Name:  Monyeen L. Black, CSR, CCRR

Title:  California Certified Shorthand Reporter

Certifications:

California Certified Shorthand Reporter #10574
California Certificate in Realtime Reporting #110 (CCRR)
Certified LiveNote Reporter
LiveDeposition Certified Reporter (LDCR)

 

 

 

Self-summary in three words:
Outgoing, Organized & Proficient

When did you begin your court reporting career?
July 1994.

What sparked your interest in choosing Court Reporting as a profession?
The short story. My mom read an article in our local newspaper when I was about 14 that was about three siblings who started a court reporting firm in Fremont, CA, at a very young age. The article was about Jenny Griffin and her sister and brother. I immediately knew I would be a deposition reporter.

What advice would you give students or those just entering the field of Court Reporting?
I always tell students to just keep pushing on. If you get stuck at a speed (I did), eventually you’ll get past it and move on. The reward of this profession is worth it. Yeah, there are hard days, but it is always interesting.

What is your favorite thing about being a reporter?
I love reporting because I hear some very interesting topics. Every day is different. But I always enjoy the challenges we face to write shorter, write faster. Technology has really helped with that, too.

As a Court Reporter, what is your worst nightmare or biggest pet peeve?
It’s almost a tie for the pet peeve. I really am not a fan of attorneys who call in for a deposition and then complain because they cannot hear. The other is the biggest challenge we face every day, talking over one another.

Where is the strangest place you have taken a deposition?
Thankfully, I haven’t had anything really crazy. I have taken a deposition in the middle of an automobile painting shop.

What is the funniest thing you have heard during a deposition?
You definitely hear all kinds of funny bits while sitting in a depo, but many of them are situations where you just had to be there. Many, many years ago I had a room of 23 attorneys, the witness and myself. PMK deposition in a construction defect case. The witness was asked if he remembered any of the guys that were on his crew at this job site. After some thought, he specifically remembers these five guys who would pile into a Chevy Nova and commute from Stockton to San Francisco every day. And he remembered them because he would watch them all crawl out of this Nova at the job site and climb back in at the end of the day. Well, the attorney representing the witness got a visual of this in his head and broke into hysterical laughter, I mean, tears running down his face laughter. This made several of the attorneys in the room laugh, too. We had to go off the record for several minutes so he could gain composure. We went back on the record and a few minutes later the attorney started laughing again and we broke again. This happened one more time, too, before the attorney could control himself.

When not court reporting, how do you spend your free time?
If I am off the record, you’ll most likely find me riding my Harley-Davidson next to my husband. It’s the only time I don’t care about emails or text messages and can forget about transcripts all while getting to see some beautiful scenery.

What do you like most about LiveDeposition?
What’s not to like about LiveDeposition? Your customer service is amazing. Always so helpful. I appreciate that you are on social media and respond to us. The LiveDeposition router has made my life much easier to realtime. I have always wanted to just provide iPads to my clients and now I have that luxury. But the most important was I needed access to my email even while realtiming and LiveDeposition has made that possible.