July 2007 - California Court Reporters Association

What’s in a Signature Anyway
By Leigh Ann Orozco, CSR, CCRA Technology Committee
Are you allowing deposition firms to sign your certificate
pages for you This is a practice that is happening throughout
the state and one that is of concern to me. Be it time
constraints, location to a firm you’ve subcontracted with or
just for ease, CSRs are allowing deposition firms to sign their
certificate pages or are allowing signed generic certificate
pages to be attached to final transcripts.
What does my signature really signify
I’ve been pondering this practice for a bit now and recently
had an experience with a small firm owner that made me
give this much more thought. This firm owner wanted my
permission to sign my certificate pages and also wanted to
do print production from my CAT files as we are both on the
same computer-aided transcription software. I refused and
it resulted in some not-so-pleasant interactions between the
two of us and made me wonder if others saw anything inappropriate
with this practice.
A majority of my work is for a local firm where I print the original
transcript and deliver the same directly to their offices for
copy order production. If I have an expedite that needs to be
delivered pronto and it won’t allow me to get to the office right
away, I will approach the client about accepting electronic
delivery and then use a digital signature on the e-mailed file
to meet the delivery deadline. Having spent a majority of my
20 years of reporting as an official reporter and working halftime
in a job share position before I left for the private sector,
it sure was convenient to be able to deliver digitally signed
preliminary hearing transcripts to both the prosecution and
defense bar and to not have to trek down to the courthouse
to meet that 10-day statutory turnaround when it was my
week off when I couldn’t easily deliver paper copy to them.
They got the benefit of a quicker turnaround and I got some
time back in my day. I can tell you that I never once got a
call about a missing transcript!
I guess what concerns me most about this practice is that
as a licensed CSR I feel strongly that it is my duty to insure
the integrity of any transcript that I produce, be it electronically
or on paper. Adding a digital signature is one method
of protecting the integrity of your final work product. If the
document has been altered, it will invalidate the signature
and the end user will be aware of that. It’s not about trusting
the firm you’re subcontracting with to do the right thing.
Mistakes can, and will, happen inadvertently. If some other
person has signed for you or attached your generic certificate
page to a deposition, how do you know that it was attached to
your final transcript, and how can you attest to the accuracy
of that document without painstakingly going through it line
for line to insure that it has not been modified
As the guardian of the record, make sure
you are using the best practices.
So, ask yourself, “What does my signature really signify”
Are you using best practices by allowing others to sign for
you As the guardian of the record, make sure you are using
the best practices.
Punctuation Points: Apostrophe S or S Apostrophe
By Margie Wakeman-Wells
Question: Is there a rule about using the possessive form
with words ending in “S” or “Z” How about plural possessives
Answer: I believe that, to make a word singular possessive,
the simplest rule is to add ‘s to the singular word -- with no
exceptions:
This way, you do not have to make any distinctions for pronunciation
or spelling or anything else.
For plural possessives, use the s’, such as:
one year’s worth of...
two years’ worth of...
Mr. Wells’s car.
Mr. Jones’s house.
The witness’s answer.
Page 18