Appointed Counsel Vol. 6 - Court Reporter Expenses

In this episode of Appointed Counsel,  host Joe Byrd speaks with Lisa Angel, Court Reporter Manager for the AOC, as they discuss the importance of court reporters, the processes of invoicing, and exactly how attorneys should work with court reporters to prepare transcripts. This episode is intended for attorneys and court reporters. 

Produced by David Stripling, Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts

Transcript

00;00;02;11 - 00;00;32;19
Host, Joe Byrd
Welcome to Appointed Counsel podcast presented by Tennessee Court Talk. For those involved in indigent representation, I'm Joe Byrd, lead attorney for the indigent Services team of the Tennessee Administrative Office of the court. Episode six Court Reporter. Expenses. Well, part of the regular practitioners under rule 13, appointed counsel will know something about the need for court reporters. And today, for our podcast, we have Lisa Angel with us.

00;00;32;21 - 00;00;40;07
Host, Joe Byrd
Lisa, we're glad to have you here on our podcast, Appointed Counsel Today. Tell us a little bit about your background and what is your role here at the EOC?

00;00;40;10 - 00;00;58;05
Lisa Angel
I've been a court reporter for over 25 years now. As the court reporter through civil and then through criminal criminals, about 14 or 15 years of criminal court reporting. And then now I'm the court reporter manager for the state of Tennessee for our criminal courts court reporters.

00;00;58;07 - 00;01;02;12
Host, Joe Byrd
And what does that entail? When you say that you're the court reporter manager, what does that mean?

00;01;02;13 - 00;01;23;12
Lisa Angel
That means I help them with different issues that come up, questions about invoices or as in this case, rule Sartain type invoices. Also, I help with the equipment that's in the courtrooms as far as all of the proceedings are recorded. Then we keep a history of that for years to come if something were to come back on that.

00;01;23;15 - 00;01;26;23
Lisa Angel
So anything pretty much to do is call reporters. That's what I do.

00;01;26;29 - 00;01;47;28
Host, Joe Byrd
You know, I'm licensed to practice in Michigan and Florida, in addition to Tennessee and in those states, at least in Michigan, as I recall, each court had its own hired court reporter that took care of any needs for recording a hearing and then eventually producing a transcription. Here in Tennessee, we use more private court reporters a little bit.

00;01;47;28 - 00;01;56;20
Host, Joe Byrd
Can you kind of give us with your experience before we get into our talk about rule 13, give us an overview of how court reporters work here in Tennessee.

00;01;56;23 - 00;02;21;17
Lisa Angel
In Tennessee, there's civil court reporters that are licensed court reporters, and they work in circuit court and any other arena other than criminal court, and they can work in criminal court also. And then we have the criminal court reporters and they can both overlap, really is pretty much like freelance work is what it is. Or a cell practitioner attorney that would be working just for their cell.

00;02;21;19 - 00;02;44;20
Lisa Angel
And they can work in different courts and also depositions and all kinds of things. Anywhere someone wants to take down a written record for a board hearing things like that, they do all of that. And in criminal court, we have court reporters that are we have a few officials that we still have in the state of Tennessee, but most of our core reporters now are contract core reporters, and some are designated reporters.

00;02;44;21 - 00;03;02;24
Lisa Angel
That means that they work for certain judges assigned to a certain courtroom. And then some just go in different districts or different counties within the district. They may follow a judge like that, and then some kind of just kind of float from courtroom to courtroom and help out as needed.

00;03;02;28 - 00;03;22;14
Host, Joe Byrd
And something that you said there, the difference between official court reporters and contract court reporters, that was actually new to me coming to the EOC, because in my private practice, I would hire outside court reporters to come and do depositions, set up for hearings, take care of trials. Those kinds of things tell us the difference between official court reporters and contract court reporters.

00;03;22;19 - 00;03;41;29
Lisa Angel
Official four reporters work for the same judge all the time. They're always in the same courtroom, and they're also an actual employee at the state of Tennessee, where the other would be contract, and they can go from court to court. But some do also stay assigned with one courtroom. So that's the difference. They're actually an employee of the state.

00;03;42;03 - 00;04;02;10
Host, Joe Byrd
So Lisa, this podcast is for practitioners. Usually what I mean by that are attorneys. Interpreters could be court reporters that might be listening. But it's mainly for those who represent indigent clients. And just like any other litigation, the work of the court reporter is essential in our cases. We sent a memo out August 15 to 2023. It's actually on the AOC website.

00;04;02;10 - 00;04;13;20
Host, Joe Byrd
People want to go to ten courts to go. They can see on the IST page they'll be able to see that memo, but it provides a great deal of information. But it's equally important for court reporters to know some of that information, right?

00;04;13;27 - 00;04;23;28
Lisa Angel
Yes. I tell the court reporters to ask if the client is indigent and that before doing the transcript to make sure you have the AOC approved order from the attorney.

00;04;24;00 - 00;04;51;22
Host, Joe Byrd
Yeah, I've run into a few since I've been here where the attorney didn't know who. We have specific rules is it applies to court reporters and getting reimbursed for or getting the court reporters paid under rule 13. So we saved a sample copy of an order for transcript on the website to t in court. Scav so folks can take a look at that order, not only for the attorneys to look at it, but for the court reporters to make sure they've got that in hand before they start any work.

00;04;51;24 - 00;05;10;12
Host, Joe Byrd
Before we dive in, I just want to make sure we understand as we organize it. And I think really the work of core reporters sort of breaks down into two categories. It is the appearance showing up, taking down the testimony, getting it recorded, and then it's the transcription of the work. Is that about fair, accurate description, you think?

00;05;10;12 - 00;05;11;21
Lisa Angel
Yes, that's right.

00;05;11;24 - 00;05;19;05
Host, Joe Byrd
So can you provide us some of the essential parts of the orders that we were just talking about, that you're telling court reporters need to be part of those orders?

00;05;19;10 - 00;05;37;00
Lisa Angel
Yes. When they get the order from the attorney, it's a good idea to look over it and make sure that the estimate is provided. There is enough to cover the cost of the transcript. And a lot of times, the attorneys will ask the core reporters ahead of time to give them an estimate. And that's really good for attorneys to do.

00;05;37;01 - 00;05;56;04
Lisa Angel
We would like to try to keep them from having to go back and ask for more funds. If it's not enough, especially in some of the hearings, that could be the case, and also in the order you would need to put copies if applicable, if there's something they need copies of. Another copy is a transcript for one of the other attorneys.

00;05;56;05 - 00;06;16;16
Lisa Angel
It everything needs to be listed in the order also if they need copies of the exhibits. Sometimes that happens not that often, but just in case we need all of that put in there so it can be pre-approved, and then we won't have to go back and forth with corrections and additions and the invoice itself. We'll need to have the number of pages.

00;06;16;16 - 00;06;33;24
Lisa Angel
And by the rate of the EEOC, which is $4, then it totals out. You would have the case information in the attorneys signature on the invoice itself. And then you would send in the invoice and the copy of the pre-approved order together, and it would be logged in and sent every single department for processing.

00;06;33;26 - 00;06;54;03
Host, Joe Byrd
I think the order that we put on the ten courts.gov website actually has some of that information that you're, you're talking about, like the number of pages, it's $4 per page and it's the original Ed one copy. And if they don't put the amount that you're suggesting, we put a kind of a default amount in there. And I think it's $500.

00;06;54;05 - 00;07;08;00
Host, Joe Byrd
And so they need to though give us an estimate. And we don't mind if they factor in a little bit more. Then the final invoice can be a little less. But like you said, we don't want the court and we don't we don't want them having to ask for additional monies. We certainly don't want them to double it.

00;07;08;00 - 00;07;27;27
Host, Joe Byrd
If it's an estimated $600 transcript, we don't want them to put 1200, but we just don't want them going back and asking for more. So we actually put some of that information in the order that we've got posted on the website too. And so you sort of kind of put it all together, send it over to us. And then as you know, our platform for processing payments is known as a cap.

00;07;28;04 - 00;07;53;27
Host, Joe Byrd
And it wasn't set up to process the claims for court reporters originally. And so it requires this really labor intensive manual process to get the claims loaded into a cap so that then we can transmit them over to for a finance and administration so that the payments can be processed. And we've tried various ways of trying to address these claims to get them done as timely as we can, but we can't stay within the 30 day timeframe, really, that we do for attorney online claims.

00;07;54;04 - 00;08;04;10
Lisa Angel
I usually tell the court reporters that payments are generally run about 45 days on the real starting invoices, so that way they won't be looking for it like at the 30 days.

00;08;04;11 - 00;08;18;21
Host, Joe Byrd
And just so you know, in some of our listeners, if they are court reporters, they may want to know that I am trying to look at a solution for that, but it probably won't be something that will happen within the next few months. It might be in a year or two, but we are trying to come up with a software answer to some of that.

00;08;18;23 - 00;08;26;05
Host, Joe Byrd
Is there anything that you would want appointed attorneys to know about working with court reporters, as we're talking about their preparation of transcripts?

00;08;26;12 - 00;08;44;11
Lisa Angel
Yes. And we really need them to let the reporter know ahead of time if the case involves an incident party. And the reason is that the actual reporter is supposed to have the pre-approved order before they do the transcript and also in like certain hearings, they would have to have that order in order to be able to do that.

00;08;44;12 - 00;09;03;19
Host, Joe Byrd
We've run into a few, I think I've come over to your office and talked a few times about attorneys who had a court reporter show up, who didn't have a contract with us, wasn't approved, and then wouldn't take $4 per page. They wouldn't take the rate. And they really got themselves in a fix, because I can only approve the amount that's been approved by the court.

00;09;03;19 - 00;09;16;13
Host, Joe Byrd
So it's really important for their sake as well as for the court reporters sake, that they make sure. What about prior to preparing the transcripts, when they make their appearance at the hearings or proceedings? What about that process.

00;09;16;16 - 00;09;33;14
Lisa Angel
Is just like before preparing a transcript, they will also need to make sure they get a pre-approved order for that before they attend the like a TPR hearing. And then other hearings that would fall under rule 13, because that needs to be approved before they actually go through the hearing itself.

00;09;33;14 - 00;09;35;25
Host, Joe Byrd
And there are certain appearance rates that apply.

00;09;35;29 - 00;10;00;24
Lisa Angel
Yes, there are. On the order that the attorney gives you. It should have what you will be actually turning in your invoice for, which would be $350 for a day, 175 for a half a day. And then you can also say, if you don't know how many days that the hearings are going to take or trial, it's going to take, it could say for the amount of days, half days, you could say per day until the end of the hearing.

00;10;00;26 - 00;10;32;15
Lisa Angel
And also if it's something you're going to be doing out of county, the mileage rate right now is 0.67 cents per mile. That would need to be included in the order, and then it would be a good idea. If it's one of those cases that looks like it may take a little while to go ahead and include $25 per hour if it's over eight hours, if any of those things aren't listed that you think might be applicable, let the attorney know and then they can get it pre-approved before the date of the hearing, and make sure they give you a copy of that new order without any changes.

00;10;32;18 - 00;10;57;28
Lisa Angel
So just kind of look over the order if they give you one and see what's on there, and if any of those are missing, then just ask them if they'll go ahead and fix that at the time. You will save time in the long run. Also, help things flow a little bit smoother. And then also you can bring your invoice if you know it's going to be all day or a half a day, you could even bring your invoice with you to court for like the appearance fee and, get the attorney to sign it there.

00;10;58;00 - 00;11;19;13
Lisa Angel
So you'll kind of be a step ahead of getting it processed. Or you could make a form invoice that you could neatly fill in wiring for. But the goal is, whenever possible, is to have the attorney sign your invoice in court. If you're just there for a court appearance. That way you won't have to wait on emails going back and forth, and it'll just streamline the processing procedure.

00;11;19;19 - 00;11;37;13
Host, Joe Byrd
And just like we talked about the transcripts, I'm sure the plea from the court reporters or from you in particular, so they don't get into duchies to the attorneys pleas court reporters ask if it's indigent or and please, attorneys, tell the court reporter, be honest and tell them if they're clients indigent, because that helps out in the long run, doesn't it.

00;11;37;15 - 00;11;53;03
Lisa Angel
Right into has it helps with the timeline. And it will also help between going back and forth with emails and different things. And also, you know, it could stall a hearing or something if it's not pre-approved and the court reporter can't do it or maybe doesn't have a contract or something.

00;11;53;06 - 00;12;17;24
Host, Joe Byrd
Well, I think we've given them the transcript order and an order for appearance on the ten courts.gov website. And you're a great resource for court reporters to connect with, when we have some issues and you and I interface regularly, I appreciate you taking the time today being with us, Lisa. And, if you need to take a look at some of those orders, whether you're an attorney or if you're a court reporter, just check it out at tncourts.gov Thank You.