transcriptionist

associate

Allegis Transcription

I am a freelance legal transcriber.

This is contract work, so expect the usual caveats. You will have to square away your own taxes, healthcare, dental, etc.

Despite being a contracted position, I have worked here for over a year and I never felt like I was in danger of being let go in order to cut costs or anything.

We get LOTS of offers for extra work throughout the week on many weeks, but we are not penalized or pressured to take on work beyond what we've agreed upon.

The work can slow down around holidays, particularly winter holidays when legal proceedings just aren't being held.

You can take more work in preceding weeks if you want to offset the slow holidays.

I would assert that due to the sheer amount of work offered, it is possible to make a living here, especially if you regularly take some of the expedited jobs at a higher pay rate.

In terms of WFH, transcribing IS fully remote, and isn't difficult to get into. The software and equipment were not overly expensive.

I would recommend this position to anybody with high WPM and high levels of patience.

Reporters sometimes write extremely sparse notes or no notes at all, and often provide zero spellings or wrong spellings.

There are sometimes poor quality audio files, but it's rarer recently. 

For some files, you will bash your head against the wall as the witness mumbles something incoherently for the 38th time and nobody asks them to clarify.

Depending on the type of legal proceedings and the personalities involved, the contents of the files range anywhere from mind-numbing to annoying to just depressing. Most proceedings become very repetitive after a while.

At the beginning of each week, you agree to a certain number of audio minutes for the week. 

A team lead will assign you any number of individual jobs throughout the week in order to total up to your declared # of weekly minutes.

You are also free to accept a variety of expedited jobs, which are offered continuously throughout the week, if you want to make more money.

The environment has been supportive and easygoing. 

I do think that various aspects of the job could have and probably should have been explained more upfront.

Issues such as how many weeks we can take off per year and various logistical nuances I had to figure out piecemeal. Sometimes I only learned things through being kindly reminded by an e-mail, since it was not explained anywhere during onboarding.

Thankfully team leads don't micromanage you, and only contact you if you've missed a deadline or a client wants something adjusted from the norm.

The quality control feedback, in my opinion, has been a bit inconsistent between reviewers. However, any feedback inconsistencies have not affected me negatively thus far.

As someone who went without work for a bit after the pandemic, this position has been a good step back into work for me.

At base rates for transcripts, provided in standard turnaround time, it's not the best pay in the world, but it is decent and stable, which is more than a lot of jobs can offer.

Unfortunately this is not a long-term full-time career option for me, as I simply find the work too tedious to do for 40+ hours per week.

I will probably keep transcription for Allegis as a side gig even as I try to find additional work, since I do like the company.

If you are in a similar position as I was, where I needed to get back into the workforce but preferred WFH, I would recommend trying this at least part-time.

The good: Excellent training to ensure you understand your role before going fully into the transcription work. While some training isn't paid, you do receive payment for a couple training jobs and a bonus for completing the training withn a specific timeframe. The staff is responsive to emails and offers Zoom meetings twice during the week to assist with any questions you might have regarding files. Everything is clearly defined in their guidelines and there are tons of resources, both in the people and through the online portal. You submit your schedule each week so it can flex with whatever you have going on and you get to decide how many hours you want to commit to each week. The pay is also competitive for this type of work.

The bad: There are no paid holidays, but this is typical for work-from-home transcription jobs. You get a couple weeks each year where you can state that you do not want to claim any work and that essentially counts as your week off. Otherwise, you have a minimum threshold of about 100 audio minutes that they want you to commit to each week. Also, the work does not always match your availability. You may state you can take 250 minutes but may only receive 150. You move up by tiers and what their you're in dictates how much work and the type of work you can take on. For example, at the beginning tier you do not have the ability to do higher-paying jobs with quicker turnaround time. While this makes sense, it does take months before you're able to move into those upper tiers to take on those higher-paying jobs. You also don't get to pick and choose your files, so if you get stuck with an accent you struggle with or audio that's difficult, you just have to muddle through it and do your best. 

Overall, I am pleased with this company and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a job within the legal transcription space. They also do insurance transcription, but I am unable to speak to that side of things as I work in the legal transcription field only.

I've been contracting with Allegis for a long time.

I've always received prompt and friendly replies from office staff about any issues I have.

For the many years (over 5) I have been here, I have had zero increases in pay.  

Communication is so-so at best.  There is a contactor website that we are expected to stay up-to-date on - but Allegis does not keep it up-to-date.  Sometimes informative emails are sent out.   Sometimes.  

Work shortages have been rampant the past six or so months. 

New software is being implemented which will remove many of the contractor perks.  If Allegis refuses to raise the pay (despite them gaining more and more business each year), they need to lower their demands on their ICs. As of right now, ICs must meet a minimum amount of weekly pages, must train on new software for a tiny compensation, must take on files of any length to be completed within 24 hours.  So, essentially, Allegis is removing the perk of having a flexible schedule. 

Is this a good job for a newbie to the transcription field?  Definitely.  Allegis will help you grow as a transcriber and you will make a decent starting wage.

Is this a good position for an experienced transcriber?  No.  Pay will not go up despite Allegis' profits rising.  Demands are more like demands on actual employee and not an IC.  So, essentially, the IC has numerous comittments to Allegis to maintain their contract.   Allegis has zero allegiance to long-term, experienced ICs aside from a nominal yearly gift card on work annivesary date and some poorly-made promotional products (10 cent earbuds, flower seeds)  you get sent in the mail once or twice a year.  

As time goes on, I think Allegis will have a lot of room for newer transcribers as many of us who are experienced and have been loyal ICs move on to IC positions elsewhere who value and work hard to retain their longtime ICs.

Allegis pays transcriptionists by the page and it seems to be average or maybe above average when compared to other similar WFH transcription gigs.  That said, you're not going to get rich doing this.  I think most people do it as a side job, though I made it work as a full-time job for many years because I could devote a full eight hours a day to transcribing, and could produce many pages in that time.  It was a modest living but the trade-off was being able to work independently and not having someone hovering over your shoulder all day.

There is a ramp-up period and people naturally go slow at first, making minimum (or less) wage.  This is often when people quit and say that this job is impossible. But it's not.  You get out of it what you put into it.  If you work hard, practice, strive to improve, pay attention to the feedback that the staff gives you, your production numbers will increase and you can make OK money.  

In my experience, Allegis is fair and a good company to work for.  They have clear guidelines, communicate readily, and provide feedback to help you.  If you don't make it at this job, it's likely because you get discouraged early on, miss deadlines, or just can't meet their quality standards, which are reasonable (like, look up street names so that they are spelled correctly).  If you don't meet their quality standards, they don't let you go right away.  They give you many, many chances to get your scores back up to good standing, and if you aren't able to, then transcription probably isn't a good fit for you in the first place.  

I'd say this is a good place to look for remote transcription work if you are diligent, receptive to feedback, willing to work hard, and accepting of the fact that not all of the audio will be great.  

When I saw that I had an email from the Allegis support team, a feeling of dread would come over me because there's a 95% chance that it was going to be insulting and unhelpful.  If the support team's goal was to make sure we only contact them as a absolute last resort, then congrats to them, they've achieved their goal. 

Expect a lot of work holds.  In the 16 weeks leading up to Christmas 2021, there were work holds for more than half of those weeks. Yet Allegis was still taking on trainees and providing them a full workload.  Work holds are to be expected at certain times, but bringing on trainees while your years-loyal employees are getting literally starved out of a job??  Ebenezer Scrooge would be proud. Prior to Allegis, I had never in my life been to a food bank for groceries, or to the plasma donation facility to sell my plasma.  These became regular trips during the last four months of 2021.

Never a raise. NEVER.  I was there for six years. 

Changes to policy are made, but the information is not communicated effectively.  Then you're given a deduction if you don't adhere to the new policy. This has happened so many times I've quit counting.  

They claim to support a flexible work schedule, but God help you if Allegis' system goes down over the weekend.  You can email their after-hours on-call help all you want, you won't hear from them until business hours Monday morning.  Then they'll tell you it's not their fault you didn't get your work done earlier in the week. So - they offer flexibility, but THEY DO NOT SUPPORT IT. 

 

Flexibility? Yes, you can work any hour of the day, for as many hours as you’d like, so long as you met your minimum production requirement.  Pay? Not terrible. That is, assuming there is work available to you. Don’t rely on that or assume you can pay your bills, because without warning, you may be out 4 consecutive days of pay. But you didn’t need to pay that electric bill this month, did you? And no matter how accurate you are, how many years you invest in this position, how many snarky emails you receive and respond oh-so-politely, you will never, ever receive a pay increase. Not even a penny per page.  You will never advance in your position. You’ll never be respected the way you deserve. And should you have an emergency or moment of humanity, even if you’ve dedicated a decade of your life to making them successful, even if your error truly creates no consequence to them or harm to the customer, they will cut your contract on a moment’s notice, because you are absolutely replaceable. Remote work can be very comfy when you don’t have to make small talk with coworkers or dress to impress, it’s great for us introverts. But it makes it that much easier for the company to conveniently forget that you’re an actual
Human being and not merely a machine spitting out transcripts.  They won’t even think twice about you. So if you’re tempted to apply, just make sure you don’t value being appreciated or compensated for your dedication. If that’s the case, you’ll do just fine. 

This is a good place to work if you are just starting out learning and want to be paid while training.  If you have experience, do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.  You will be paid for a couple  pages of typing for the index no matter how long it takes you, with some indexes taking a half hour or longer.  Requirements for what to include on the indexes are forever changing and increasing.  Their digital reporters typically have below average skills and a great deal of time will be spent trying to track down information that should have been given to you in the first place.  You will spend an exorbitant amount of time researching spellings which should have been given to you to start with.  All this extra work will be done on your own time since pay is per page and does not include gathering information and verifying spellings.  Any extra effort  on your own time to get the most accurate transcript possible will not be appreciated.   Policies are sometimes put in place retroactively so one never really knows what the page work requirements really are or will be.   Allegis used to be a good place to work but Veritext has created a different environment.

For insurance, you get paid 1.50 per page, legal is more. Most files average about 10 minutes and are about 4-9 pages. It takes about 30 minutes to transcribe 5 minutes of a file if you're new to the field. You can expect to work at least 15 hours a week (probably more as a newbie) to meet the minimum, just to make $150. It sounds easy, but the mental load of bad audio files can absolutely decrease productivity and create stress. You deal with foreign accents, fast talkers, stutters, etc. that are difficult to transcribe. After awhile, it gets easier and the company offers many online resources, a community forum and scheduled feedback, which are all very helpful to get the job done. But there's constant work holds, especially in the first year. Retention holds you back, so even with 100% accuracy and 300 pages a week, you'll still be in the bottom tier for the first year which sees work holds about every two to three weeks. No work = no pay. I DoorDash when there's work holds and honestly, I make more money doing that! 

This is an Independent Contractor position which requires the completion of a minimum number of pages per week. In order to avoid "work holds," you need to produce two to three times the weekly minimum. In order to have access to work, you effectively need to put in full-time hours. Meeting the weekly minimum and having high accuracy will get you a "work hold," and you will see them advertising for this position yet again. "Work holds" and posting for new workers at the same time. Why you ask? They are fishing for workers who can commit to doing this full-time. Everyone else is subject to be cut off. The long hours of sitting and typing with no benefits . . . know what you are walking into.

What is the best part of working at the company?
I've been working as a legal transcriptionist for a few months now and have enjoyed it so far. There is a lot of feedback, and it's definitely challenging at times. But if you go into this knowing it's not just easy, mindless typing work, it is manageable.
For those concerned about work holds, those are just if you're an insurance transcriptionist. I was told in my interview that there is plenty of legal transcription work, and so far, that's been my experience.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
It takes a lot of work and learning to learn how to do this kind of transcription, especially if you don't have transcription experience. But they have training that is helpful.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
You're an independent contractor, so you are more on your own. But they do have people available to answer questions.

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