Whether it’s a deposition for a court case or the transcription of a government meeting, the official record’s accuracy must be flawless. Memories fade. People change their stories. But the speaker’s original words, rendered precisely, will preserve the integrity of the proceeding.
That’s why the expertise of the stenographer is critical.
It’s an expertise Marguerite D’Andrea Keller, owner/stenographer of the aptly named Precise Reporting Services, and her network of independent stenographers have demonstrated for several years.
“Our stuff is so critical,” said Keller. “It’s the record. It’s the official record.”
Keller offers stenography for depositions, trials, hearings, meetings, interviews and more. She offers in-house videography — her son is her primary videographer, Realtime reporting (whereby spoken words are instantly entered into a feed that can be streamed or broadcast) and computer-aided real-time translation (CART) for the hearing-impaired.
Due in part to cooperative arrangements with other stenographers, some of whom she has worked with for many years, she can offer services nationwide and even in Europe. However, most of her business is concentrated in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Florida.
And, unlike some of the bigger companies where attempts to reach a live person by phone can prove elusive and frustrating, Keller is accessible. That’s especially important if her services are needed immediately.
“I have my phone with me 24/7,” she said. “My clients reach me at night, on the weekends.”
And once, in fact, when she was vacationing in Italy.
In addition, Keller said she does not have the higher page rates, higher attendance fees, higher cancellation fees and added administration fee that some large companies have.
Not all of her clients, however, are high-profile professionals. When her son was young, he wanted to learn the words to a fast-paced song he’d heard on the radio. Knowing it was his mother’s area of expertise, he asked her to listen to it and write it down for him, which she happily did.
Keller’s love of stenography began with a recommendation by her own mother. At the time, Keller was a high-school majorette, a role that requires a good degree of ambidexterity. Her mother had taken some court-reporting classes but had to stop when Keller’s sister was born.
But, seeing how well her daughter manipulated her baton, Keller’s mother recognized the kind of manual dexterity necessary for using a stenograph machine. At her mother’s suggestion, Keller went to school for stenography.
“I loved it,” she said. “I absolutely loved it.”
She worked for someone else for a year before starting her own business. In the 1990s, she moved to Washington, where there was a lot of work for someone with her skills. For a couple of years, she worked for storied attorney F. Lee Bailey.
In 2008, she relocated to Northeast Florida. Five years ago, she moved her business into its current location, 820 A1A North, Suite W14, Ponte Vedra Beach.
Her office includes conference rooms with complimentary WiFi and refreshments.
Though she does a lot of work via Zoom, she prefers in-person stenography because it better allows her to read the lips of the speaker, which aids comprehension.
Unlike typing, stenography is based on phonetics. The highest typing speed ever recorded is 216 words per minute. Using a stenograph machine, Keller can do 265 words per minute. That kind of speed allows her to offer CART and Realtime.
She can also offer interpretation, because she has a broad range of interpreters in her network.
“I have people I can call on for everything you can imagine,” she said.
Keller is a Registered Professional Reporter, a Certified LiveNote Reporter and a Florida Professional Reporter. She can be contacted by phone at 904-373-0175, 877-4-A-STENO or 301-210-5092 or by email at precisereporting@comcast.net. Her website is precisereportingservices.net.
