With the demand for more accurate and easily read legal records on the rise, many individuals are looking to start a career in legal transcription because of the growing need for their services. Legal transcription is a great career choice due to the ease of getting started and the abundance of work available. The need for well-trained legal transcriptionists, however, is vast due to the numerous companies that hire employees who are unqualified and inexperienced in the legal field.
The majority of businesses do require some sort of basic training in order to be hired as a legal transcriptionist, and it is rare to find one that will hire someone with no transcription experience. Generally, businesses require their employees to have a strong working knowledge of legal terminology, the English language, and the use of correct grammar. It is also a good idea to become familiar with the fundamentals of law, the court systems and litigation and to know how a law office works in order to ensure success in the business. Legal transcriptionists are generally required to be masters at dictation because they will use it so frequently on the job. It is wise for individuals to do extensive research on legal transcription before choosing it as a career. Researching individual businesses requirements is of even greater importance because all businesses are entitled to set their own qualifications to be required of their employees.
Since some form of training will be preferred, it is good to know that there are many training options from which to choose. Training to be a legal transcriptionist is more flexible than ever before. Individuals wishing to pursue this career can choose to train in a school, at home, or online, with several of these options overlapping. This versatility allows more people to become well-trained legal transcriptionists because they now have the time and ability to find quality training programs, whereas before they may have had to travel long distances to study in a specific college that offered the transcription courses.
A good place to look for schools that provide legal transcription training is CollegeSurfing.com. This site links individuals to several schools that offer training for legal transcription. On the site, individuals can browse through many state and community colleges that offer associate degrees or certification courses in legal transcription. CollegeSurfing.com also provides access to many online colleges and programs that make training for legal transcription even easier.
MedWord is an online resource that provides training courses in all facets of transcription. They have most of the basic training that is common today but also have the added perk of giving specialized courses to teach valuable skills that are used nearly every day on the job. People who choose to take MedWord courses will enter the job field with valuable knowledge of the legal system in addition to transcription basics, helping to make them better and more desirable employees.
In addition to online and college courses, many employers will allow individuals to train on the job, so they can earn money and train at the same time. This option is more convenient for the transcriptionist but can be a hassle if it is a small company. With that said, most businesses that choose to allow for on the job training have several well-trained transcriptionists on staff who have the time and skill to train newcomers properly. Although this option can take more time, businesses that use it are able to personally mold individuals into the type of workers that their company needs and are more likely to keep employees longer.
There are many different training options for legal transcriptionists today. Individuals can choose from an endless number of courses and programs that teach them valuable skills for the field. Many transcriptionists further their careers into paralegal studies or even law. The availability and ease of the training process is leading more qualified individuals to work as legal transcriptionists and provide better legal records for organizations all over the U.S.
You may also get a variety of textbooks and references, such as a medical dictionary, drug book and so forth.
So what else do you need?
That depends on how productive you want to be, and how you work best. There are more reference books that may be helpful, particularly if you transcribe in a particular specialty. Even if you find some great online references, books are sometimes just easier to use.
A medical phrase book can be a real gem. Sometimes you can just catch a part of the phrase, and if you look it up the rest is suddenly clear.
Some things you may enjoy having, but I suggest waiting for your first job to see what's included by your employer. On the other hand, if you're freelancing you will definitely need to provide your own tools.
This includes a good medical spell checker. Depending on the company you work for, you might use Word; then again many companies have their own proprietary software. This may include a spell checker, in which case you don't need to buy one.
But if your employer doesn't provide one, you need one! Everyone makes mistakes when they type, and it's better to have your spell checker catch it than Quality Assurance.
Not to mention the sheer havoc if the doctor can't tell what happened due to inaccurate typing.
Do note that a spell checker does not replace the need to go over your own work, particularly in the early days. If you need to listen to the report again because you think you missed something or got the context of a word wrong, take that time. Quality matters in transcription.
A word expander is a great delight as well as a huge time saver. Some employers will include one in their software, but if not I strongly encourage you to get one on your own. A word expander will pay for itself in terms of increased productivity and fewer spelling errors. It will take some time to figure out all the abbreviations, but when typing "aox" instead of "alert and oriented" is one of the shorter expansions, you can see where the expander can help you.
Most will allow you to add your own expansions in. Do not make the mistake of using common medical abbreviations into expansions, especially if you're working on an account that is to be typed verbatim. Some doctors want their abbreviations in there, which is why I generally had the letter "x" at the end of my expansions. Two if the abbreviation already had one.
You can also use the expander to fix your most common typos, such as "teh" for "the". Huge help!
You will also want a good collection of reputable websites to do your research on. You can't pick just any website, but there are a number of good medical and medical transcription sites out there that will give you accurate information when you're trying to figure things out.
It may be hard to decide to spend a bit more money on your career after spending a lot of money on your education, but like your education the right tools will pay off in terms of increased productivity.
Both Greg Heslin & Stephanie Foster are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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