transcriptionist

reporter

legal secretary

human resources coordinator

client associate

eScribers, LLC

Pros:
- Working from home is pretty great.

- They took me in, someone who had very little professional transcribing experience and no degrees, and taught / are teaching me a lot about transcribing. They even offer an online course of sorts to help with getting official transcription certification, completely optional and free.

- Management pretty much always gets back to you with any questions within a day, usually right away.

- They're very accommodating when it comes to working with you around personal problems and deadlines. You can take a break pretty much any time you want to, as long as you communicate with them.

- You are assigned jobs, and I prefer this as opposed to trying to compete for the better jobs when it comes to transcribing companies that let people pick up the jobs they want.

- You really do get to choose your own hours and how much work you want to do. You can experiment with and change your schedule often in order to find the best one that works for you at any given time. Because I have a full-time job outside of this, this has been really helpful for me.

- You can get the work done via whatever method you please. As long as the final result is correct (and you aren't spewing private information regarding the content of your jobs anywhere) that's all they care about, and I really like that.

- Legal transcription is quite interesting, and you learn a lot about the legal world. Most of the audio also seems a lot more clear than general transcription.

Cons:
- The pay, though average for work-from-home transcription work, is really, really low. They like to make it out as if the money you make depends on you, and it does, but you'd have to be godly at transcribing just to make minimum wage. Especially considering there are no benefits, you have to remember to pay taxes, and you provide all your own equipment and services, it's just not nearly enough. I'm making probably about $3 an hour on average right now. I'm fine with this as long as I'm sort of in the training phase, but something tells me even when I've learned and utilized all I can, I won't be making more than $6 an hour, and I'm not sure the best I can do is worth that little. You cannot viably live off this, no matter how good you are at it. I really wanted to replace my current my full-time job with this, but I don't think that can realistically happen.

- Partly because of the above, there is no incentive to doing the best you can do with any particular job. It's more of a punishment doing that or paying attention to details, because you're basically doing it for free. You find yourself trying to find the line of the bare minimum required in order not to be laid off. At times, attention to detail is even discouraged, such as you are not allowed to call courts or other places to get information that's needed. You must rely on management to do this, and they aren't always quick about resolving these discrepancies.

- Sometimes the audio or speaker is very difficult to decipher, and that makes the job take twice as long if not more. I've probably damaged my hearing on things like turning up the volume to hear a quiet speaker and then having someone else cough as loudly as they possibly can into the microphone. These are also the parts you usually have to replay and replay, trying to understand what was said, and it's just awful and irritating.

- There are a lot of documents and resources management provides you and expects you to use, but they are not super well-organized, and there is a ton of them, so it takes far too much time and effort to use them effectively, even though some of the documents are very helpful.

Even though I enjoy legal transcription and was sincerely looking forward to this job, working with eScribers was impractical, frustrating, and not worthwhile. They pay per page, which sounds like a good deal if you're a skilled typist, but it isn't just typing--you're required to do your own research to verify the material and include citations, which quickly adds up to a lot of time. You'll be earning something far below minimum wage; you'd probably make about ten times more working as a cashier at Walmart, which is unacceptable considering the high skill level, education, and attention to detail you'll either need to have or quickly acquire to work as a legal transcriptionist. Additionally, the template macro eScribers requires you to use with Microsoft Word is buggy and took several hours overall to get set up. The training is insufficient. Instead of giving you a pdf or webpage to read through, they spam instructions in dozens of separate emails. You get a proofreader during orientation, who reviews your transcript and sends back corrections (some of which aren't even accurate to the audio), and who otherwise does not communicate any personal feedback. No one responds to the Microsoft Teams chat, and you will be constantly retrieving sign-in codes to access the most basic documents. One assignment contained a new type of material and no instructions or guidance were provided on how to format it. It might be worthwhile to work through all of this for a fair wage, but for a working adult it doesn't make much sense. The amount of work eScribers expects for the pay is practically scam-level. Most charitably, it might be advertised as an internship for students who need the experience and don't mind working virtually for free.

... However, the audio quality is very poor at times, especially videoconferences, which are many ever since COVID. I spent more time cleaning up the flawed transcripts produced by their voice recognition software than it would have taken to transcribe the audio manually from scratch. Having worked as a transcriptionist before transitioning to scopist, I can 100% confidently say this was the case.

Long-term contractors like myself were hit with a significant pay cut due to the implementation of a formatting system called WebScribe. It’s promoted as a tool to improve workflow, and it’s actually the opposite:  extremely inefficient and very burdensome.

I was required to conduct extensive research such as verifying:  names, places, terminology, abbreviations, citations, companies, etc., along with completing assignments and filling out case-specific documents for each assignment. While I didn’t mind this extra effort, as I wanted my transcripts to be accurate, it amounted to hours of unpaid labor.

Proofreading was another major issue. While some proofreaders are very competent and provided excellent feedback, others made edits that are not only inaccurate but often unrelated to the audio. Their names are not attached to the final transcript, mine was, so their mistakes reflected poorly on me.

Compensation is technically paid on a per-page basis, but the current rates have dropped to a level that is no longer sustainable.


My first impression should have been a clue as to what was to come! When I was contacted for an interview, I had to wait over a month! At first I thought that she had her dates wrong but no, she said she was really busy and her first available interview was over a month away. Okay. I was hired that day and started soon thereafter. I am not a newbie to the transcription world at all and I really do appreciate constructive criticism to help me become a more efficient and well-rounded transcriber. The emails I received from my editors were less than kind, nitpicking me to pieces. When I typed for eScribers, I also typed for three other companies as well and I brought eScriber's concerns to my other employers' attention to ask if it was true, am I really that incapable? Should I reconsider my mode of employment? Because the tone of those emails were so bad, it nearly broke me. I was reassured by my other companies that my work is really impeccable and ALL THREE had no idea what eScriber's was talking about in my work. In the meantime, I received yet another hard email from eScribers and said that's enough. I really do love what I do and to be stressed to my core about things they couldn't even define? I was out. I understand that eScriber's does hire less experienced transcriptionists and will teach you the ropes, but whether you have experience or not, pay was low. I don't miss them at all. Live and learn.

Do not accept this job if you have never done any transcription work previously.  Do not get swayed at the prospect of working at home, deciding your own hours. If you have zero experience transcribing they will fire you go before you can really get the hang of it. If you do make the fateful decision accepting the job you will spend hours reading and learning the orientation pamphlet along with hundreds of rules that different courts have. They'll implore you to spend $100 on a foot pedal, but they'll most likely fire you before it would even ship to your house.  Your first few jobs will be easy and you'll be corrected on small mistakes you make . However you'll get a more challenging case that will be with a different court you have not previously worked on and they will provide no help. They expect  you to be near PERFECT after only a few cases.  The pay is absolutely abysmal, 0.25 cent increase after orientation (that could last up to 6 months) is laughable. With no benefits this job is the equivalent of working in a sweat shop in China.  If you add up the hours spent learning rules along with the transcription work you'd probably average $3 per hour.  Do not work here, you'll make more money picking up aluminum cans on the street. 

I worked at eScribers for 2-ish years and I learned quite a lot there. You handle a ton of jurisdictions, so you get exposed to a variety of expectations. This could prepare you well for another job in transcription. However, the audio I felt was often poor. Zoom calls, while inevitable for COVID, didn't help. Sometimes we'd get no names of the people involved in cases or even attorney/judge names. Sometimes you just got nothing to work with. Their scoping tool in my opinion has some ways to go. I often just resorted to transcribing myself because it was less time consuming to fix the machine generated transcript. The pay isn't great, better than other places that do freelance, but still very low. (Pay can vary by jurisdiction) It feels like you have to work fast to compensate for the pay. I don't think I even reached minimum wage and I thought I had a skill issue,  but I perform well at my new job. The people were generally nice and supportive, and answered questions. However, I heard it may not be the same in higher up roles. All in all, it's nice that it's flexible and a good place to learn. You'll get to do some interesting cases too, but I wouldn't rely on pay being a liveable wage and you won't have any benefits. I'd consider it a side gig.

I work as an independent contractor transcribing courtroom proceedings,  interviews, depositions, and an assortment of other things.  For those interested, working as a legal transcriptionist gives a glimpse into the legal world without having to get an expensive law degree (or be a criminal).

The pay is considered by most in the transcription industry to be industry standard, and it is per-page.  Therefore, your effective hourly rate will vary depending on your speed and the quality of the audio (which generally tends to be good).  It's certainly not a six-figure job, but it is a decent-paying job.  This is a contract job, so there are no insurance benefits to speak of and there is the additional self-employment tax.  The only real investment you need to make is a foot pedal, a computer, a copy of Word, and a good set of headphones.

The job is very scalable; it can serve as a side job or it can serve as your primary income source, as work is almost always available.  So long as you get your deadlines met, you can work at any time of day you see fit.

eScribers does have a training program and helpful proofreaders, which is invaluable for someone with little to no experience in legal transcription.

I worked for this company for a good eight months and I can tell you many things about them.  For one, they will put money in your bank account.  

However, be ready to work 12 hour days losing sleep on a $50 dollar file just to have your proofer send back your file with a bunch of nitpicking telling you how much of an incompetent transcriber you are.  

Be ready to have your proofer CC emails to operations talking trash about how much of an incompetent transcriptionist you are trying to get you fired because they're just as miserable as you are.  

If you really need money ( and I mean REALLY need money, like your stomach is touching your spine)  and you have a PhD in English, then this might be the job for you.  

If you love being nitpicked on every little comma and period and then finding out that you were actually right from the beginning later on then this might JUST be the job for you.  

IF you love working 20 HOUR days on a single file just to have your proofer tell you that after only reading 2 pages of your 70 page document that they want you to go back through ONE hour and TWENTY minutes of audio all over again so that they don't have to actually do their job then this might just be the job for you.

I start out with a little typing practice and forearm stretches before jumping headfirst into the next or current project I have. Much of our content is confidential, so it makes me feel a little special that I am trusted with such sensitive information. Management is incredibly understanding. I have yet to have any sort of disagreement and we're coming up on my one-year mark. 

You would think that criminal cases involving children would be the hardest to transcribe, but as long I keep in mind that my transcript being as accurate as possible genuinely helps the victims of the crimes I'm dealing with, I'm okay. 

The most difficult thing to deal with is cross talk, bad reception (especially with the recent spike in teleconferences due to COVID), and heavy accents. I like having a clean transcript to turn in to my proofreader. 

Apart from getting paid fairly for my work, I'd have to say the most enjoyable part of my job is the validation that I receive -- especially on particularly difficult jobs.

I have been working for Escribers for about 3 weeks now, and I’m still in orientation. I had no previous transcription experience and was having a hard time finding WFH employment, so I really appreciate the opportunity to break into a new field and receive training. It’s true that the pay is not great. Currently I’m making $1 per transcription page, and I have the potential to earn $1.25 per page later. That’s it. With tons of stuff to learn, right now I’m working many hours and not getting much pay. However, I am okay with that. This for me is a learning, not earning, opportunity. There are lots of transcription jobs that pay well out there, but they usually require a year or two of transcription experience. I view this as an opportunity to gain experience and add to my resume, with hopefully more earnings in the future.  The training materials are not the most organized or easiest to figure out, but they do provide lots of resources if you are willing to dig around. My proofreader is very nice and helpful. If you don’t have transcription experience and you want to get into this field, this might be a good place to get started.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Transcriptionist 2 salaries reported	$19.00 per hour
Reporter 1 salary reported	$240 per day
Legal secretary 2 salaries reported	$42,000 per year
Human resources coordinator 2 salaries reported	$50,000 per year
Client associate 1 salary reported	$47,500 per year

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