| Build your spellings list before the depo, send your “certified transcript attached” emails from a hotkey, and back up your job dictionaries in one click. | | You know the drill. The agency calls at 6pm: 9:30 depo tomorrow, medical malpractice, two expert witnesses, and counsel wants a rough draft by end of day. Oh, and an expedite on the final. The writing part you’ve got. Years of theory, briefs and a job dictionary that’s practically a family heirloom. It’s everything around the writing that eats you alive. Prepping spellings the night before. Emailing counsel for the exhibit list. Sending the rough. Chasing the read-and-sign. Typing the same “Attached please find the certified transcript” email for the thousandth time. None of that is reporting. It’s busywork, and when you’re paid by the page, every hour of it is an hour you’re not writing or editing. Sound familiar? ❓ Here’s the thing: Case CATalyst and Eclipse aren’t the problem. They’re built for the transcript. It’s all the little stuff you do outside your CAT software, by hand, over and over. That’s exactly the kind of work a computer should be doing for you. So below are the tools I’d hand any reporter or scopist, most helpful first. Some run on your Windows PC, some run right in your browser. None of them need you to learn anything techy (and none of them touch your writer or your dictionary). Click Learn more on any one for the full rundown. Now on with the show… 😃 | | Emails, Invoices and Canned Text: Type It Once ✍️ | You’re a keystroke-efficiency expert in your CAT software. Now get that same power in Outlook, Word and your agency’s portal. | | Tool | What it does for you | Prompt Assistant
Learn more → | Think of it as briefs for the rest of Windows. Keep your canned emails in folders: request for spellings and exhibit list, rough draft attached, certified transcript attached, read-and-sign letter, errata reminder, invoice cover note. Pick one from a menu or type a short trigger and it’s in. Fill in the case caption and send. | SimpleTextSender
Learn more → | A lighter option: a small menu of your most-used snippets on one hotkey. Your CSR number, your certificate wording, your appearance-fee line, your agency’s billing address. | Clipboard History
Learn more → | Copy the case number, the caption, the witness name and counsel’s email once, then paste any of them later from your clipboard history. It even remembers which window you copied from. | AutoSuggester
Learn more → | Suggests words as you type, based on what you type most. Law firm names, attorney names, that drug name from last week’s med-mal depo. Start typing, pick it, move on. | Naked Clipboard
Learn more → | Paste plain text with a hotkey, no fonts or formatting tagging along. Great for spellings pasted out of an attorney’s email into your word list without dragging their formatting into your file. | Spell Check Everywhere
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AutoCorrect version → | Spell check in every Windows program, not just Word. For your emails and invoices. (Turn it OFF inside your CAT software. Your dictionary is the boss in there.) 😅 |
| | Tip: Build your Prompt Assistant folders around a job’s life: Scheduling, Prep, Rough Draft, Final, Read and Sign, Billing. When the job wraps, every email you need is already written. ⚡ |
| | Job Prep: Spellings and Word Lists Before You Go on the Record 📚 | The best prep is the terminology you already have in your job dictionary before the witness opens their mouth. | | Tool | What it does for you | Transcriber
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Transcribe and Summarize → | Got a public video of the expert witness giving a lecture, or a webinar on the procedure at issue? Drop the file in and get the text back, then mine it for spellings and terms to build your job dictionary the night before. (Keep confidential case audio out of it unless your agency and jurisdiction allow it. It uses an outside AI service.) | AnyDoc to Markdown
Try it → | Counsel sent the notice, the exhibit list or a prior transcript as a PDF or Word file? Turn it into clean plain text right in your browser, so you can copy the names, drugs and case terms straight into your word list instead of retyping them. | Segmenter
Try it → | Split a long audio or video file into chunks. Nice for scopists and proofers splitting up a long public hearing video for prep, and it can transcribe the pieces if you bring your own OpenRouter key. | Media Player
Learn more → | A small player for MP3, WAV, WMA and MIDI files with hotkeys for pause and skip, and its own volume that doesn’t change your system sound. Handy for plain audio files that aren’t synced to your CAT file. |
| | Files, Dictionaries and Delivery 📁 | Exhibits, audio, the rough, the final, the e-tran, the invoice. And the one file you can never, ever lose. | | Tool | What it does for you | Quick File Backup
Learn more → | Your personal dictionary is years of work. Pick your dictionary and job folders and the file types you care about, and it copies them to a backup drive or folder. Set it to start the backup as soon as it opens and close when it’s done. | Smart File Renamer
Learn more → | Point it at a messy Downloads folder and describe what you want: “everything for the Martinez depo.” AI checks off the matching files (exhibits, audio, notice, rough) so you can rename or move them together. | Simple File Renamer
Learn more → | Rename a batch of files in one go. Scan_0034.pdf becomes Martinez-Exhibit-12.pdf, and the whole exhibit set lines up for the final. | RemindMe
Learn more → | One hotkey, type “Martinez final due, expedite,” pick a time, done. It pops up on your screen or emails you, even if your PC is off. Great for turnaround deadlines and the 30-day read-and-sign clock. | Stopwatch
Learn more → | Track on-the-record time, waiting time or your own editing time per job. The stop button works as a pause, so you pick up where you left off after every “let’s go off the record.” |
| | Tip: Run Quick File Backup at the end of every job day. If your laptop dies the night before a daily-copy delivery, your dictionary is sitting safe on the backup drive. 😊 |
| | Remote Depos: Quiet Screen, Clean Audio 🎧 | Zoom depos are here to stay. These keep your screen and your audio out of trouble. | | Tool | What it does for you | Do Not Disturb
Learn more → | Toggle Windows 11 Do Not Disturb with one hotkey before you go on the record. No email pop-ups sliding across your screen while you’re sharing exhibits or reading back testimony. | Mic Mute
Learn more → | Hotkey to mute your mic, your speakers, or both. Mute yourself during a break without hunting for the Zoom button with your hands still on the machine. | Compare Mic Levels
Learn more → | Check your mic levels before you start recording backup audio. Better to catch a dead or quiet mic before the witness is sworn in than during your edit. |
| One thing I’ve learned: you don’t need to automate your whole practice this week. Pick ONE thing on this list that bugs you on every single job. Fix that. Then pick the next one. When you’re paid by the page, every hour of admin you get back is an hour for editing, or for a night that doesn’t end at 2am with a rough draft. That’s the real FREEDOM. How about you? What’s the one piece of job admin you’d love to never do by hand again? Drop me a note and tell me. I read every one. | | See All Our Tools | | the-Automator.com • Windows automation tools that give you your time back |
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