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What is a scopist?
"Scopists are linguists with polished skills in shorthand, computer usage,
English, legal terminology and the law, medical terminology and medicine, and other science or profession vocabularies, and
well-rounded general knowledge. While a reporter is in trial or a deposition, the scopist takes the reporter's files
containing the first computerized shorthand-to-English translation of the job s/he's working on, reads through it and defines
for the computer dictionary and shorthand entries that did not translate into English, corrects any misspellings or "typos,"
flags questionable passages for the reporter's attention, ensures that all parenthetic inserts and transcript formats
are as they should be, attempts to track down spellings of technical terms or proper names that the reporter might have failed
to provide with the job's worksheet, etc.
"When the scopist has done his/her work, the reporter then fine-proofs
the transcript, completes any necessary research, corrects any errors, and then prints, certifies, binds, files and distributes
it.
"Not all reporters use scopists, and indeed there are some technical/expedite
transcripts that many reporters simply prefer to self-scope and stay hands-on with from beginning to end, with the possible
luxury of having a scopist do the final proofing on it if they've self-scoped. After all, two heads are better than
one when it comes to spellings and punctuation and such.
"Those of us who've been fortunate enough to have our lives made easier
by scopists value them as counsel would value a good law clerk or research assistant."
Susie Lee, Official Reporter
Elli Harris * Lorena * TX * 76655
(717) 892-3777
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