Jamie Ree has something to show you.
 |
If you’re an apprentice court reporter, you know your associate’s degree requires 40 hours of intern-level observation and practice. You should therefore know Jamie, who presides over the finest court reporter-training program in the land. |
In short: She’ll show you how it’s done
For more than a decade, Jamie has trained select court reporting students in the finer points of their craft. As continuing education coordinator for Suzanne Hand & Associates (one of many hats Jamie wears at the agency), it’s both her duty and her passion.
“There’s really nowhere else for these students to go,” Jamie notes. “They can sit in at other agencies, but that’s not really training them for what they want to do. We have an extensive training program that nobody else offers – the students themselves come to us and tell us, ‘Nobody else does this.’”
Far from a cattle call for the masses, the Suzanne Hand training program has churned out just a few dozen professional-grade reporters over the last ten years. That sounds low, until you understand why only two students are selected to participate every six months.
This is no shut-up-and-watch field trip or two-dimensional lesson from a vacant-eyed lecturer. Selecting its students mostly from the Long Island Business Institute, Jamie’s program features the kind of personalized instruction and individual attention budding professionals can’t get elsewhere – natural extensions of the accuracy and professionalism that define Suzanne Hand & Associates.
“We have high standards,” notes President Suzanne Hand, “and we want to train new reporters to meet our standards.”
The effort is a win-win for the agency, though not entirely self-serving. Over the years, only about 80 percent of Suzanne Hand-trained reporters have gone on to work for the agency; the rest take their heightened skills to other firms, even competitors. Suzanne sees this as good karma: bettering her agency and its reputation by bettering the industry as a whole.
“Whether they work for us or someone else,” she says, “we know we’re preparing them to do well.”
Not only preparing them to do well, but to do well at all facets of their chosen profession. Students taken under Jamie’s wing sit in on actual depositions, EBTs, EUOs, medical depositions, hearings and arbitrations, eventually preparing “practice transcripts” that are checked against official transcripts. When their mock records are deemed strong enough – “Only when we think they’re ready,” Jamie notes – trainees are given what their tutor calls an “easy” assignment.
“They don’t get a second one until we’re completely satisfied with the first,” she says. “If it’s not good enough, they go back into training.
“I’m very hands-on,” Jamie adds, “and I make absolutely sure our trainees get it right. It’s the only way to correctly teach them to perform an important job that’s as difficult as it is rewarding.”
After six months of informative, no-BS weekly lessons, the end result is new ace reporter – one worthy of working for the most highly respected court-reporting business in the metropolitan area, or bringing some of Suzanne Hand & Associates’ patented professionalism out into the world.
“Bottom line: They’re going to be well-trained,” Suzanne says. “We’re not sending reporters out there until they know what they’re doing.”