Sargent's Reviews

Cons outweigh the pros. You are an employee here, not a freelancer, so it's an 8:30 to 5 job but if they need you after 5pm, it's not overtime. The majority of their reporters are voice writers and not stenographers and both just record the audio of the depositions and you have to send the audio to the main office and their typists type the work. As a stenographer, they send out work you never get to look over yet they use your name on the certification page. They send brand new reporters to take difficult medical doctor depositions and have typists with little to no knowledge of medical or legal jargon transcribe the audio. You can drive 100 miles to take a 20 minute job and get reimbursed only 24 cents a mile. They make you buy a $300 audio recorder which they deduct from your paycheck in $50 increments. While they give you some vacation days, there are so many guidelines about when you can take them and you end up never getting any time off. They have terrible jobs and produce low quality work that even if you just finished court reporting school, I don't recommend this agency because you will never improve your quality of work or build your dictionary at this dead end job. Management is non-existent and their practices are unprofessional and borderline illegal.

Be prepared to drive your vehicle into the ground all while getting paid ONLY 24 cents/mile (less than half of what the IRS recommends) They only care about quantity of transcripts they produce and not the quality so you can't take much pride in the work you do. There's now a rule that you can't take off for a doctor's appointment on tuesdays or thursdays, not sure if that's even legal. You will be sent all over the state to cover jobs because of huge turnover. No bonus or incentive to put in extra work with minimal salary increases. Be prepared to look for a new job when you start here. No benefits to be found here, they offer a 401k but good luck being able to put anything into it.