March 19, 2024
#34 - Transforming the Justice System with Rachel Artis in Nigeria
Imagine a legal system where the court reporters are nowhere to be found, leaving judges to try to keep an official record of the proceedings with their own notes, or worse, completely by memory – a reality that is all too common in places like Nigeria.
This episode spotlights Rachel Artis, a visionary entrepreneur currently in Nigeria advocating for justice and implementing court reporting programs.
We take some time to delve into the cultural embrace and recognition that comes with working to strengthen justice in Nigeria. You'll even learn a few African phrases and words like Ubuntu – a selfless philosophy that emphasizes community and shared humanity. Join us for this compelling story of commitment, community, and the slow, steady march toward revolutionizing an entire court system.
Chapters
00:01 - Advocating for Court Reporters in Justice
08:18 - Empowering Court Reporters in Nigeria
17:51 - Steno Africa Justice Support and Partnerships
22:02 - Challenges and Motivation in Africa
26:57 - Impact of Work and Recognition
30:29 - Lessons in Ubuntu
38:25 - Navigating Work Culture in Nigeria
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Court Reporter podcast.
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Hi, my name is Brynn Reynolds Seymour.
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I'm a certified life coach, former freelance court reporter and currently working in the court system.
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For years, I lived in constant overwhelm, drowning in pages, deadlines and self-doubt, feeling like I'm not even qualified to be doing the important work I'm doing.
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Despite my best efforts to carve out time for other activities in my life, work always seemed to find a way into the back of my mind and weigh me down so that I couldn't really enjoy those other moments.
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If you've ever felt like this, you're not alone and it doesn't have to be this way.
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In each episode, I'll dive deep into the challenges we face in our daily lives and share practical coaching tools and solutions to help you reclaim your peace of mind and become the most confident person in the courtroom.
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Hello, so we have some exciting news.
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There is now a new website courtreporterpodcast.
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com.
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www.
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courtreporterpodcast.
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com.
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This website is now live.
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You can sign up for our newsletter there.
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You can also leave comments and voice messages on episodes.
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com.
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Let's just take a second to imagine a justice system without court reporters.
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So here's a scenario.
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In a high-profile criminal trial, Judge Smith (that's a made-up name) presides over a courtroom packed with attorneys, witnesses and spectators.
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The case involves multiple defendants, intricate legal arguments and emotionally charged testimony.
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As the trial unfolds, Judge Smith decides to take notes in an attempt to keep track of key points and evidence since there is no court reporter.
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However, as the proceedings intensify, the judge finds it increasingly difficult to juggle note-taking with managing objections, issuing rulings and maintaining the order in the courtroom.
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Despite his best efforts, Judge Smith struggles to capture every important detail amidst the fast-paced dialogue and legal nuances.
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Frustrated and overwhelmed, the judge begins to miss crucial pieces of testimony and fails to record critical objections raised by the attorneys.
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As the trial progresses, inaccuracies and omissions in the judge's notes become very apparent, leading to disputes between opposing counsel and challenges to the accuracy of the record.
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So, without a reliable transcript prepared by a trained court reporter, the integrity of the trial and the integrity of the record is called into question, jeopardizing the fairness of the proceedings and the rights of the defendants and the plaintiffs and every party in the case.
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Okay, so in this example, the importance of everyone focusing on their own role becomes evident.
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While judges are essential for overseeing proceedings and making legal determinations, making difficult decisions, attempting to fulfill the role of a court reporter when they have to do that can compromise the integrity of the judicial process.
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By allowing each participant to focus on their specialized tasks, such as presiding over the trial for the judge or producing an accurate transcript for the court reporter, then the legal system can function more effectively, ensuring that justice is served.
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So through this example, you can see and understand how important court reporters are in the justice system and what chaos and what injustice would be served without us.
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So going to talk talk about this topic today, because this is actually a reality in countries like Nigeria.
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So let's welcome Rachel Artis, who is currently in Nigeria.
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Rachel Artis is a dynamic entrepreneur with a profound impact on the court reporting industry.
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She got her start as a court reporting student in her home state of New Jersey.
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With over 14 years of experience as a scopist, she has not only built a thriving scoping and proofreading agency, but also co-founded an online scoping school after personally training over 250 individuals as scopists.
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Scopists are editors for court reporters for anyone who's not familiar with the term.
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Rachel started consulting internationally almost immediately through her passion for giving people opportunities, regardless of their location.
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Rachel's journey transcends traditional boundaries, as she currently works to revolutionize Nigeria's judicial system, empower its citizens and memorialize the nation's history and current affairs with captioning in the entertainment and media sectors.
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Okay, so welcome Rachel Artis.
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Thank you, thank you.
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I'm glad to be here.
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I am really excited to talk about Nigeria's justice system and the importance of advocating for court reporting in the nations and the countries that are not currently using court reporters.
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I was very surprised to hear that in Nigeria and probably a few other countries, they're actually not using court reporters and the judges are trying to play the role of a court reporter and they're actually taking, you said longhand notes?
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Yeah, not even shorthand notes.
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Not even shorthand.
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And they're trying to fulfill the role of a court reporter, which is a very important role in the justice system.
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But they also have to make decisions, manage objections, like they have a role.
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They're the judge, they're also trying to be the court reporter.
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So how is that working out?
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You know, I think it has served Nigeria and other countries on the continent, you know, and even some of the outlying islands, but I think they're ready for justice in a more should I say, speedier way, more, you know, expeditiously getting accomplished.
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Because a lot of the judges are getting up in age, I think we can all just kind of brainstorm four or five critical things that may go wrong.
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If a judge is writing longhand, that means cases don't get complete.
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There's trials that go on for decades just because there are adjournments.
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And if a judge is writing, if we think of ourselves having to be a judge and write down every day what's going on in the case and then make decisions about that for a career, let's say, 20, 30 years, a lot of judges retire in their 60s or 70s.
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So that's some of the challenges they have and I think they're ready for court reporting the way that we have experienced it in the West.
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Absolutely.
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The justice system definitely needs court reporters and a judge cannot play the role of a court reporter.
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Like, absolutely, like you said we could think of.
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I mean so many things could go wrong in that situation.
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Yeah, and they do and I think that because they're so used to it, it's not really first on the mind of some of the issues that people are facing can be reduced or eliminated just by having a court reporter.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Our role is essential in the justice system.
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So so what motivated you to take on this project of advocating for court reporters in the justice system?
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Like, how did you get into this?
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So?
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I like to say that I came into this kicking and screaming.
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It wasn't really my bright idea, as my mom says, sometimes it wasn't my bright idea, but what happened was during this is probably back in 2015, I started seeing African names pop up in different court reporting Facebook Facebook groups that I was in and what I noticed is that, just as I was feeling proficient and scoping at that time because I was kind of still getting my feet wet, still getting started no one was answering their questions and it was kind of weird like are they bots?
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Are they trying to scam?
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You know, because at that time we had a lot of people trying to come into court reporting groups and the administrators were trying to protect the reason that we were there, which was to educate ourselves as court reporter professionals in the industry and things like that.
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And so I just out of curiosity said hey, what's up?
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Who are you?
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What are you doing?
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Nice to meet you.
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And that conversation just led to a relationship with different court reporters in Nigeria and when the pandemic started, one of their major courthouses burned down and I instantly remembered those conversations that I had and was just thinking like wait a minute, are they okay?
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What happened and when I went to check in, we just kind of had longer conversations I guess you can say that I had had before and I started training them how to scope and I decided I wanted to come into Nigeria and meet them in person, because that was also during the pandemic time period, so they were kind of like on furlough.
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They weren't getting their salaries during that time and you know, the whole world was basically shut down at that time.
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So I tried to empower them through teaching them how to scope, and that really meant a lot to me personally and I promised myself and them that when everything was over and everything had calmed down, I would come down and visit them.
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And that visit turned into them begging me to do a one day training at the court and I didn't really see the point, to be honest.
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I was like I came here to see you guys.
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You know I came here to meet you guys and the chief judge of Lagos State was kind enough to allow me to do a one day training, ask for a report about my findings and then, after I gave him my report and listed the issues that I saw with the system that they currently had, he then asked me okay, well, how would you fix it?
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Send me a proposal and, as they say, the rest is history.
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So and what did that proposal say?
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Like, what did it?
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What does that look like?
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Yeah, so really I had to take a good look at what was going on.
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So these court reporters had been trained all the way back from like 2012.
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They were trained to about 110 words per minute, some of them, and then sent out into the field.
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So there were technology issues.
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Their systems were outdated.
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They were using writers that I had never heard of at that time.
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That made their job more difficult because of the logistics issues here in Nigeria.
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By the way, I'm personally physically in Nigeria right now.
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I wasn't talking to you but so that's why I'm saying here but the logistics are, and you might have heard that loud click in the background power.
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Power goes on and off every day, like a water faucet almost.
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So that really affects how they're able to take the record down.
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So the writer they were using was connected to a laptop and did not have a screen.
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So when power goes out, they're blind, basically.
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So those are some of the things I suggested newer equipment, writers that had screens on them, and training on their software, training on how to be a professional.
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One of the real challenges is that they are employed directly by the state and when they work with a judge, they follow that judge their whole career, so they actually become like a personal secretary to the judge, if I could try to describe that relationship.
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So that also creates a lot of conflict.
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You don't really have a bipartisan court reporter at that point.
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They're not neutral.
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So I also talked about some of those things in my proposal and he was really forward thinking enough, I think, and took a risk to be innovative to what that process looks like, and he agreed that.
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You know, I never thought of these things and of course he himself has a court reporter.
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So that's kind of what some of the things that I had in the proposal.
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Okay, so let me get this straight.
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I think so.
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They do use court reporters, but you're trying to improve the system, the court reporting system, because my understanding was that they don't use court reporters, but I guess some of them do, so one state.
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Yeah, so one state is fully integrated with court reporters in Nigeria, but only some of the judges use them, and when I say use them, I mean utilize that service.
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Quite a few of the judges that I've met still write longhand while the court reporter's writing, because they haven't built that trust.
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So that's one element.
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Then you also have magistrate court and they don't have court reporters at all.
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So, even though court reporting is present in the whole state of Lagos, being that there is a court reporter to the honorable justices in all of the courthouses, they're not really utilizing them well and I really haven't been trained to have that relationship with the judge specifically for that.
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Some judges like them and use them as a court reporter, like you would see in the United States, and some don't.
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Now, and other states that I've now kind of branched into having these conversations with, they do not have stenographers at all.
00:13:06.216 --> 00:13:08.086
Wow.
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So maybe, like one of the court reporters from Lagos decided to move and somehow, through word of mouth, this one judge was like I really want this person, I want this court reporter, and they have them, but as far as system wide, even at a federal level, they don't have court reporters.
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There are a few here and there, but they're just sprinkled throughout the country and a lot of the school.
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That was around a while ago, I think.
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The instructor passed away, unfortunately, so there really hasn't been a passing on the torch, so to speak, in Lagos state and also at the federal level.
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So there was like once upon a time, I think, there were a few reporters at the House of Assembly.
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Then they retired and again, they haven't trained.
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That I'm aware of.
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They have not trained court reporters in Nigeria since around 2016.
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That was the last graduating class, if you will.
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So you can imagine people moved away, people move on, people retire, and so it's not nowhere near enough.
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And they are only trained to.
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They only have to pass 110 words per minute.
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Yes, that's what I've been told.
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They only had to pass at about 110 words per minute.
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And the other challenge for them is that they were taught American English court reporting, which is really challenging because Nigeria and most of Africa, I would say even their legal system is British influenced.
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So that also affects the English that they use and the spellings that they use.
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And then, of course, they have their own languages that they speak.
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Nigeria has quite a few different tribes and languages and they're very, very diverse, so it's not unheard of to have two or three languages going at one time on, you know, a trial, and actually some of the court reporters are interpreters as well.
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They will literally stop writing, interpret and then go back to writing.
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So everybody's doing several jobs at once, and so it's definitely a multifaceted opportunity.
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But challenge is the word that comes to mind first.
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That doesn't sound very productive for everybody to be playing all the different roles and I never knew this, you know, I just thought, I just I think we all take it for granted, coming from the states, that like, oh, everybody is doing the same thing, and right, it's not happening that way.
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Did we talk about Steno Africa yet?
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No, we haven't.
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Okay, what is Steno Africa?
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So Steno Africa is a project that I started really because when my clients, my friends in the court reporting industry, learned that I was kind of out here in Nigeria for the long haul doing this work, they really kind of got behind the calls with me and really wanted to know how they could support and I think that was supporting me and my stay here.
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Because, you know, being an expat when you weren't prepared to be an expat has a lot of strange challenges that come with it, and then also an expat.
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So expat is like it's short for expatriate.
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So I am, you know, an American citizen, born and raised in the US, and then when you went to go and be outside of the country longer than like vacation time period, where you're like working there or you're just going in and out of other countries and, you know, working remotely just outside of your own country, they call you an expatriate and they've kind of shorned into expat.
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So that is what I mean by that.
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And then they also wanted to support the court reporters, because the reason that I came to Nigeria was really to support court reporters that had been forgotten about here in Nigeria.
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And so when they learned that these court reporters make an average of between 80 and $120 per month US if I'm converting it to be full time official court reporters.
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They want to know how they could support and so we set up this project and our goal is to become a 501C3 this year, but right now it's just a project where court reporters can donate equipment, software helps and funds to support education that I may want to give the court reporters that their court is not ready to support, so maybe I want to really spend more time with them on software, but that's not in the curriculum that I'm able to teach them right now.
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So we may create a retreat and, like last year, we got a lot of support.
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We had a what we called Steno Africa Beach Day.
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Beach was spelled in English and then day was spelled in Steno and we took all the court reported out to the beach and we had barbecue and we all had matching African print fabric which is called Ankara.
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That was like the fabric of the day.
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Everybody had shorts made and different little outfits made to be on the beach and it was really just a way to create community and celebrate the court reporters that really felt and do feel overlooked because there's not a court reporter job title in Nigeria, so a lot of the perks or benefits that they would get and should get for this amazing skill that they have, they're overlooked.
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So Steno Africa is a project that allows people, even companies that have firms and other brand partners that donate so that we can have events, we can hold classes and training and we can offer financial support to some of the court reporters that may be in need and just really support the effort that I'm doing here in Nigeria and Africa.
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That's amazing, you know.
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It just made me think of the United Nations.
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Have you reached out to the United Nations or gotten their support at all?
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Because what you're doing is helping promote sustainable development goals 16, peace, justice and strong institutions, which is basically providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
00:19:18.990 --> 00:19:25.368
So it sounds like what you're doing is in line with what the United Nations is trying to accomplish through SDG 16.
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It's funny.
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You should say that because I have not.
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I do not have a relationship with them as of yet, but through my networking being here, I was invited to the Universal Periodic Review for the states in that surround Lagos, inclusive of Lagos, and I was invited by just someone I had met at a attorney's dinner.
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And when I was invited to that, then someone I met there invited me to that and just said, hey, come, and I had no idea what it was for, what it was about.
00:19:58.788 --> 00:20:13.465
But yes, the effort that I'm doing actually ticked about 20 different adopted line items that the Universal Periodic Review requested Nigeria to act on and that effort is supporting them.
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So I was able to write a letter or report and show how my efforts are supporting things that other nations asked Nigeria to do and Nigeria agreed to do over the past four years.
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So I do look forward to maybe having those conversations and networking in the future, because that is what I'm doing and I didn't know that there was agendas and missions and things like that out there for this effort and for what I'm doing and I have really tried to focus on what that task is and not be distracted, and one of the ways I've done that is by staying self-funded and not taking on investors.
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The way that I support that is just by scoping and proofreading in my apartment here in Nigeria, so that I can feel good about the decisions that I am making and sleep easy at night, knowing that I don't have someone else's agenda that I'm necessarily pushing and that if I want to walk away from a situation, I can, and that's really, really important to me.
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I would love to have that conversation and find out more about those things, but I've slowly become aware that, yes, my mission and what I'm doing does align with some of those efforts that the United Nations has.
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Yeah, because Whenever we team up with other organizations and partner, like even their sustainable development goals, there are 17 goals that address the needs of the global issues.
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Okay, number 16 is the one about justice and the number 17 is partnership for the goals by partnering up with people like the United Nations, or organizations, courthouses and things like that.
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But you're fulfilling.
00:21:54.786 --> 00:21:57.405
Yeah, I'll have to look into that, yeah.
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Definitely, because that's an important global issue.
00:22:01.074 --> 00:22:02.450
So that's really amazing.
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You probably experienced a lot of hardships, and it's not easy to live in Africa.
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Even you were telling me earlier we were experiencing some internet issues.
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It's probably unstable.
00:22:14.432 --> 00:22:16.412
Then the court reporters also lose power.
00:22:16.412 --> 00:22:25.271
Then what gives you the strength and the motivation to continue and stay committed and remain in Africa, even though it's probably hard?
00:22:25.271 --> 00:22:27.553
Like what kind of hardships have you experienced?
00:22:27.553 --> 00:22:29.511
Sorry, that was like three times yeah.
00:22:31.094 --> 00:22:32.204
I'm not an object to answer.
00:22:34.412 --> 00:22:35.253
I do that all the time.
00:22:35.253 --> 00:22:38.170
I'm looking for like a yeah, so do I?
00:22:38.210 --> 00:22:39.509
Yeah, I can give you a summary.
00:22:39.509 --> 00:22:41.131
So you're filling the hardships.
00:22:41.131 --> 00:22:47.010
The main hardship is that I came here to visit, so I have a visitor visa.
00:22:47.010 --> 00:22:50.852
I am not an employee, so I don't qualify for a work visa.
00:22:50.852 --> 00:22:58.009
Okay, I have to exit and re-enter the country every 30 days, sometimes less.
00:22:58.009 --> 00:23:11.411
So that is just a financial hardship, a logistic hardship, to know which borders are safe for me to cross, because it's expensive to fly in and out of countries every 30 days, yeah.
00:23:11.411 --> 00:23:25.109
And the next hardship is the cultural hardship I don't want to say the culture shock, because I have visited other countries, lived in other countries before, but this is a little bit more close to home because I am a black girl from New Jersey.
00:23:25.705 --> 00:23:37.150
So when I came to Nigeria or Africa and everyone's perception of who I am as a person is not the perception that I have had of myself all my life, it's really strange.
00:23:37.150 --> 00:23:42.673
So I went from what I would consider I lived in South Carolina before I moved to Nigeria.
00:23:42.673 --> 00:23:52.105
I went from living in a small county outside of Myrtle Beach just blending in, to now being everyone's focal point.
00:23:52.105 --> 00:23:55.390
That's like a blessing and a curse, if you will Like.
00:23:55.390 --> 00:23:58.371
I look at it as that it's hard to navigate.
00:23:58.371 --> 00:23:59.707
At home.
00:23:59.707 --> 00:24:12.525
I can jump in my car and go to TJ Maxx if I want to, but anytime I want to move around, do something, I have to move with a certain amount of security and a certain amount of caution and a certain amount of planning.
00:24:12.525 --> 00:24:18.895
That goes into everything that I do, and the more popular, the more well-known I become.
00:24:18.895 --> 00:24:21.011
That security has to go up.
00:24:21.011 --> 00:24:37.736
So that's challenging, going from being a middle class American to being thrust into this kind of class of first class and not how I was at all raised and nothing that I understand.
00:24:37.736 --> 00:24:50.390
It is strange and it can be a bit isolating, lonely and, if I'm not careful, depressing, because I have to be careful about who I trust and friends and I'm a really open.
00:24:50.390 --> 00:24:52.670
If you know me in person, I'm really open down to earth.
00:24:52.670 --> 00:24:54.811
We can hang out.
00:24:54.811 --> 00:24:58.775
I never meet a stranger and that's just not necessarily smart.
00:24:59.644 --> 00:25:09.030
Being autistic and having ADHD and learning the rules of a new culture is really, really hard, and so that's a challenge.
00:25:09.030 --> 00:25:10.309
That's one of the hardships.
00:25:10.309 --> 00:25:12.632
And then the other hardship is the currency.
00:25:12.632 --> 00:25:17.654
If you know anything about the Nigerian Naira, it fluctuates.
00:25:17.654 --> 00:25:24.731
It's at such a fast pace and all the time that you really can't predict your expenses.
00:25:24.731 --> 00:25:50.088
So there's really no such thing as budgeting in Nigeria, because, even if you are gainfully employed, what bought you groceries for two weeks can quickly only buy you groceries for two days, depending on how fast the currency moves, and you can't necessarily prepare for that or anticipate what that might look like unless you want to start studying financial markets or something which I don't have time to do.
00:25:50.088 --> 00:25:57.493
So that's really hard because it's hard to plan, it's hard to grow a business, it's hard to do anything you really need to do that way.
00:25:57.964 --> 00:26:16.153
But all of those hardships is actually the main reason I think that I am passionate and committed to seeing this through, whatever that looks like, because I think I mentioned earlier, I really did not necessarily want to come here and do this.
00:26:16.153 --> 00:26:16.976
This wasn't my goal.
00:26:16.976 --> 00:26:23.548
I didn't wake up with this vision one day and say I'm going to go to Nigeria and revolutionize stenography over there.
00:26:23.548 --> 00:26:51.453
So what I learned while I was here is that, because of the color of my skin, the fact that I'm an American and the fact that I am exposed to court reporting and international standards of record keeping, I can get indoors that a Nigerian court reporter cannot get into Even an Nigerian business person that sees the wisdom and has heard about it and wants to push this effort.
00:26:51.453 --> 00:26:55.931
They're just not going to be given that shot and it's unfortunate but it's true.
00:26:57.026 --> 00:27:09.722
And once I came to grips with that and realized the privilege that that afforded me, there really is no person that I can say I want a meeting with you and I won't get that meeting.
00:27:09.875 --> 00:27:22.660
And not only get that meeting, but then get a call back and get a request for a proposal and things start moving ahead, which I thought that was normal, because I think in America we're used to getting a response most of the time for something that we're trying to do.
00:27:22.660 --> 00:27:31.003
We're not used to our efforts kind of just for years and years, decades or a lifetime being ignored.
00:27:31.003 --> 00:27:48.179
We might not get hired for a job okay, six months, maybe a year for the one that we want, but we have so much opportunity in the United States that we just we take it as a given that hard work pays off and I've learned here that's not true.
00:27:48.179 --> 00:28:01.144
Someone can be passionate about something, but if they don't have something that either the government or the court or their people respect, it's just not gonna move ahead.
00:28:01.144 --> 00:28:07.804
And I feel like it would be pretty selfish of me to understand that and walk away.
00:28:08.315 --> 00:28:13.219
You see the problem, you have the solution, so you're stuck.
00:28:13.219 --> 00:28:30.480
It's like you were appointed, yes, and like you can't really get out of it without you know you're going against your conscience because you know the power that you have and what you can make happen, and you're the only one that can do it, which makes you like the appointed and the one, the one that has to do it.
00:28:31.255 --> 00:28:33.983
Yes, so that's why I'm committed.
00:28:33.983 --> 00:28:43.544
It's funny you said that one of the administrative judges, which is like the second judge to the honorable chief judge of Lagos State, she gave me a Yoruba name in November.
00:28:43.544 --> 00:28:52.161
She already gave me one before, but she gave me one in November and that name is Omowale and that means our daughter has come home.
00:28:53.103 --> 00:28:53.304
Wow.
00:28:55.097 --> 00:28:56.142
And I don't even know why I'm getting.
00:28:56.142 --> 00:29:01.804
I'm starting to get choked up, saying like when I say those words, because I know what that means to them, you know.
00:29:01.804 --> 00:29:10.164
And after she gave me that name, after a presentation that I gave, you know, everyone in the whole court system started calling me that.
00:29:10.164 --> 00:29:31.263
And it's touching because the first name that she gave me, which is about six months prior, was Ebunolua, which means a gift from God, and when I gave my last presentation, she said you're no longer a gift from God, you're our daughter and, yeah, you can't go home after that, you know.
00:29:31.263 --> 00:29:48.279
So to know that the work that I'm doing has such an impact is very humbling and it's something that I think I'm gonna be proud that people will know that about.
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