Legal Transcription - Della Street Posted: Feb 19th, 2018 - 3:05 pm In Reply to: Question on: Legal Transcribers Needed - KLJ Transcription - whowoulddothis
$1 per page isn't horrible for legal transcription. It's 10-pitch courier, and usually 22 lines long. If you're doing Q and A, someone might answer "Yes." That constitutes a line. WordPerfect has all sort of things built in to make the dictation go quickly.
However, if I'm reading this correctly, there is no reason to make the contractor do the first 100 pages for free. My guess is their reasoning is that they will probably have to proof those first 100 pages very carefully. In my opinion, that should be their cost of doing business.
If you live in one of those states that requires state certification, these certifications can be very valuable. Usually individual transcribers can be added to the list and called to do this work. There are rates approved by the state, and they are usually pretty good. The rates are based on turnaround with daily rates being very high and something like a 15-day rate being lower. I have a good grasp of legal terminology but am a a relatively slow typist, and I can make the equivalent of $60K annually if I'm paid a rate of $2.35 per page. Really fast typists or folks using steno can make $100K at $2.35 per page. That's why, yes, at $1 per page you can probably make more than you can make at a lower paying MT job, but it's still pretty low.
Again, I don't mind testing, but I'd never work for free. And I'm suspicious of the work ethic of a firm that would ask you to work for free. I think a setup something like you do the first 100 pages for $1/page, the second 200 pages for $1.50/page, and after that you make $2/page is fair.
And seriously, you will find court reporting companies giving you a regular timed typing test. I'm not sure why they still do that, but they do.
I will say I like the transparency of being paid by the page. There's none of this black characters/spaces, 65-character line business. You type 300 pages, you get paid for 300 pages.
Hope this helps. Legal isn't perfect, but MT has gotten so wacky, it's a low stress alternative.
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