At this week’s sales meeting, I played two videos which I thought would be good to share with everyone at DFW. At the sales meeting we talked about having a desire to succeed and work ethic, two critical ingredients in Driven toAchieve Your Potential, one of DFW’s core values.
The first video is from a motivational speaker, Eric Thomas, who talks about desire and motivation. He suggests that most people who say they want to succeed, often don’t do what it really takes to succeed and in reality aren’t truly willing to do what it takes to succeed. He likens the desire necessary to succeed to the desire we have to breathe and suggests that you will become successful when you want to succeed as badly as you want to breathe.
The next video is a clip of an interview of Will Smith. He has a simple philosophy on hard work. Simply put, in his words, if he and you get on a treadmill [in a contest to see who can last longer] there are ONLY two possible things that will happen:
1) You will get off before he does
2) He will die before he gets off before you
That is his metaphor for what outworking everyone else looks like.
(fyi – feel to watch then entire video which is the entire Will Smith interview, all of which is interesting, but the work ethic portion starts at minute 3:45 on the video)
Creating or expanding business relationships is not about selling – it’s about establishing trust, rapport, and value creationwithout selling. Call me crazy, but I don’t want to talk to someone who wants to manage my account, develop my business, or engineer my sale. I want to communicate with someone who desires to fulfill my needs or solve my problems. Any organization that still has “sales” titles on their org charts and business cards is living in another time and place, while attempting to do business in a world that’s already passed them by.
Engage me, communicate with me, add value to my business, solve my problems, create opportunity for me, educate me, inform me, but don’t try and sell me – it won’t work. An attempt to sell me insults my intelligence and wastes my time. Think about it; do you like to be sold? News flash – nobody does. Now ask yourself this question, do you like to be helped? Most reasonable people do. The difference between the two positions while subtle, are very meaningful and powerful.
The traditional practice of sales as a business discipline has become at best ineffective, and in many cases flat out obsolete. You see, good business practices are not static. Stale methodologies and disciplines simply die a slow and very painful death, and it is my contention the overwhelming majority of sales processes I see in today’s marketplace are just that – stale.
The problem with many sales organizations is they still operate with the same principles and techniques they were using in the 60′s, 70’s and 80’s. While the technology supporting sales process have clearly evolved, the traditional sales strategies proffered by sales gurus 20 or 30 years ago have not kept pace with market needs. They are not nearly as effective as they once were, and as I’ve alluded to, in most cases they are obsolete.
Trust me when I tell you that your existing and potential clients have heard it all before. They can see the worn-out, old school closes coming a mile away. They can sniff antiquated selling strategies, and will immediately tune out on presentations not deemed relevant. If your sales force is still FAB-selling, spin-selling, soft-selling or using any number of outdated, one size fits all selling methodologies, your sales are suffering whether you realize it or not. If you want to create revenue, increase customer satisfaction, and drive brand equity, stop selling and start adding value.
Lest you think I’ve lost my mind, I want to be clear that I’m not advocating taking your eye off the revenue creation ball. Rather what I’m recommending will help you generate more revenue, with greater velocity by simply doing the right thing in putting your customer’s needs first.
I hear a lot of noise about the tough economy, and revenue being down for many companies. I hear complaint upon complaint that companies just don’t have money to spend, and that nobody is buying. If you’re experiencing this type of reaction from your customer, it’s not because they don’t have money to spend, it’s because you’re selling and not adding value. It’s because you’re talking and not listening. It’s because you don’t get it…
It’s not about you, your company, your products or your services. It’s about meeting customer needs and adding value. When you start paying more attention to your customer needs than your revenue needs, you’ll find you no longer have a revenue problem to complain about.
So, my first suggestion is you change nomenclature. Clients are people not fish. Don’t “lure” or “hook” them – engage them, listen to them and serve them. Eliminate the words “suspects” and “prospects” from your vocabulary and replace them with potential clients. Think about it – do you establish trust by profiling and targeting prospects, or by attempting to understand the needs of a potential client? This is much more than a semantical argument – it’s a philosophical shift in thinking, and a practical shift in acting. Stop selling and start serving.
The truth is most corporations have a hierarchy of sales that comes with a very established and entrenched pecking order. The enterprise sales folks and key accounts reps sit atop the food chain, followed by inside sales reps, and at the bottom of the ladder you’ll find the customer service reps. The hunters are revered and the farmers are tolerated. Regardless of the titles being used, this entire concept of sales is so antiquated it’s laughable. Frankly, most people I know would rather talk to a knowledgeable customer service person over a sales rep any day of the week. The reason for this should be obvious – the perception is a customer service professional is providing information and helping them meet their needs. A sales person is trying to sell them something.
It’s time for companies to realize that consumers have become very savvy and very demanding. Today’s consumer (B2B or B2C) does their homework, is well informed, and buys…they are not sold.
If customer centricity is a buzzword as opposed to the foundation of your corporate culture then you have some work to do. The reality is until I know that you care more about meeting my needs than yours, you’ll remain on the outside looking in. By the way, in order to understand my needs you have to actually know something about me…
Since the large majority of all buying decisions either begin or conclude on the Internet, you better be visible online. In addition to the basics of search engine optimization and traditional search engine marketing, I would strongly suggest getting involved in social networking. Just by having a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social networking platforms, you not only open-up a new communications channel to your existing clients, but you also make yourself readily available to those looking to find what you have to offer.
Teach your sales force to become true professionals focused on helping their customers for all the right reasons vs. closing the big deal for personal benefit. To do otherwise will lead to missing substantial opportunities without even being aware of it.
The most important factor in creating revenue and building brand equity is the client/customer/end-user. If you don’t engineer everything around the client, your client relationships will vanish before your very eyes. Don’t be just another vendor, become a trusted advisor and advocate.
Question: Do you know what happens when you give a procrastinator a good idea?
Answer: Nothing!
According to research, all the statistics I’ve found say that 90 to 95% of people procrastinate. I don’t think I could find anyone who could claim they have never procrastinated.
Many people procrastinate: but what you may not know is everyone doesn’t procrastinate in the same way. I realized recently while working with clients that there are two very distinct styles of procrastination.
I put together The Action Solution specifically to help people actually make progress on what matters to them, and I’ve found that some techniques are especially effective for people who procrastinate in one way – and some techniques are especially useful for people who procrastinate in the second way.
Let’s talk about the first form, what I call short term procrastination.
“I’ll Do It Tomorrow”
“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
- Spanish Proverb
Short term procrastination is the type of procrastination we see all the time. It’s frustrating, but having worked with many people who exercise this style of procrastination I’ve become fairly good at dealing with it.
This is where you have some task you need to do, some thing you want to work on – and you could do something about it today, right now.
However, instead of starting, short term procrastinators tell themselves “I’ll do it tomorrow.” This is procrastination one day at a time, and as bad as it is for your productivity – it’s even worse for your morale. Every day, you wake up with good intentions, hoping you’ll be able to make progress.
And every day when you put off a task yet again, you try to tell yourself you really mean it this time, you really will start tomorrow: but deep down, you know that from experience, you probably won’t.
I’ll get back to discussing short term procrastination and it’s root causes up ahead in a future article. Make sure you’re signed up via email so you can get that update.
For now though, I want to discuss this second style of procrastination. This style is far more dangerous, because on the outside people may even look productive - while in truth they are procrastinating and not spending time on what they want most in their lives.
“I’ll Do It Someday”
The second type of procrastination is long term procrastination. This is the type of procrastination that kills dreams, leads to long term regrets, and that other people will play along and help you deny you’re doing it.
Long term procrastinators have some project they want to take up, a dream they want to accomplish, but have no idea when they’ll actually be able to do it. They just know you’re too busy and can’t get to it right now – instead, plan to “get around to it someday.” This is called ‘someday syndrome’, and it is something which affects almost all of us.
Someday syndrome is insidious, because it often looks noble on the outside, because the excuse you’ll make for putting off your dreams and goals is you don’t have time, because you’re doing the things you “need to do” first.
People get tied up in day to day work, little emergencies and short term “urgent” tasks (that may not really matter to them in the long run). As as a result, they are never able to put aside enough time to write, or exercise, or taking that trip they’ve dreamed about because they’re so busy.
All those things get pushed off to “someday.” And every day, they wonder where the day went.
As you’ve read these two descriptions, short term and long termprocrastination, you may have identified with one or the other. Keep that in mind, because I’m to ask you about that in a minute.
Now, lets get to some of the broad root causes of why we procrastinate.
Why We Procrastinate
Do you know the real reason we procrastinate until tomorrow or someday?
It’s because deep down, on some subconcious level, we take today for granted – and imagine that we have unlimited time left in our lives. We don’t feel the urgency we need to to take action right now.
I’m always talking about how important it is to value your time, and that’s really what it comes down to: when we procrastinate, we do so because we don’t value our time. Specifically, we don’t value today, and this moment.
We think we have all the time in the world, and we start by taking today for granted – and from there it’s a slippery slope to taking the next day for granted.
And once you begin taking one or two days for granted – you end up devaluing them, and it’s a slippery slope to taking the rest of your life for granted.
“We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with.
Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do.
We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.“
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Question: Which Do You Identify With?
We’ll be talking about procrastination a lot in the coming weeks, because long term procrastination specifically was the basis of The Action Solution.
As we close today, I have a quick question for you:
Which form of procrastination do you most identify with (even if you frequently overcome it)?
Insights I gained from Morrie Shechtman, my Vistage Speaker, April 2012.
Morrie’s Philosophy – Morrie works with companies to help them clarify and act on core values, which ultimately serve to create a tangible and unified culture. After this self-discovery phase, he moves onto the critical elements of relationships, commitment and accountability. His goal is to create a company filled with employees who have the capacity for self-analysis and adaptive learning. Such companies – characterized by increased productivity, open and honest communication, and a willingness to eliminate the dysfunctional behaviors – have a remarkable advantage.
There is NO personal or professional growth without dealing with who you are. All personal change precedes professional change. You must be committed to personal growth. Managers SHOULD talk to employees about their personal lives because it affects job performance.
The strongest driver in life is the need to reproduce the familiar, EVEN if the familiar is destructive, and that is why change and personal growth is so hard, because change involves the loss of the familiar. And people who are afraid of change are conflict avoiders where their familiarity is with avoiding conflict, thus no personal growth occurs.
Morrie gave an example of sales people who do not reach or exceed their quotas and likely never will, because their familiar is being a disappointment to themselves or others. Therefore, EVEN if they are performing above and outside their comfort zone for a period time, they will figure out a way to get back to their comfort zone (the familiar) by avoiding conflict and thus, disappointment prevails.
We should always be happy, never satisfied.
If you want to grow people, you should regularly express disappointment in people. Disappointment is the catalyst for growth. And that lack of satisfaction is a driver for growth. So the expression of disappointment is a vote of confidence in people. If you’re not disappointed in people, you gave up on them a long time ago.
Anger is a caring expression of disappointment. Hostility is a non-caring blanket accusation from which there’s no redemption. For example, a caring angry statement of disappointment would be, “I didn’t like the way you handled that client. I’d like you to look at what you said and why you said it,” thus showing your concern for growth in that person. A hostile non-caring statement would be, “Every time you deal with a client, you blow it,” thus showing you have given up on that person.
Regarding our incomes, most of us will make what we NEED to make (the familiar), NOT what we want to make (the unfamiliar). Therefore, when hiring, especially with sales people, make sure what they NEED to make is consistent with what the company NEEDS them to make, so there is alignment.
Your income is the reflection of the amount of risk you are willing to take, the more risk you take, the more money you can potentially make. Companies pay the most to those employees willing to take the most risk. For example, selling which often involves cold calling is risky because rejection is uncomfortable, and that is why rain makers are often the highest paid people.
Training is an intellectual venture, it’s about thinking. Personal and professional development is an emotional venture, it’s about feeling.
Love and hate are both forms of investment in a relationship. If you deprive someone of disappointment, you abandon them. Accountability is an act of caring. I care enough about this relationship to confront you because I believe you to be a better person than this.
On conflict, the earlier you confront issues, the more you’ll grow as a person. Ignoring issues is the easy path
On creating a caring company culture, caretaking is telling people what they want to hear, caring is telling people what they need to hear. If you want to help people grow, you need to tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
Another example of caretaking is dismissing people through giveaways. If you give people something and walk away, that is the ultimate form of abandonment. Caring for people is to confront them about why they are in the situation they are in to begin with and what they are going to do about it. For example, instead of dealing with your screaming children, you give them something (a toy, a gizmo, whatever) to quiet them down; anything but actually confronting and dealing with them in a manner that achieves personal growth .
Culture is the articulation of values in an organization. On the difference between values and goals, values are deeply held beliefs on what the world ought to be, NOT necessarily how it is, goals are where you are going in life. Values are how you are going to get there.
Characteristics of Values:
1) They are inherently polarized; black or white. Consequently, they must lead to decision amongst two or more choices
2) They are situationally neutral, therefore universally applicable. Circumstances never determine values.
3) They are people neutral. Who people are never determines values.
4) They are unambiguous, and incapable of further definition.
Where would you place yourself on the following values continua? You have to be toward one end or the other — you cannot be in the middle.
You can teach skills, you can’t teach values, therefore, hire for values consistent with the values of the company. Motivating people does not happen, you set boundaries and expectations that they either can conform to or not.
As many of you all know, once a month, both Sheril and I each attend an entire day Vistage meeting. Vistage is an organization with the specific purpose of helping individuals grow professionally and personally. Sheril and I are each in separate groups that meet on separate days, about 12 people for each of our groups plus our Vistage chair, Mark Taylor who organizes and moderates each meeting. Vistage meetings are hosted each month by a different member of the group, typically at their office in a conference room. The day is broken down into two sessions, 9:00 am – noon, then lunch with the group, then 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The format is simple: in one of the sessions, either am or pm, for each meeting we have a different speaker every month who talks for 3 hours and in the other session we process issues that anyone in group might want help on.
I cannot say enough about how Vistage has helped me grow, both personally and professionally. Our Vistage chair, Mark, is a professional CEO Coach (check out his blog) and as a part of our Vistage membership, Mark also comes to our office 2x a month and sits in our executive committee (EC) meetings every other Tuesday (we have the EC meeting every Tuesday at 12:30 pm for about two hours) and Mark provides valuable insights and ideas, almost as a quasi board member. It is also worth noting that I have been in Vistage now for two and half years and since I joined Vistage (Sheril joined about 6 months ago), DFW has grown revenues by nearly 40% in 2011 and is experiencing similar growth YTD 2012; and March 2012 was the best month EVER for DFW in terms of job volume. Therefore, we are on track to nearly double DFW in two years. I feel Vistage has helped me grow a lot as an individual and as a leader and I am excited about the future for DFW. I plan to start sharing the lessons learned at Vistage with each of you by blogging about the specific lessons. The first of these blogs recapping our last speaker, Morrie Shechtman, Fifth Wave Leadership, will be coming very soon
Consistent with DFW’s mission to become to best court reporting company in the world to work for, and as a reminder, DFW has a $2,500/yr matching program for every employee who would like to make an investment in themselves towards personal and professional growth. For each dollar you spend on yourself towards personal and/or professional growth, DFW will match/contribute up to $2,500/yr. There are all sorts of ways you can invest in yourself including classes, seminars, books, audio/video series…etc…etc, just let me know what you have in mind first so I can approve it before you actually spend the money and then DFW will reimburse 50% of your investment. Some of you have taken advantage of this program but not all of you. Perhaps you have forgotten the program exists or been too busy to work on yourself or don’t have the money or…etc…etc. I cannot stress enough the rewards you AND those around you will reap from making an investment in yourself towards growth. Find the time, find the money, what better investment than an investment in yourself? Do it.
I recently heard an attorney say, “The only problem with realtime is you miss it when you don’t have it.” For those attorneys that swear by the benefits of realtime, and there are a lot of you out there, a common frustration is when your court reporter can’t successfully connect your LiveNote laptop to the realtime feed. And guess what? You’re not alone.
I have trained hundreds of attorneys in how to use LiveNote over the years, and a VERY common frustration I hear from them is that the court reporter couldn’t get the LiveNote connections to connect. Often times, when the court reporter can’t get your laptop to connect, the court reporter will provide a laptop as a back-up, but that may not be ideal for you. Or even worse, maybe the court reporter doesn’t have a spare laptop for you, so sorry, no realtime for you!
Why doesn’t your laptop connect?
Reason # 1: The court reporter is not properly trained to troubleshoot your incorrectly configured laptop
Reason # 2: The laptop you bring is not properly configured to effortlessly receive realtime
In other words, having an experienced realtime court reporter makes a HUGE difference as to whether or not your realtime connections will work. But that is NOT the only reason. And let’s face the facts: in a perfect world, you would ONLY work with your favorite and most trusted realtime reporters and your laptop would work every time…yeah, right. But now back to reality for a moment: you frequently don’t have control over which court reporter will be working with you. Therefore, I’ve compiled my top 5 tips below, covering the key things you can do to give yourself a fighting chance to have your laptop connect to realtime with consistency, regardless of who the court reporter is.
It is important to note that LiveNote is not the only software solution for realtime transcripts. There are other alternatives including CaseViewNet and Bridge. These days most realtime reporters will bring their own realtime laptops, often configured with CaseViewNet or Bridge. In the event that your laptop will not connect, you can use one of these “loaner” laptops in place of your own LiveNote laptop. These loaners work quite well, but the reality is that LiveNote is currently the realtime software that most law firms own, thus the software that you likely have loaded on your laptop.
Here’s what you can do to help your own cause:
Tip # 1– First and foremost, get your laptop to the reporter at least 30 minutes before the deposition is scheduled to start.
These days, most realtime court reporters, given enough time, can troubleshoot most realtime connection issues. So if you want your realtime connections to connect, do yourself a favor and get your laptop to the court reporter as early as possible, giving the court reporter ample time to correct any issues that might arise. This is the most important tip and will save you a lot of frustration.
Tip # 2– Let the court reporting agency know in advance that you want realtime.
This is especially important if you or your firm are not responsible for arranging for the court reporter. For example, if you are defending and opposing counsel is responsible for ordering the court reporter, be sure that somehow the court reporting agency knows in advance that you want realtime. This simple step will give the court reporting agency a head’s up that an experienced realtime reporter is required. This makes a big difference.
Tip # 3 – Make sure your laptop is READY to receive realtime by doing each of the following:
- While this may seem obvious, check your laptop to be sure a working copy of LiveNote or another realtime application is installed on your laptop…seriously.
- If your laptop does not have a serial port (pictured below), ensure you have a working USB serial adapter. (Click this link to see exactly what a USB serial adapter is and what you should buy in order of preference).
These days, many of the new lightweight laptops and net books do not have serial ports. If your laptop does NOT have a serial port, your laptop will require a USB serial adapter to connect to the court reporter’s realtime feed ASSUMING the reporter is connecting using cables (aka serial connections). The reason is because the cables that court reporters use to connect require your laptop to have a serial port. The reality is that most court reporters do carry USB to serial adapters, BUT (and this is a BIG BUT), there are all sorts of compatibility issues with these USB serial adapters. These issues include compatibility with your laptop, compatibility with your operating system, AND compatibility with the realtime software itself. So if you don’t have a serial port on your laptop, your best bet is to bring a USB serial adapter that has already been properly configured to work on your laptop. This simple step will prevent tons of problems.
- Ensure your laptop is ready to receive wireless realtime.
Another work-around to the serial port issue above is when the court reporter connects their realtime to your laptop wirelessly, which is a very cool way to go. This great option is becoming more and more popular. However, in order for wireless to work, most of the time the reporter will need to install a small piece of software on your laptop. This is easily accomplished by the court reporter right before the job starts, ASSUMING your laptop is not locked-down by your IT department. Locked-down laptops handcuff court reporters, making it nearly impossible for them to troubleshoot your laptop if there is no serial port and/or no working preinstalled USB serial adapter. So, as a preemptive measure, click the link below (or forward the link to one of you IT/Litigation support professionals) and follow the prompts. This will auto-install the necessary drivers onto your laptop that are most commonly used by most court reporters who use wireless realtime, enabling your laptop to receive wireless realtime, EVEN if your laptop is locked-down with administrative only rights.
- Make sure your laptop is NOT locked-down with administrative rights only.
Although not quite as good as coming with your own USB to serial adapter and wireless adapters installed, simply ensuring the court reporter will be able to install software makes a HUGE difference as long as you follow Tip # 1. Alternatively, if your law firm IT/Litigation support department will not unlock your laptop, then forward them this blog so IT can install everything you need.
Admittedly, the next few tips are a bit techie and may require the geek squad. I’ve tried to simplify the tech talk, but it is still a bit techie no matter how you look at it; sorry about that. On the other hand, if you understand what I am saying below, you will rarely experience frustration from failed realtime connections because you will know what to do!
“Techie” Tip # 4– Know how to determine which COM port your USB serial adapter is working on.
This can be done by checking the Windows device manager on your laptop, which can be found within the control panel. Then, make sure this matches the COM port selected in the connection options screen of LiveNote when attempting to connect to a realtime session. I understand that this may sound like Chinese to many reading this. However, if you can have one of your IT literate friends explain what this means, you will know more about trouble-shooting realtime connections than 99% of the attorneys out there.
“Techie” Tip # 5- Remember this: “x’s on the screen = baud rate issue”
When the court reporter is attempting to establish a realtime connection and you see a bunch of x’s rather than words on your LiveNote realtime screen, the problem is likely a baud rate issue. I’m guessing you’re thinking this too sounds like Chinese. No worries; just remember x’s = baud rate issue. If the court reporter is struggling to trouble shoot a connection issue and you see x’s, suggest to your court reporter that it may be a baud rate issue. Your court reporter should be able to troubleshoot the issue from there and will think you’re really smart!
Realtime is an invaluable tool for attorneys. May all your realtime connections connect!
When casually addressing this topic with reporters, the answer quite often seems to be, “it depends.” I wanted a better answer, so I surveyed nearly 100 reporters of varying experience and skill level. What I found is that while it may “depend,” most of you are in agreement about what it depends on.
Step 1: Ask reporters what they do in varying situations when interruption may be necessary.
For those of you that didn’t take the survey, I asked reporters to answer what they typically do in each of the following situations with regard to interrupting:
1) If someone is speaking extremely fast and you are not getting the complete record, what do you typically do?
2) If multiple parties are speaking at the same time and you are not getting the complete record, what do you typically do?
3) If you cannot understand one or more of the parties due to their accent, or they are speaking too softly and you are not fully comprehending and digesting their words, what do you typically do?
I offered the following options:
Interrupt immediately
Wait until break to clarify
Rely on your audio back-up to fix later
Other
I also gave an opportunity to comment on each question, and also asked about years of experience and the speed they’re comfortable writing at. Here are some of my key findings. First the easy stuff:
Almost no one thinks you should wait until break if you are not getting the record, regardless of the reason.
Those who answered “other” basically said “all of the above” or “it depends,” so I have left out the “other” category while digesting the numbers; thus why the totals do not add up to 100%.
Nearly everyone agrees you should interrupt immediately if you can’t understand what is being said due to heavy accents or if someone is speaking too softly.
One very interesting suggestion for hard to hear witnesses was to use headphones during the depo and listen to the audio feed directly from your microphones since you can turn up the volume.
Most agree you should interrupt if the parties are speaking over one another.
Now something really interesting I discovered when filtering the data between the less/more experienced reporters and the slower/faster writers:
There is a definite difference of opinion on how to handle fast talkers. The more experienced and/or faster writers nearly unanimously agree if it’s too fast, interrupt immediately. The less experienced and/or slower writers are far more likely to rely on the audio back-up rather than interrupting.
Interestingly, when reading through the comments, and there were tons of them, I noticed common themes from the veterans which were:
COMPETENCE & CONFIDENCE
The most experienced, fastest writers commented often about the importance of immediately establishing your presence as a competent, skilled reporter on every job as the best way to deal with the issue of interrupting. Simply put, if you establish yourself immediately at all jobs as a true professional, then if/when you need to interrupt, the parties will know you’re not crying wolf and are more likely to be sympathetic to your plight.
(FYI – in a future blog, I will explore what it takes to become that competent, confident reporter that commands respect from the parties and interrupts effortlessly; stay tuned.)
In fairness, there is another theory to be explored as to why the younger, less experienced reporters are less likely to interrupt when they can’t keep up. The less experienced reporters are also most likely the younger reporters, as in the Gen X reporters. These Gen X’ers have had the luxury of audio back-up for their entire careers, so they’re simply embracing the technology, right?
Well, maybe. But while there is likely something to that argument, I would suggest that only partially explains what is going on. With regard to relying on audio back-up or not, the inability to “keep up” was the only scenario where there were noticeable differences in the responses between those of greater and lesser experience. If reliance on the audio back-up is a generational thing, then why don’t the younger, less experienced reporters rely on their audio back-up for other scenarios as well?
Which brings me right back to this competence/confidence thing. Most likely, the less experienced reporters are embarrassed when they can’t keep up, so they aren’t speaking up.
So should you interrupt?The answer overwhelmingly seems to be YES!
Ok, if we know interruptions are inevitable and necessary, then, of course, we must ask ourselves how best to interrupt. That definitely seems to be a personal thing, but there are some consistent themes. I highly suggest reading through the comments, as there are so many great ideas.
Highlights include: be polite, and no sarcasm – UNLESS you have a killer personality and/or sense of humor, in which case, if you’re witty enough, a little humor may be just what the doctor ordered. Putting your hands in the air seems to resonate as well.
It’s game day. You’ve prepared hard for this most important deposition, the big witness; your client is in attendance watching intently. It’s a chance for you to shine. The deposition starts off easy enough, and you get into a rhythm, you’re in total control, just as planned. Then it happens, the court reporter interrupts because he/she isn’t getting the record, then interrupts again and again and again throughout the day. So much for making a great impression on your client, not to mention the distraction to your flow. Sound familiar?
Interrupting by the court reporter is one of the most common reasons that attorneys complain to court reporting agencies. Ironically, one of the biggest pet peeves that court reporters have with their agencies is when the agency does not support the court reporter when a client calls to complain that the court reporter was interrupting too often.
Tricky, huh?
So I set out to tackle this perplexing dilemma. I started by surveying nearly 100 highly experienced court reporters throughout the US and even abroad, and the results were quite interesting. What I found were some practical ideas that attorneys can implement immediately to limit the number of interruptions at their depositions. And here’s the kicker, implementing these ideas will also give attorneys cleaner realtime feeds, better roughs delivered faster at the end of the day and higher quality final transcripts.
Of the reporters surveyed, 62% have over 20 years of experience and 92% of them have at least 10 years of experience. Additionally, nearly 75% of these reporters write (when the court reporter records the spoken word it is called “writing”) at 225 words per minute or faster. That’s fast! These court reporters work for most of the well known agencies, so some of them likely have reported for you. We asked them a series of questions on how they handle interrupting and what they think can be done to limit how often they need to interrupt. Many of the responses were fascinating and some of the results quite unexpected. After reading through zillions of ideas from these court reporters from around the world, I’ve come up with one simple observation, one provocative opinion and several practical ideas to help attorneys keep interruptions to a minimum.
One of the most fascinating discoveries from the survey is that the most experienced and talented reporters indicated the most willingness to interrupt, although they are least likely to need to interrupt due to the speed they write at. Less experienced reporters were less likely to interrupt due to fear of seeming inexperienced and more likely to rely on “getting” the record from their audio back-up. So which reporter do you think will deliver a higher quality transcript? Like it or not, if you’re lucky enough to have a real pro reporter working for you, they are nearly certain to interrupt if they are not getting the record.
Maybe you’re thinking the simple solution is to use the same court reporter you’ve grown to love over the years or to keep the same court reporter for the entirety of a case… aah, if life were that simple. The reality is your favorite court reporter is not always available, the deposition sites for a case are not always in the same locale and you do not always get to select who the court reporter is.
Also, just to be fair, I am the first to agree that there is plenty that court reporters and agencies can do to address this problem as well. But since my target audience here is attorneys, my focus for this blog is what attorneys can do. I do plan to write another blog on this topic geared towards the court reporter and agencies.
We got some fascinating feedback from the comments on the survey. And as you’re reading them, remember, I’m just the messenger. These feelings are directly from the court reporting community, representing countless agencies, most likely including the one you use.
Simple Observation: Court reporters nearly universally feel that their skill level and difficulty of their job is often underappreciated by attorneys who “just don’t get it.”
Maybe you don’t believe me, or maybe you don’t care. Well, here are real quotes from many different court reporters that came from the survey when asked about this topic.
“The reality is that most attorneys and witnesses have no understanding of what we do and how difficult it is. They think we are tape recorders.”
“Get clients/lawyers who know how to make a record.”
“Most attorneys are totally ignorant of the effort the reporter must go to in order to make a record.”
“Unfortunately, the attorneys and witness control how much interrupting should go on.”
“… with over 25 years of reporting experience speaking fast is just part of the job, it’s going to happen. no matter how many times you ask them to slow down or not speak over each other, it is a battle that you just have to grind through because sometimes they just don’t listen…”
Provocative Opinion: Those attorneys that understand, accept and embrace that they are partially responsible for the amount of interrupting that occurs are the same attorneys that are likely to experience fewer interruptions, better realtime, better rough ASCII’s and higher quality final transcripts.
So if you’re willing to do something about it, here are the top two ideas you can implement immediately:
Idea #1: – For the taking attorney: When delivering your “ground rules” to the witness at the beginning of a deposition be CERTAIN to include and emphasize “verbatim etiquette” including:
1) Explain the court reporter is not a machine, and just like everyone else in the room, he/she has to hear what everyone is saying in order to construct an accurate record
2) Specify only one person is to speak at a time
3) Remind everyone to be considerate of the speed they speak at
4) Remind everyone to speak loudly and clearly
5) Remember #1 – 4 applies to you as well
Idea # 2: – You know everything about this case, and having that context helps you more easily “get” everything being said, especially when heavy accents are involved. The court reporter is coming in blind and does not have the benefit of this context. So to give the court reporter a more level playing field and fighting chance, here’s what you can do.
Prepare and provide the court reporter/agency as far in advance with any/all of the following:
The deposition notice
A list of names
Word indexes
Words of art
Expert reports
Previous transcripts
Extra credit – a brief synopsis of the case and the roles of the key players likely to come up in testimony
Simply implementing these two ideas consistently will save you a lot of frustration. Give it a try.
In the context of legal testimony, realtime is the ability to view testimony in real time on a computer screen as it is being written by the court reporter. Click here to see a quick demo of the technology in action.
The term “realtime” first appeared in print around 1940, and has been on an upward march in popularity ever since. How do I know this? Actually, finding information like this just became really easy thanks to Google Labs, which launched a super cool FREE new tool on December 16, 2010 called the “Google Books Ngram Viewer,” which allows anyone to plot the frequency of usage of any word over extended periods of time. The tool queries Google’s vast database of over 5.2 million books, ranging from 1500 to 2008, and includes over 500 billion or so unique words that are included in the collection. This tool provides for a wealth of trends by tracking the popularity of words spanning decades or even centuries. Wow!
So I plotted “realtime,” and found the term was first used around 1940 and has been on the rise ever since. Yet, here we are 70 years later and the application of realtime technology as a tool to empower litigators during depositions, arbitrations, hearings and trials is still unknown or highly underutilized by so many attorneys. This is despite the fact that realtime technology in the legal space has been around for over two decades. Isn’t that unbelievable? So I’ve dedicated this blog post, my first ever (preview future blog topics) to the pros and cons of realtime for attorneys during depositions.
I am a certified LiveNote trainer (West LiveNote is currently the dominant player in realtime viewing software for the legal industry, although it is worth noting that Lexis Nexis in partnership with Stenograph offers a competing realtime viewer called CaseViewNet that seamlessly integrates with TextMap which is gaining in popularity) and over the years I have given dozens of LiveNote CLE training courses to thousands of attorneys. I always start my CLE by asking the attendees by a show of hands how many have used realtime. Even though I know what is coming, the answers still amaze me. Usually less than half of the attendees raise their hands. The funny thing is that the company LiveNote has for years been promoting how widely used their software is: “81% of AmLaw 200 firms use LiveNote.” Also, the law firms that I present to have almost always spent considerable amounts of money on the software, so what gives? It is worth noting that in addition to realtime capability, both LiveNote and CaseViewNet/TextMap also provide an extremely powerful transcript, exhibit, and video management tool used to manage this information post-deposition, which is also highly underutilized by most, but more about that in a future blog.
The Cons – let’s start with why realtime is underutilized or not at all:
“I didn’t know about it” or “why fix what isn’t broke” or the proverbial “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” – you get the idea, enough said.
It’s too expensive and my client won’t pay for it – court reporting agencies around the country typically charge anywhere from $1.50 – $2.00/page per connection so depending on your budget, using realtime can be cost prohibitive. But keep reading and perhaps you can forward this blog to your client to justify the expenditure.
Realtime is distracting – I sometimes hear this one, but from my experience, many of the people in this camp have not been properly trained on how to use the technology and/or informed as to all of the benefits.
It’s too frustrating because my court reporter can’t get my laptop to connect – Unfortunately, this one is somewhat common and stems from poorly trained court reporters AND poorly prepared attorneys. As for the court reporters, not all court reporting agencies are created equally, so choose wisely. But even if your court reporting company provides competent realtime reporters, you don’t always get to choose the court reporting company and your adversary may provide inferior court reporters. But wait, there is still hope. There is plenty you can do to improve your chances of a successful connection. Click here to learn how.
The Pros – what those in the know…know. There are countless attorneys who swear by realtime; here’s why:
Instant access to the testimony, verbatim – simply following/reading the testimony in realtime misses the point. It’s nice, sure, but by using realtime, now you can have the testimony quickly accessible at your fingertips any time during the day – not just as it is occurring. So when you want to refer to testimony from earlier in the day for follow-up questions, you can immediately review what has been said rather than relying on the court reporter for a readback. Or if you want to review at break or at lunch with your colleagues, experts…etc…you can review the exact testimony with ease rather than relying on your recollection of the testimony or the all-too-common yellow pad.
Commanding the room – who’s in charge, you are, right? Let’s certainly hope so, and it can be intimidating to a witness knowing that everything being said is right in front of you and easily retrieved at any point throughout the day. Strategically this can put the witness on the defensive and let them know that you’re in charge of the room. Wouldn’t this technology come in handy with your spouse!
Did you get what you thought you got? In many instances, attorneys may think a deponent has answered a particular question to their satisfaction or that they’ve phrased their question in a certain way only to read the final transcript weeks later and see that the answer or the question wasn’t as thorough as needed, oops, too late…ugh! Having access to the testimony as it is occurring (or during a break) will help you confirm that you’re getting what you think you’re getting and got what you thought you got, before it’s too late.
Errata issues - let’s face it, even the best court reporters aren’t perfect. With realtime, you can instantly see whether or not the court reporter is “getting it” and address any mistakes by the court reporter while they are happening, not weeks later on an errata sheet. This can significantly improve the quality of the final transcript.
Objections – should counsel object to form, realtime allows you to calmly review exactly what you just said, reframe your question and get right back on track.
Counter distractions - when you’re in a rhythm at a deposition, do distractions by the witness, opposing counsel or even the court reporter get you off track? Or worse yet, you lose focus, perhaps worrying about something on the home front? Never, yeah right! With realtime, you can calmly pick up where you lost track and no one will ever know you had lost track.
Flag key testimony – sticking with my 1940 theme, the yellow pad is over-utilized and inefficient. With realtime, by a simple tap of the space bar, you can flag/highlight testimony when something important comes up. You can then instantly navigate to any of these flags within seconds at breaks or bring the entire realtime transcript, including your flags, back to your office for review later that evening or days later. If you want to get fancy, you can also assign issues in realtime and flag by issue rather than with a simple highlight. You can also add notes to your issues. Additionally, you can preset auto tags and the software will automatically flag and catalog predefined terms for you. How efficient is that?
View realtime testimony and/or video from anywhere in the world – did you know that you don’t even have to be at the deposition to view the realtime feed? Known in the industry as LiveNote Stream, realtime can be streamed anywhere in the world with password protected access to view the transcript and/or video in realtime simply with an Internet connection and Internet Explorer (IE). Most often this would be a colleague, your client, co-counsel, paralegals and/or experts. In fact, remote attendees can even send secure instant messages to other remote attendees and/or counsel attending the deposition. Don’t worry, opposing counsel can’t see these IM’s, even if they are attending remotely themselves. This technology can save considerable time and money by reducing the need for everyone involved to attend the deposition in person. This allows for improved collaboration among members of a team handling a litigation.
So while there are plenty of attorneys who don’t use realtime because they don’t understand the technology, there are cost considerations, or they find it to be distracting, in this day and age, many wouldn’t dare take a deposition, arbitration, hearing, or trial without it due to the many advantages offered. Give it a try!
I have many ideas for future blogs but chose to start my blogging career on topic that I’m passionate about which using technology to be more efficient. So I started with realtime and its benefits. My ambition in this and future blogs is to share with you a lifetime of court reporting experience for the solutions to the most common problems that come up for attorneys, paralegals and their clients on everything related to the deposition phase of discovery.
Here’s a preview of future blogs:
Why is court reporting so expensive and what can you do about it?
I hate when the court reporter interrupts during the deposition – is there anything I can do about this – - – YES!
You’re still using yellow pads, post-it notes and highlighters, really, really?
My court reporter is sending me crappy roughs drafts, how can I prevent this?
Got any international depositions to schedule, everything you need to know from logistics to keeping your costs in check.
The dreaded spot call, someone at your office forgot to schedule a court reporter, happens all the time, don’t let that happen to you.
Late nights at the office digesting transcripts? There’s a better way…really!
What’s up with the token and LiveNote anyway?
Videoconferencing vs. Video Streaming – which one is for me? Is either for me?
