You may not know it, but there’s a shortage of court reporters in the country. According to a 2013 report commissioned by the National Court Reporters Association, thousands of court reporter jobs are going unfilled as fewer young workers are taking up the profession.
“Legal proceedings are coming to a grinding halt in many states,” said Eve Barrett, CEO of Expedite Legal. “That’s how bad it is.”
Barrett launched Expedite in Dunedin, Florida in April 2018 to help solve that problem, by connecting legal support providers, such as stenographers and notaries, with professionals seeking their work. Through the Expedite app, attorneys and other customers can place a request for services such as interpreting or court reporting, review provider ratings and fill out job details.
Providers receive a text, email and push notification letting them know their service is requested. Providers earn the full amount of the job pay and the customer pays Expedite a fee for connecting them.
Barrett created Expedite in part out of necessity. As a court reporter with over two decades of experience and owner of a legal support business, she said she spent years juggling sudden requests for services.
“I built this to solve my own firm’s problem,” Barrett said. “For at least the last 21 years, our industry has been doing business the same way. When we get last-minute calls from attorneys … we scramble to fill those positions. We invariably spend an inordinate amount of time on that and it often fails.”
Eyeing a gap in the industry that was just waiting to be filled, Barrett invested $300,000 from her retirement savings to launch the company. She adopted the model of on-demand mobile apps like Lyft and Uber. Since launching the app, Barrett said her own legal support business has grown by 28%.
Expedite currently connects users in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Tampa Bay. Other cities have reached out asking the company to launch locally, Barrett said, but one of the biggest challenges is finding enough providers to sign up and fill the demand.
Borrowing a metaphor from ride-sharing apps, she said, “You need to have the drivers before you can bring on the passengers.”
To get the word out, Barrett has taken the message on the road, traveling around the country and speaking to her colleagues in the industry. In August, she gave a presentation at the National Court Reporters Convention in Denver, Colorado, and said she has a few more speaking engagements lined up this fall.
Competitors like LitUp and Statim have appeared since Expedite launched but Barrett insists her experience and contacts in the industry give her a competitive edge.
“I know all the nuances that go along with things like the scheduling process,” she said. “My edge is that I know exactly what it takes.”
