A NEW BUSINESS MODEL FOR COURT REPORTING
The court reporting market in Atlanta has been shaken up again. With more and more court reporting firms merging to accommodate business on a national scale, one court reporter decided to focus strictly on Georgia. Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting has been formed to help court reporting return to its roots. Targeting the needs of local Georgia law firms, this group is offering high-tech court reporting services and personal assistance at affordable prices.After a decade of working as a freelance reporter for some of the most prestigious court reporting agencies in Atlanta, Elizabeth Gallo launched her own court reporting firm with a unique business model. “We chose to forego the expensive overhead that inflates the cost of transcripts,” says Elizabeth Gallo. Gallo explains that her clients already have high, ongoing expenses associated with their exclusive addresses. Since Gallo has taken a more modest stance, passing up the Buckhead address, her fees are lower.
Without the pricey office space, Gallo also says that her firm has a greater share of profits to invest in services for lawyers, paralegals, and legal assistants. “We quite effectively compete on a grand scale with all of the long-established court reporting agencies. Not only do we present state-of-the-art services and topnotch personnel, we deliver it all at a more competitive rate.”“We don’t consider ourselves cheap,” said Elizabeth Gallo. “First, we take care in pricing our services according to what the local market supports for quality court reporting. Second, we reward our reporters by paying a higher percentage than the average court reporting firms. We do so because our reporters reflect our agency by consistently delivering excellence.
We deal only with the best court reporters, who earn every penny of their commissions. By offering higher commissions, we attract Atlanta’s preferred court reporters, and they remain loyal to our firm. By investing in our court reporters, we make a meaningful investment in our company. Our goals are to focus strictly on customer service and to offer top-notch court reporting services to our clients at fair rates.”Gallo explained that her ambition is to give the smaller law firms in Georgia a valuable competitive edge. “They don’t have the advantages of the larger firms, which are supported by clients with deep pockets. Therefore, we give them [the smaller law firms] access to an online repository; searchable, digital exhibits; E-Transcripts; video-sync; and everything else that the national court reporting firms make available to the big guys. Along with those resources, we also provide a deeper level of customer service. Our clients would get lost in the corporate environment of the mega court reporting firm,” says Gallo. “All in all, we are tremendously excited about all we have to offer Georgia attorneys and their support staffs.”
