What I Learned Running Technology at a Court Reporting Firm
First-person lessons from modernizing a 45-year-old court reporting firm: what breaks in the field, what reporters ask for, and how to keep their trust.
Key takeaways
- Field failures expose more about a product than a controlled demonstration.
- Repeated entry and unclear handoffs cost time across scheduling, production, delivery, and payment.
- Modernization has to preserve the trust built by the professionals responsible for the record.
- Move quickly on repeatable work, not on certification or record integrity.
DepoStack grew out of the technology work I have led at Executive Reporting Service, a Florida court reporting firm with 45 years in the industry.1 For about six years, I have been responsible for systems spanning reporting, legal video, production, delivery, and agency operations. My court-reporting license gives me one useful perspective, but the broader lessons came from owning technology across the full workflow.
What breaks is never the demo
In a sales demo, everything works. In the field, the Wi-Fi at the hotel conference room drops mid-realtime. The depo gets moved twice before 9 a.m. The videographer needs the sync and the file’s still uploading. Three parties order copies and one of them needs it yesterday. The most useful software is not necessarily the product with the longest feature list. It is the product that remains dependable on a difficult day.
The same workflow needs keep surfacing
The requests are practical. Reporters want fewer repeated entries as a job moves from scheduled to on the record to delivered to paid. They want control of their dictionaries, which a CAT software migration puts to the test, and clear pricing before purchase. Agencies need reliable payment workflows because timely, accurate pay matters to the professionals doing the work. I heard these needs repeatedly over six years.
One job record
Scheduled
On the record
Delivered
Paid
Speed without breaking trust
Here’s the tension I sit with. A 45-year-old firm runs on trust from attorneys and reporters who know the work will be right. A startup runs on speed. Those can coexist if you’re disciplined about one rule: the record is sacred, and the human stays the authority.
Move fast on scheduling, billing, exhibits, the busywork. Never move fast on the integrity of the testimony. AI can carry the load; it doesn’t get to certify the record. A reporter does.
Scheduling
Billing
Exhibits
The testimony: never rushed
A reporter certifies
Those lessons shaped the first DepoStack tools, starting with Exhibits by DepoStack, now in Preview for exhibit preparation. Transcript by DepoStack and Video by DepoStack are Planned; their waitlists are for updates, not access to an app.
Andrew Mayes Founder of DepoStack. Director of Technology at Executive Reporting Service, a Florida court reporting firm.
Sources
Sources reviewed
- Executive Reporting Service executivereporting.com · the firm's own site: founded in 1981, 45+ years ↩︎
The rest of this note is first-hand experience from my work at Executive Reporting Service. DepoStack's tool states are from its own product pages.