As many of you might know, I am married to a legal videographer, Chris Jordan. Naturally, we met at a deposition, and it was a doozy of a depo. The deposition took place at the witness’ home. His two angry Rottweilers greeted us at the door. The attorneys ordered Domino’s Pizza for lunch, and the witness had a couple of Budweisers. I thought Chris Jordan was handsome, and therefore I practiced the principle of “act as if,” and acted as if he liked me.
That deposition took place on August 2nd, 1994. Every year I send a thank you note to the attorney who noticed the deposition, and Chris and I celebrate.
What I learned from Chris Jordan is that great videographers genuinely want the court reporters they work with to succeed, have less stress, and produce a great transcript.
What are some of the things videographers do for court reporters?
- Provide a live feed of the monitored, clear audio to the reporter’s laptop
- Provide a feed from their audio to the court reporter’s headset (and even provide headsets)
- Provide a wav file after the deposition for the reporter
- If the reporter has a computer issue, take extra time to set up microphones or “do whatever” to give the court reporter more time to troubleshoot whatever the issue might be.
- Help to set up iPads around the table and watch to see if the real-time test strokes come up
- At breaks offer to get the court reporter coffee, water…
- At lunch, offer to grab something for the court reporter
- Be empathetic about the level of difficulty, speed, or demeanor of the people at the deposition
- When a court reporter starts lifting their shoulders and fidgeting, silently mouth out or signal to the court reporter the time until the next disk change
- When necessary, make a disk change before the disk has run out of time
The thing is, many people might say it is the videographer’s job to provide good audio to the court reporter. But because I work with Chris Jordan and his team of videographers all over the country, I have the privilege of listening to their conversations around the office or maybe while having a beer. They talk about depositions and court reporters and how much they like the reporters, respect the reporters, can’t believe what court reporters are able to do, and brainstorm new ideas about how to help reporters with different kinds of wav files, compressing files, new software…
I believe legal videographers “go to war” with court reporters, and they get it. I am grateful for their professionalism and kindness and am glad they are on my team.
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