How a Community of Hardworking Women Inspired Me to Build Stenovate

Dear Transcript Community,

 

Every court reporter, scopist, and proofreader has been there: That moment when deadlines pile up, clients are fussy, and time is vanishing into thin air.

As they say: When it rains, it pours. As a freelance court reporter, I’ve experienced genuine transcript trepidation as every job suddenly expedites at once, leaving me completely overwhelmed. As if the challenge of capturing every word at 225+ words per minute wasn’t enough, we also have to juggle deadlines and manage our business in whatever free time we can muster.

Working with quality scopists and proofreaders has been pivotal for my professional growth (and maintaining my sanity), but as many reporters will tell you, finding reliable help isn’t always an easy task.

Outsourcing work to scopists and proofreaders certainly saves time, but that comes with challenges of its own. You have to find and vet teammates, relay details, negotiate rates, transfer files, communicate frequently, and track invoices. These hurdles discourage many reporters from trying to outsource at all.

Not to mention – the shortage. You know the one.

The majority of reporters say they take days off work to catch up on transcripts. That means they earn less money and have less time to do the things they love. With our industry’s labor shortage, there’s even more pressure to figure out how to make reporters more productive.

The Court Reporting Community Deserves Better

Court reporting is an incredible profession. I’ve never met a harder-working group of people in my entire life, so it breaks my heart to see colleagues held back by the lack of good productivity tools.

After years of using calendars, spreadsheets, Dropbox, email, Facebook Messenger, and PayPal to collaborate with my team, I finally realized the problem:

I had plenty of tools, but none of them were connected. I had a system, as we all do, but I needed a single solution to organize my business and my team.

There are dozens of project management tools on the market, but none fit the unique needs of the legal transcript community.

After getting feedback from hundreds of reporting professionals, we believe Stenovate can be that solution.

Stenovate: One Platform to Run Your Business

Stenovate gives reporters, scopists/transcriptionists, and proofreaders more control over their businesses. We combine the features of your favorite tools into one platform, making teams more organized and productive.

There are three major features in the first version of the Stenovate platform:

1. Transcript Tracker. View your entire business at a glance. It’s easy to be organized and prioritize when you know what’s on your plate with clear, defined deadlines. Not to mention, you can get help with a few simple clicks. #CollaborationHeaven
2. Workspace. Finally! A dedicated workspace for you and your team. Confirm spellings, transfer files, ask questions, and send and receive team updates with real-time notifications every step of the way. Holy. Guaca. Moley.
3. Invoicing. Track scoping & proofing expenses with ease. As soon as a scopist or proofreader marks a job complete, an invoice is automatically generated and sent to the reporter. We also keep track of year-to-date totals to make tax time a breeze. Soon reporters will be able to send invoices to agencies and/or attorneys as well. Praise be!

And this is just the beginning. Stenovate has designed numerous features for improving your productivity, from professional profiles to shared discussion spaces. As a platform created for reporters, by reporters, we have big plans and will continue listening to the community to make Stenovate even better.

Empowering the Transcript Community to Accomplish More in Less Time without the Headache

The legal transcript community works incredibly hard on the record and behind the scenes to keep the legal system running. (If you’re not patting yourself on the back right now, you should be.)

We built Stenovate to make your lives easier off the record. We help you save time for the work that matters most: keeping qualified reporters in the reporter’s chair. Time is critical, not only because of the steno-shortage, but because time is money.

As a majority female profession, court reporting has one of the highest concentrations of women-owned businesses of any industry (Not that we don’t love the men of court reporting!) Yet many of us were never taught the fundamentals of running a successful small business. They don’t teach Transcript Efficiency or Business 101 classes in most court reporting schools or transcript courses. We are left to figure out that part ourselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong! We’re excellent at producing accurate verbatim records, and we’ve all been savvy enough to come up with our own business systems to get us by. But we’ve never had a solution designed specifically for the transcript community that packages all of our essential tools into one robust platform.

And that, my friends, is about to change.

Stenovate is launching this summer, and we aim to do more than accelerate your business performance through streamlining organization and efficiency.

Our mission is to empower transcript professionals, especially the thousands of women-owned small businesses in our industry.

As a reporter who lives and breathes the #TranscriptLife every day, I understand your struggles. I’m right there with you. I know and respect how hard you work on the record. That’s why it’s my personal mission to simplify your work life off the record.

All My Love,

Lauren Laurence,RPR

Founder of Stenovate