters.  Karen Ruud spoke about career path options.  Donna Crane gave the students some Case CATalyst guidance.  Nancy Varallo discussed the steno theory and answered questions.  The students will begin more extensive CaseCATalyst training in the third quarter.

This is an exceptional group of students who possess an intense desire to succeed.  Some of the students have had perfect test scores.  They aren’t surrounded by more advanced students, so they have no preconceived notions about speedbuilding.

The second quarter ended on September 4, and the benchmark goal was 120 words per minute.  Two students are writing at 140 wpm, seven at 120 wpm, three at 100 wpm, and one at 80 wpm.  After a one-week break, classes resume on September 14.  The third quarter ends on December 18, and the benchmark is 160/180 words per minute.

For more information, please visit, ncraonline.org

taken from ncraonline.org

The Total Immersion pilot began in March 2009 with 15 students. The students are highly motivated and have a strong technological background. Throughout the first quarter, the students typically learned two theory lessons per day, and they have now incorporated speedbuilding. Attendance remains at 100 percent for the live classes. The quarter ended on June 5, the students had a weeklong break, and classes resumed on June 15.

Here is the first report of the committee:

The concept of the Total Immersion pilot began in 2005 with research carried out by NCRA’s Reporter Education Commission, which gathered volumes of reporter training data through focus groups and individual discussions with students, reporters, and educators. The research findings led the Reporter Education Commission to form a task force to develop a skills-only training program that would allow NCRA to identify what role the machine time plays in a student’s success or failure. The goal was to test whether immersing students in only the theory and their steno machines would allow them to reach 225 words per minute in a year’s time.

In July 2008, the NCRA Board approved the requested funding for the Total Immersion pilot and directed the task force to move forward as planned. Robert McCormick, CRI, a retired professor from Alfred State College, was hired as the pilot instructor; a steno theory was written by the task force; an academic exam was written; and the TAIS Inventory (Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style) was selected as the desired aptitude screening test for pilot applicants. Ads were placed, and 198 prospective students submitted resumes, tested, and were interviewed. At the end of the process, 15 students were chosen to participate in the program. Equipment was purchased, the online course was set up using the Moodle course management software program, and the pilot was launched on March 16, 2009. The program is run under the auspices of the National Court Reporters Foundation.

All students entered the program with strong technology backgrounds. Each is visible in class at their work stations by videocam. The class meets twice per day, five days per week. Throughout the first quarter, the students typically learned two theory lessons per day and were given regular unit evaluations. There were four parts to each test – numbers, word lists, transcribing steno into English, and speedbuilding. Students who scored less than 90 percent were required to go back, review, and retake the test. Those who had difficulty grasping a theory principle were pulled out for remedial review and tutored until they were back on track. All students are expected to spend a minimum of eight hours per day in class or practice sessions.

Several working reporters have visited the class as guest speakers to give the students an extra boost of enthusiasm. The students are highly motivated, and attendance remains at 100 percent for the live classes. Additionally, the students began personal coaching sessions with NCRA’s Education Department staff toward the end of the first quarter.

The quarter ended on June 5, the students had a weeklong break, and classes resumed on June 15. The NCRA Total Immersion Task Force met to discuss the students’ progress against the established benchmarks and to determine if any adjustments were needed in either the curriculum or the timeline. As a result of the students’ success in Quarter 1, the second quarter began with no adjustments to second quarter activities, which will consist of a combination of theory review and speedbuilding.

The students uploaded their dictionaries on the first day back to class, have learned how to add, modify, and delete entries, and they are now performing daily dictionary maintenance. The students seem to have easily grasped the concept of hearing new words, writing them, and making entries by applying the theory principles they have learned. There’s added excitement, with the students now seeing their translation.

Students are submitting an average of 25 pages of practice per day. Through Realtime Coach and Stenograph University Online, they are responsible for completing weekly practice assignments, with a focus on accuracy and speedbuilding. The students are putting their newly acquired skills to use by writing e-mails, Word documents, and even the daily chat section of the classroom with their steno machines and outputting to their CaseCATalyst software. The second quarter will end on September 4, with a benchmark of 120 words per minute.

On June 8, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went on NPR to talk about California’s budget crisis, and while discussing ways to relieve the crisis, Governor Schwarzenegger stated that court reporters are “unnecessary” and “can be cut completely”.  NCRA is outraged that Governor Schwarzenegger claimed that court reporters can be replaced by digital means.

This comment is part of a series of ongoing attacks against court reporters including the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s proposal to  replace official court reporters with digital recording and repeated attempts to do away with the California Court Reporting Board. NCRA supports the court reporters in California who are fighting against these assaults on the profession and hopes that Governor Schwarzenegger and legislators in California will recognize the integral role that court reporters play in the judicial system.

WASHINGTON, April 1, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ –

The “Occupational Outlook Handbook 2008-2009,” recently released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), said court reporter employment will grow by 25 percent through 2016, because of “increasing numbers of civil and criminal cases” coupled with federal telecommunications legislation that requires television captioning and the increasing demand for real-time communication access for people who are deaf and hard of hearing under the American with Disabilities Act.

In recent speeches, U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said with the country transitioning to a knowledge-based economy, workers with higher skills “are being paid a premium,” while she said the strongest demand is for workers “in technical occupations.” Her words are borne out by the BLS projection for court reporting and by a 2006 NCRA survey that determined an average net income after expenses of $65,242 for freelance (deposition) reporters and $72,072 for court reporters who work for local, state or federal courts and agencies.

“Our efforts to increase the number of court reporters and training opportunities are beginning to pay off,” says Mark Golden, CAE, NCRA’s executive director. “Last year, nine new schools opened to teach court reporting, while maintaining high performance standards and a challenging academic curriculum. Yet we still have a long way to go before the supply even starts to meet the demand.”

Golden noted that the training is challenging. “It demands a great deal of practice to develop skills of dexterity and concentration,” he says, “but for those who become guardians of the record and providers of communication access, the rewards and sense of making a real contribution make it all worthwhile.”

To further meet the future need for court reporters, NCRA is reaching out to potential students at http://www.bestfuture.com. In addition, legislation now before Congress calls for competitive grants to train captioners and reporters who specialize in realtime and Communication Access Realtime Translation. CART provides an immediate translation of all spoken words and environmental sounds in academic, civic, religious or cultural events for people who are deaf, have hearing loss or are learning English as a second language.

NCRA, a 23,000-member nonprofit organization, represents the judicial reporting and captioning professions. Members include official court reporters, deposition reporters, broadcast captioners, providers of realtime communication access services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people and others who capture and convert the spoken word into information bases and readable formats.

This article summarizes some of the fundamental e-discovery issues that must be addressed in modern civil litigation.

Today, e-discovery is no longer a best practice; it is the required practice. On December 1, 2006, proposed changes relating to electronically stored information (ESI) in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) took effect. These changes require advanced e-discovery planning in the earliest stages of litigation and will impact almost every case in federal court, and a vast majority of state court cases as state legislatures adopt the new FRCP provisions in full or in part.

While court reporters typically are uninvolved in the discovery process, evidence issues and e-discovery plans are beginning to migrate into depositions, hearings, and the courtroom. Becoming familiar with such recent developments will prove advantageous in the court reporting field as this area continues to develop. This article summarizes some of the fundamental e-discovery issues that must be addressed in modern civil litigation.

LOCATION OF DATA
As electronic discovery becomes routinely accepted in today’s technology marketplace, courts increasingly are demanding counsel to actively engage in the direction and management of the e-discovery process. In one landmark e-discovery case, Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, 2004 WL 1620866 (S.D.N.Y. July 20, 2004), the court addressed the general role of counsel in litigation, stating that “[c]ounsel must take affirmative steps to monitor compliance so that all sources of discoverable information are identified and searched.”
This includes assuming responsibility for uncovering relevant documents (with the assistance of an e-discovery expert if necessary), evaluating discovery requests for electronic information and properly preserving this information. It is imperative that all data locations are explored when searching for responsive documents.

PRESERVATION
Although electronic files are easy and convenient to create and duplicate, they also are easy to alter or destroy. For example, simply booting a computer can destroy “slack” and “temporary” files contained on a computer hard drive. Clicking on a file, rather than properly copying it, can change its “last access” date, revealing another innocuous way that computer data can be lost. In most cases, maintaining the status quo without taking proactive measures to save computer evidence will have unfortunate consequences.

As soon as litigation is anticipated, preservation letters should be sent to all parties and nonparties in possession of potentially relevant data. In some cases, securing a preservation order from the court and monitoring compliance thereafter may be required. Finally, practitioners must discuss technical considerations with their client’s information technology manager and electronic discovery expert. In complicated or voluminous discovery cases, requesting that the court appoint a neutral expert may be advisable.

SPOLIATION AND SANCTIONS
When proper preservation procedures are not followed, courts are faced with considering the effect of the spoliation, negligent or intentional destruction of evidence, and whether any sanctions are appropriate. From monetary fines to adverse inferences or dismissal and default judgments, courts have levied a wide range of penalties on parties committing e-evidence spoliation.

CONCLUSION
In today’s high-tech corporate world, litigators, courts, and organizations have clearly acknowledged that technology has a significant role in litigation. With this ever-growing recognition of modern technology trends, all legal professionals – including court reporters – will benefit by understanding the issues, rules, and case law relating to electronically stored information. 

Adam Kish, Esq., is a legal consultant for Kroll Ontrack Inc., a Minnesota-based company specializing in electronic discovery, paper discovery, and computer forensics.