From the President

Because litigation testimony is an important element in the discovery process and can be complex by nature, utilizing new technologies is very valuable.

Not every court reporting agency provides deposition management tools for their clients. But that is one of our main goals, so that your firm’s trial preparation processes go smoothly.

As technology continues to evolve quickly, we are constantly improving upon our systems, to help you manage your court reporting planning and details. Please let us know of ways that we can further improve our technologies or services to your firm’s benefit.

Best regards,
Sheila Atkinson-Baker

The Distinguished Profession

By Efoli Ekot, 
Dedicated, The Legal Secretary Journal

The word “Secretary” is derived from the Latin word secrenere meaning “to distinguish” or “to set apart” and the passive participle (secretum) meaning “having been set apart,” with the eventual connotation of something private or confidential. Therefore, a Secretarius was a person overseeing business confidentially, usually for a powerful individual (a King, Pope, etc).

The secretarial profession is one of the oldest professions that ever existed, though we cannot tell the precise date the profession came into existence. History has it that it predates 1868, being the year Christopher Latham Sholes, a U.S. mechanical engineer, invented the first practical modern typewriter, and that for centuries the profession was dominated by educated, economically lower-class males, until 1873, when young women were employed into the profession to demonstrate the typewriting machines produced by E. Remington and Sons. This demonstration brought about the eventual takeover of the profession and consequent association with females.

Epochal transformations in the profession began in the 1950s when it (or “Business Education” as it was then called) migrated into colleges and universities, a development which brought about sweeping changes in technologies in the business world and now E-commerce, which has caused a move-away from traditional secretarial skills to office automation and ICT, accounting programs, court reporting programs, paralegal training, administrative training, legal (secretarial) programs and medical (secretarial) programs, etc.

There are various professional bodies in existence today, some of which are self-restricting.  However, Legal Secretaries and Legal PAs are skillfully trained and can consequently fit into almost any organization since law, as it were, touches almost all aspects of human life.

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