1. I don’t think I have ever — ever – received a reporter’s transcript in an electronic format (except PDF) that prints with physical page breaks in the same place as the electronic page breaks, and I’ve never been able to adjust the transcript in a word processor or text editor to make it do so. If you want to print it at a readable font size, a page of transcript typically chews up 1.25 physical pages and inserts another page break there. Is this by design, to prevent copying?

2. I have also never received an electronic transcript that allows for easy cut & paste of testimony into a brief or memorandum. Highlighting more than one line of text invariably grabs the line numbering as well as the text, so the line numbers get pasted into the brief and have to be deleted one by one. Also, most transcripts have hard returns (line breaks) at the end of each line of text rather than text wrapping that adjusts automatically, and these hard returns have to be edited out after the excerpt is pasted into the brief. Again, are these things by design? I can conceive of why someone might want the line numbers to appear in excerpted quotations. but it seems to me one should be able to grab just the text; after all, your citation to the record or exhibit will specify the page and line numbers.

Any opinions on these issues, Sue?

Also a brief phone call or e-mail to the owner of the court reporting agency from their valued client pointing out the dissatisfaction with the transcript format would most certainly be welcomed and the situation remedied with the client as well as the reporter (at least here at our agency it would be).