First Court Reporting Internship Hour -- Mock Depo

A few weeks ago, one of my teachers approached me and a couple other students about reporting a mock deposition that would count toward my internship hours.  The purpose of the exercise, she said, was to show the new lawyers how they looked in print.  I quickly typed up a response saying that I'd do it, clicked send, and before I knew what had hit me, I was committed.  I'm the type of person who believes in going with their first instinct, though, so I came to the conclusion that this would be a great experience.  Here is how it went from start to finish.

I arrived at the law office at least a half hour early and told the administrative assistant I was there to report a mock deposition.  She directed me to a large conference room that looked out over the city skyline.  There were tables at either end of the room that held pitchers overflowing with juice and plates full of giant donuts.  Mmmmm... donuts.

All joking aside, though, I was too nervous to eat. ;)

Then I picked a seat, set up my equipment, and began warming up.  When the lawyers arrived, I introduced myself and asked the names of the parties in this case and created a seating chart on paper.  When we were ready to begin, I swore in the witness.  I went through the oath flawlessly, but forgot to have them raise their right hand with me.  Definitely won't forget that one again!

The lawyers at the deposition talked pretty fast for me, but it showed me what I need to work on.  Next time, I will interrupt when it gets too fast instead of trying to rely on the audio.  I was just so nervous, though, and everything I thought I knew went out the window other than my brain telling my fingers to write.  The funniest part?  I found out at the end of the first one that I had written Mr. Schmidt as Mr. /SHEUT throughout the whole depo.  Lather, rinse, and repeat with one more witness and questioning attorney.

Sitting down to edit has taught me so much about punctuation and has forced me to get better and smarter at using my CAT software.  I started using some hyperkeys I wasn't aware of before, and most importantly, I started defining my slop as \word\word in Eclipse so it translates but still flags me to check it in the transcript with the C hyperkey.

One piece of advice I have for editing is to do one thing at a time.  Define all untranslates on the first pass, then go back for periods and question marks, and then do another pass for commas and semicolons, etc.  Break it down into little tasks, and then it doesn't seem so overwhelming.  I turned in the final transcripts today, and am already thinking about the next one.  Bring it on!