Note: Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity.

Kristie Wood didn't set out to create a mentorship community. On a break from taking the Certified Verbatim Reporter (CVR) exam, she noticed that the waiting room was full of court reporting students who didn't know each other, because so much of the work happens over Zoom. So she invited a few of them back to her hotel to talk through the CVR test. That conversation turned into a group chat, and the group chat has since grown to more than 300 students and reporters.

Wood, who has nearly 25 years of court reporting experience, shared that story, and the practice built around it, as the first speaker in Steno's new CEU series for court reporters, a session titled How to Build a Sustainable Court Reporting Practice From Day One. We had reporters new to the profession alongside reporters with 15-plus years of experience, all looking to sharpen the same fundamentals.

Wood's core point is that we need to think of mentorship as a professional resource, the same as a rate sheet, a scopist, or a proofreader. Reporters who treat it that way build stronger practices faster than reporters who go it alone.

The Myth of Earn It First

New reporters are taught, implicitly if not directly, to do the grunt work first. Take the long hours. Push through burnout. Earn the right to ask for help. Kristie's argument is that this instinct doesn't strengthen a practice. It weakens it.

The costs are concrete. Time lost grinding through a transcript that should have taken a fraction as long is time not spent building a client base or developing realtime skills. A six-hour job that should take one doesn't build character, it leads to burnout. And treating mentorship as something to be earned rather than sought only deepens imposter syndrome instead of resolving it. Who has time for that?

Seeking mentorship isn’t taking a shortcut, it’s investing in your business and your professional wellbeing.

The Professional Community Every Court Reporter Needs

Wood named three roles every reporter needs in their corner: a mentor, a scopist, and a proofreader.

A mentor is the experienced reporter you lean on for everything school doesn’t: rates, agencies, software, what to say to an attorney. This can be one person or several. The more folks you can find who have been in your shoes, the better.

A scopist is the first person to check the quality of your work. It’s important to find and vet someone for this position before your first job, not after. Just be sure to set turnaround agreements and communicate expectations up front.

A proofreader is the final pair of eyes before delivery, and Wood is emphatic that this needs to be a different person than the scopist:

A girl I was mentoring had a very small job. And she's like, I just want to get this out of my computer. I scoped it, I proofed it, I just want to get it turned in. I said, Please, please send that to a proofreader. She said, No, it was so clean, I promise. I said, Look, it's gonna cost you, like, maybe $7. It was such a small job. Just do it. And she called me back and said, Well, thank you so much. They found so many things that I just couldn't see.

Kristie's own standard practice reflects the same principle. Every job is routed through a scopist, then a proofreader. That two-step process gives Kristie consistent quality, protects her reputation, and provides her with more capacity to take work.

Rates, Agencies, and Getting Paid What You're Worth

Rate sheets are one of the first things Wood tells new reporters to get in order. She learned why the hard way.

When I started working, I had a friend come over one day who'd been working as a reporter for years before me. And, she's like, What are you charging? And I said, “What do you mean, what am I charging?” She's like, where's your rate sheet? I replied, I don't have a rate sheet, I just let the agency pay me whatever they pay. And she's said, no, you need a rate sheet, that's not how it works.

And so you need that to start building your business. What do you charge per page? What do you charge for a rough? What do you charge for a copy order? All those things need to be laid out. And school is not going to teach you this, because it's not their responsibility. Their responsibility is to get you to the test.

A rate sheet is only part of the equation. Kristie also pointed to agencies—knowing what they look for, how to introduce yourself, and what to ask before accepting work—and attorney communication, starting with how a reporter presents themselves on and off the record from their very first job.

Kristie firmly believes that students deserve honest conversations about rates, what infrastructure costs, and what it returns. Reporters who graduate without this knowledge tend to accept whatever rates they’re offered. Transparency isn’t a taboo; it’s a professional obligation and a contribution to the profession as a whole.

Where to Start

This can feel like a lot at once. Wood recommends choosing one element to build within your business this week and go from there. Potential first steps include:

• Find a scopist. Interview them the way you would any other hire, and align on work product, rates, and communication expectations before the first job comes in.
• Reach out to a mentor. Bringing a question to a more experienced reporter is often the fastest way through it.
• Draft or update a rate sheet. Knowing what you charge, and why, is part of knowing what your work is worth.
• Reach out to an agency. We'd love to hear from you here at Steno.

We're grateful to Kristie for opening the series, and for the two things she's building that this profession has long needed: mentorship and community. In an earlier post, I wrote about mental health care for court reporters, and community is a piece of that larger picture.

Kristie's community is free for current court reporting students, with 150-plus reporters, monthly online meetings, and quarterly in-person gatherings. Her mentorship program builds on that with rate sheet templates, videos, and hands-on guidance for the stretch of a career that starts right after the exam. Find her on TikTok at @getreadysetreport.