Scope Out A Work At Home Job

Every day, millions of people are searching for a way to work at home. Many of them are looking for data entry or home typing jobs. In fact, in September alone there were 896,600 searches on Google for "data entry", "home typing" and "typing jobs". What most people doing these searches don't realize is that while certain jobs that involve typing do exist, they are always specialized in some way, like medical transcription, which requires medical terminology training along with the needed reference materials and equipment. In addition to a training course, MT's are often required to have at least 2 years of on-site hospital work in order to qualify for a work at home transcription job.

This is the case with many work at home jobs that involve typing or data entry. Job searchers are frustrated by the conundrum of not having the training or skills to get the job without a significant investment of time and money.

So what else should these would-be work at home searchers be searching for? It's less what you should be searching for a more what you should be scoping out. Scopists transcribe and edit transcripts for court reporters. They take a draft of a court proceeding, sent by e-mail or simultaneously displayed on a computer, and read it to check for any mistranslations. The scopist makes necessary edits to ensure that the transcript is in the proper format. They then send the revised transcript back to the court reporter.

Judy Barrett has worked from her home as a scopist for several years. For the past 20 years, she has been training others to become scopists through her home based business, Scoping Careers International.

"I had never heard of it, either, until one evening years ago when I was having fun at a potluck dinner with a group of other single mothers," says Barrett. "At about 10 o'clock, one of them stood up and said, 'I hate to leave because this is so much fun, but I've got to go home and finish typing a deposition tonight, and get it to a court reporter tomorrow.'I didn't even know what a deposition was, at that point, but I followed her to the door, found out what she was doing to make money at home, and the rest, as they say, is history."

When Judy discovered this career she was in an all-too-familiar situation for many people who want to work at home- she was a recently divorced parent of a one-year-old daughter and was facing some health issues. Scoping turned out to be more meaningful to her than she could have imagined.

"I have often said that scoping found me, rather than the other way around, because it was a small miracle that grew in importance as the years went by, I raised Jen, and she became a scopist as a way to support her habit of being an artist. It's a family affair!"

What makes scoping especially attractive now is that it is virtually a recession-proof career. According to Barrett,

"In the general arena of work-at-home careers, this one stands head and shoulders above a lot of them because there is always activity in our courts, no matter what is going on with the economy or job shortages in other fields. I'm always saying that if people could behave, we who do scoping wouldn't have a job. I'm afraid that as financial pressure increases on people, they're less prone to being nice and more prone to suing, in the hope of receiving money to survive with."

The best way for a scopist to get work is to approach court reporters and small court reporting agencies, according to a representative of a large firm that places court reporters. Judy looks back on when she scored her first gig with a smile:

"I had a traffic ticket that I felt was unjustified, so I decided to go to court. My case was later on in the docket so, at the morning break, I went up to the court reporter who had been taking testimony and announced that I was a scopist. He looked at me with fire in his eyes, and I thought for a moment he was going to pick me up, throw me over his shoulder, and take me home. In fact, he quickly gave me his card, and invited me over to his home later that evening (to meet his wife and kids, and pick up my first scoping job)! And the police officer who was slated to testify against me went away, after I saw him talking with the court reporter. Case dismissed! Justice in America is a great thing to be involved with!"

Technology today allows the scopist to do nearly all of their work from home. Most of the work is handled through email and FTP downloading, making location of little importance.

Barrett says,

"Scopists are paid by the page, and earnings are based on how many pages a scopist can edit in an hour. The skill of the scopist *and* the quality of the unedited work sent by the reporter both play into how much a scopist earns. Earnings range from around $15 per hours to $35 an hour and above, depending on several factors, including the above, as well as whether the work is very simple or very technical, and the turnaround times involved."

It's so wonderful to see a work at home success story like Judy's. Sometimes, as in her case, the career finds you. But sometimes looking outside the box of "type at home" searches can lead you to a real work at home career. As Judy says,

"All in all, this career has served me very well for many years, and I am gratified to be able to offer a path to a legitimate in-residence career to my clients."

Judy’s websites:
www.scopingcareers.com
www.scopingcareers.blogspot.com

National Court Reporters Association (NCRA)
8224 Old Courthouse Road
Vienna, VA 22182
(800) 272-6272
www.ncraonline.org

This is a national association of court reporters and related professionals including scopists. Associate membership is open to scopists.