S02E20: State of Legal Interpreting Sector

Luis Echeverry

I’m doing well. It’s a pleasure to be here with you and thank you for having me on.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I’m so happy that you made it. Finally we have made this happen. I I start every interview by asking you to tell me about yourself and what you do, just a little bit of background please.

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah yeah, I was born in Colombia, South America. I came to this country back in 1969. My parents brought us here. Five of us kids came and grew up in Southern California and actually we all still live in Southern California. I’ve been married now for almost 40 years. Next year in February I will celebrate 40 years anniversary with my wife. And we still live in Southern California, my siblings and myself. My parents have passed. 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So from what I’m hearing, it was technology which was a game changer in terms of communication.But did you notice anything after that, for example, you know everyone is talking about how automation became a challenge and and we are still dealing with that.How do these things affect you?

Luis Echeverry 

Well,  I was fortunate that I was at that time my uncle was a programmer and he helped us out doing a lot of programming for our program that would help us manage processes, but it was, uh nonetheless, very challenging trying to keep up with some very new technology at the time and try to make it all fit into the business the way we did business.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

OK, well interesting. Now today we are going to be talking about the challenges of interpreting in the legal system, in particular the under the circumstances we had to go through in the past year or so. Please give us an overview of what the legal industry is experiencing today in terms of interpreting.

 

Luis Echeverry

There was a big disruption early in 2020 that’s when right here in California we had a lock down and pretty much everything came to a halt. All our jobs were cancelled and then they started the comebacks very slowly, mostly remote. Uhm, that went up for quite some time until about some work sometime late in the second quarter of 2020. A lot of the states started allowing for remote depositions to be accepted. When that happened, Uhm, there was a big surge in business demand and things really we couldn’t,it was hard keeping up with the demand. Things are stabilized now and we’re back to pre-pandemic times.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Well this last year, as you alluded to, was particularly challenging and tough for the interpreting sector. How did the pandemic affect the legal interpreting front? Now you mentioned that things have stabilized, what was the net impact of the pandemic? What type of changes did we observe happening that might stay for the long term?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, the biggest change of course was that don’t go in remote, not only for our employees, at one time we had to send everybody home here from our office and everybody working remotely. Something that we were not used to doing before, and that in itself was very challenging, especially the communication part. Trying to communicate to one employee with another as to what was going on with the particular process. Also, the interpreters are trying to get interpreters that not only were certified but also familiar with doing remote depositions. We had to coach a lot of them into the process of logging on and using the right equipment to be able to communicate well in that, so yeah, that part was very challenging. 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Do you think that there will be long term implications from what we went through? Has it become, for example, more acceptable to use remote and virtual type of solutions compared to having everybody in person in the past how would that affect our industry as a whole in the long term?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, I think there will be a lot of longtime implications come mainly the remote interpreting is going to be widely accepted more and more in the past if we had a job that required a certain interpreter, certain language, or a certain region, where there’s a dearth or certified interpreters, we’d have to tell a client that nobody was available for that job, and we asked him if we could do it remotely, and 99% of the time the client would say no. I think these days that will change if there’s a deposition that’s taking place in a remote area or very difficult language. Clients will most likely accept a remote interpreter to sort of like a hybrid deposition to take place. 

  

Sultan Ghaznawi 

One thing I want to know is that it would on site to online transition it has not been very smooth for some and in some cases not even possible. How do you find that transition to to move things in terms of interpreting from from on site or offline to online to a virtual type of environment?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, the translation come while it was challenging, I was very fortunate that I have Veronica Amador who’s my office administrator. She was the one that pretty much implemented this whole thing here in my office. Uhm, unfortunately early 2020. I sustained a very serious accident while vacationing in Colombia.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Sorry to hear that

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, and for yeah and for the first part of the year I was not even around here in my office at all. That’s when we were dealing with a pandemic. Fortunately, Veronica took the reins on this and put in place some practices that we were able to use to be successful that remote interpreting.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

And do you think that you can implement those practices and those processes in the long term to be sustainable?

 

Luis Echeverry

Oh, absolutely, and I think that more and more interpreters that as they become familiar, not only with remote interpreting, but with simultaneous remote interpreting applications it would make it. It’s going to make it more feasible and I think more attractive for clients to in the future do more remote interpreting than they do on site interpreting.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So Luis, I’m assuming a personal legal interpreting is still needed, it has to be needed under certain scenarios and situations. Please tell me about how you manage that? How do you handle on site scheduling and deploying people?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, the on site scheduling it didn’t change much for us.  We have a custom program that we use for that, and the hardest thing was accessing that program remotely for when interpreters were sent home. My daughter, Stephanie, was the one that was sort of running the show as far as managing how people were going to work, communicate with one another and with together with their IT company we were able to make everybody work together and be able to do that with with very little disruption.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

And do you still handle on site interpreting the same way?  For example, clients call you in and you schedule someone to go, or are there challenges, for example to make sure that everyone has a COVID vaccine done. What are some of the changes that have happened with the on site interpreting?

 

Luis Echeverry 

Yeah, that that that’s a good question. Uh Sultan, yeah, with on site interpreting when they begin opening California up again and we were able to send interpreters too nbew on face to face interpretation we of course had to given certain guidelines. Now they’re all independent contractors and that what’s that is what makes it most difficult that you can’t control them you can’t tell him you have to be vaccinated or you have to do this and that, but we can certainly in this case be able to tell him you have to follow CDC guidelines and those are there for everybody to follow and we haven’t had any issues that I know of with any interpreters. Uh, there’s only been very few interpreters that have turned down assignments because they’re not comfortable going into the setting. Whether it’s on site where they’re going to be a plus, close proximity with other individuals, but those are very few.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Luis, let’s shift gears and talk about the client experience. What are they going through?  How have these changes impacted their work?

 

Luis Echeverry 

Yeah, the client experience has changed quite a bit in the past we had a representative that would go out to visit clients freedom sometimes bring him treats promotional items and make sure that everything was running smoothly with our services. Uhm, with the pandemic, obviously all these offices close down and or even if they were up and they wouldn’t accept any outsiders, so most of that was done by phone or by email, so we lost a lot of the personal touch that we used to have with our clients. Nonetheless, we still had to stay on top of it. Communicate with their clients well, UM, so that we could iron out any issues that were coming along as services were provided.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So do you find the clients accepting that change that reality or are they going back to pre pandemic type of lifestyle that they had in terms of work, what do you find?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, a lot of our clients have employees that are now working permanently from home, so we used to go into an office where they may be 20-30 people. Now you go in there and there’s only 5,6,7,8 people, much less than 50% of the staff that we used to see before, so that has changed a lot. Most of the communication now is by email. Which in a way I like it because it it leaves a record of what is being requested and what is being said. 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

On the same note, did these changes impact the client spend at all? Some people assume whether correctly or not,that remote interpreting is cheaper. What are your thoughts?
 

Luis Echeverry 

Thoughts yeah, no Yeah. You’re writing out a lot of different expectations there. Because it’s remote because an interpreter is not leaving their house. Maybe we will not have to pay as much for that service, but the reality is that interpreters still have to reserve that same amount of time, yet they’re not leaving their home to drive out to do an assignment, but they have to prepare for it.  They have to get their equipment prepared. And they have to prepare the work zone. So that hasn’t changed and actually what’s happened is depositions have actually taken longer than they used to in the past, onsite depositions typically took a couple hours, remote depositions are taking much longer than two hours these days, and we are running into an issue now where we have to rebook afternoon assignments often because interpreters doing a morning deposition are in a deposition that’s taking too long and they can’t do an afternoon assignment. 

 

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Sultan Ghaznawi 

And do you find that clients accept that reality they understand that or or do you have to develop new policies and tools to make sure that they understand and and set expectations accordingly.

 

Luis Echeverry 

A little bit of both some clients do understand and they are fine with it, others can get frustrated for this and they will not accept it as well, but as time goes on and they do more and more of these depositions, they begin to realize that by nature they’re going to take a lot longer than an onsite deposition.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Understood. Now, Luis, while COVID placed a lot of sectors on pause, the legal industry had to keep going. I mean, there were nothing could wait. How did your organization adapt to the changing needs of this specific industry?

 

Luis Echeverry

Again, I was out of the office for the first part of the year 2020 when all these changes were taking place, Veronica was the one that was handling all these different challenges. Making sure that the interpreters were well trained to do remote interpreting and making sure that our clients also understood. I think one of our biggest challenges for depositions was with the non English speaking person. This person sometimes is not well versed in computer technology. To be able to log onto a meeting to face the camera when they’re talking, to use a microphone properly, and that part has always been a challenge for us.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

OK,  and so is that challenge becoming easier to deal with now given the fact that that non-English speaker, probably they also had to adapt to some of the realities of COVID and I can only imagine what type of difficulties their going through, but what is our industry doing as a whole to address things for them?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, because we work during doing this deposition we work closely with court reporters. They are facing the same issues as we are and they are the ones that set up the meetings, they were the ones that distribute the codes, and they’re the ones that are more the in charge of the meeting as far as all the different parameters, all the different individuals that that are taking place in the meeting, and they can control that more and now they that has gotten a lot better they have gotten a better grip on how they manage these remote depositions.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

We talked about this a little bit earlier I I would like you to expand if you will, since it has been a year since the pandemic officially started or well actually so it will be soon two years, have things become more normal and accepted with regards to VRI and SRI, or do you still see that it’s kind of a taboo and there’s a bit of a stigma for doing things online?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah they had. It has become a lot more accepted over the months or two years by now, in the past it was very challenging. To find certified interpreters that were actually, well, familiarize with remote platforms, it’s a lot simpler now and we don’t have to do as much coaching anymore.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

And while we are at it, do you think that there was some sort of evolution or development in terms of the online platforms that accommodated online interpreting? Have they improved compared to what we had before because there was demand for it? What have you noticed on the technology front?
 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, and a lot of these remote platforms have changed in that they are now allowing for interpretation. It used to not be that way before. Zoom, zoom for instance has a channel where you can have remote interpretation done simultaneously. There are other platforms out there like could interpret Phi and others that have even better tools for remote simultaneous interpretation and as we continue using these platforms more and more, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more improvements.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi  

And do you think that that that those changes or the demand for those changes they emanate from our industry or it’s from the outside the demand that’s social, economic or environmental for that matter,  because now people have to stay in their homes. Do you think that’s forcing technology providers to change and adapt and provide these new medium for communication?

 

Luis Echeverry

Absolutely, and I think it’s not just for our industry but or our profession a lot of the different professions will require better communication tools and interpreting as a big part in especially that the world is getting smaller and we need better communication and using these platforms with interpreters is going to continue to improve over the years.
 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So let’s talk about interpreters. You just talked about them and they have obviously started adapting as well. How did this shift affect them to do their work? What have your observations been? What are some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that have been presented to them.
 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, I think it’s been very difficult on interpreters, remote interpretation is not easy to do. Yeah, as I mentioned before, sometimes the deponent or the person that speaking., he doesn’t always face a camera, doesn’t use a microphone properly, and unless interpreters able to hear that person clearly understand that person clearly, it makes it very challenging and I guess it makes it so that it becomes more of a fatigue factor kicking then trying to concentrate so much on what a person is saying. And it’s very been very difficult for interpreters.
 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

These tools, these technology tools that allow remote interpreting to happen they also have additional medium or assistive medium of communication such as text chats and other aspects. How did these new aid tools that came to these you know online platforms how do they change the way we do interpreting, have they made things easier do you find or do you think that they’ve complicated things and people are scared of using technology?
 

Luis Echeverry

You know that all depends on interpreters, some interpreters can work well with the splitting them while they’re interpreting , be able to read text on the side and reply to that text, while others need to concentrate only under interpreting, and so it doesn’t work well for everybody.  It it all depends on the individual.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So some people find it as distraction while others actually put it to use. OK, do you think there has been a change in their income level? How did going online affect people incomes?

 

Luis Echeverry

The income level?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Yes, yes their potential to earn.

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah, yeah I think that the income level has, was affected, especially during the first quarter of first and second quarter of 2020. Fortunately, we had a lot of the small business loans, and many interpreters were able to take advantage of those small business loans to keep them afloat, I think byt now things are pretty much stabilized, and interpreters are back to earning pre-pandemic wages.
 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So with that, what type of new business opportunity do you see for translation or interpreting companies as well as interpreters themselves? How did the new dynamic, the way technology has evolved, manifested itself as an opportunity for people beyond what we’re doing today.

 

Luis Echeverry

I, I think this creates a huge opportunity, especially for interpreters that don’t like driving to certain areas. Now they know they can work from home, in fact, they can even move out and live in places that are very pleasant to live, where you may not find a lot of activity going on for interpreting, so it changes everything as far as the interpreters and they don’t have to be located in a certain area to stay busy, they can be pretty much anywhere in the world.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Do you think that the online connectivity that’s become available, are they posing any competition from outside the state or outside the country that might negatively affect the way interpreters actually get work done and or the amount of work that they’re getting done?

 

Luis Echeverry

Yeah that’s a very good question Uh, when you start opening the doors for a lot of outside competition, especially competition from other countries, it makes it so that we tend to think that a lot of our work is going to go away and is going to be done by people that can do it for a lot less. Fortunately, in the legal industry, we need interpreters that are certified, usually court certified, and when you get certified, you get certified with a for a particular state for the most part or unless you’re certified as a federal interpreter and a lot of interpreters that are working abroad don’t have that certification and therefore can’t do that kind of job. 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Understood, and what would you advise Luis to those interpreters in terms of adapting to the new reality as a legal interpreter? What does it mean to perform your work today and how you should adjust?
 

Luis Echeverry 

Well, you have to be open to change and you have to realize that not it’s not the way it used to be, where you can drive downtown do a couple of depositions and be back home by 5:00 o’clock. You might have to stay at home, do a deposition in the morning, and maybe drive out to do another deposition in the afternoon or vice versa.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And for those of us that are not very familiar with legal interpreting business, what will be the challenge is going forward in your opinion?

 

Luis Echeverry

Well, if you’re not familiar with the legal, the way legal interpreting works as far as challenges going forward, just keeping up with the different platforms that are out there, the different technology, AI for example, is changing a lot and it’s going to get to a point where we are going to have a lot more influx on AI when it comes to interpreting and we have to be ready for that.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

That’s an interesting point you brought up Louis, where does AI stand today with regards to interpretation?

 

Luis Echeverry 

Well it it has come long ways, but it still has a long ways to go I don’t think that is anywhere near to be accepted for medical interpreting, or for legal interpreting. But there are other fields that where AI might be acceptable and humans will be replaced by those machines doing the mechanical interpretation.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I think one of the challenges is that today, as speech has to go into texts and that needs to be translated with machine translation, then synthesized back into speech, so if that problem can be overcome from basically using speech to speech translation or voice to voice translation, which will yield interpreting, do you think that will change the landscape?

 

Luis Echeverry 

It may for certain fields I still for legal and medical I don’t think that’s going to change uh, yet until  the technology gets it for us pretty much maybe it will never be perfect, but close to being perfect it has to be more accurate than human interpretation in order for it to work.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

So let’s take that question a step back and take that question with a general view. Do you think technology will be playing an important role in how interpreting will be delivered in the future?

 

Luis Echeverry

I, I think so. Eventually it will be that that technology is changing so many aspects of our lives. You know you have robots now that are putting cars together they’re even doing surgeries, so I think taking it one step further for a robot that can actually talk if you will or the machine can talk and be able to interpret accurately. I think that’s that’s to be expected.
 

Sultan Ghaznawi

One thing we hear these days in our industry, even outside, is that data breaches are pretty common. You know customer data gets breached everyday basically, there’s some news that so and so company got hacked. How does this affect online interpreting? Given the fact that now that we’ve opened up virtual interpreting to people from outside our borders one requires specific legal information is discussed. What, in your opinion, what are the implications of or getting people from outside the state who are not certified to to do this type of work?
 

Luis Echeverry

Well, I’d until we have until our legislation changes and accept interpretation that is done outside of our states that’s not gonna happen if you’re doing a deposition, say in Texas, you need an interpreter that is certified for Texas, you can’t have a California certified interpreter doing a deposition in Texas.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Understood. So with that you don’t see any any major challenges to user data or confidentiality breaches that the online and platforms polls because some people are very concerned about that.

 

Luis Echeverry 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But I think again, it all has to do with legislation. Once it is legal to share that kind of data, then things will change and you’ll see a lot more interaction.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Let’s let’s talk about your crystal ball. How do you foresee the future of this industry moving forward? Do you think the demand for interpreting will grow?

 

Luis Echeverry 

I think that the interpreting will continue to grow as being growing and it will continue to grow, when it will stop growing, it;s hard to tell, but at least for the next few years I see that it will continue to grow.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So in your thought what’s the driving factor for the growth of interpreting.

 

Luis Echeverry

Well, at least right here in the our clients are US based and as long as you have immigration there always be will be in need for language interpretation.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

OK, what are your projections for 2022 in terms of how the economy, politics and other factors affect your revenue streams?

 

Luis Echeverry 

Yeah, I think the economy as long as we continue to have a strong economy like we have now things will continue to improve on the political part if we have laws that are passed, it can impact us like the Care Act. For example, the Care Act could be something similar to what a AB5 was in California, where it will make it harder to have independent contractors. It will force many to classify those independent contractors as employees that’s going to be very challenging for us.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So the we were talking about AB5 and a couple other episodes as well. How did that affect our industry in in California? How have things changed since since that discussion was happening. 

 

Luis Echeverry

Well, AB5 was a disruption because it forced many to rethink and how they  were doing business fortunately, Coptic came along, and that was fuelled by Lorena Ortez Schneider and she was able to have a, uh, carve out an exemption if we well for interpreters and translators here in California, so that took a lot of the pressure off of us but I’ve been up until that time we were carved out for interpreters and translators, we had to redo all our independent contractor agreements and treat our interpreters and translators more like vendors to avoid that relationship that we may have as an employer, employee.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I want to give a shout out here to ALC, the Association of Language Companies. They have been very active on advocacy front. Do you think,  you mentioned Lorna earlier, but do you think that their efforts also made a difference here?
 

Luis Echeverry 

Oh, absolutely. I think the they have a very very strong program for advocacy that is going to help us steer the legislation in the right direction to benefit that also.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Absolutely. So since most of the people listening to this podcast are executives in the language industry, what is your advice for them?

 

Luis Echeverry 

Uhm, well, as far as an employer,  take care of your employees, we need to take care of our employees because they are the ones that are talking to our clients and dealing with our vendors everyday. Take good care of them and training and hiring and training new employees as though it’s very, very disruptive. Hmm, the other thing is, join the association that supports our language services. One that comes to mind is ALC (Association Of Language Companies). I think they’re instrumental and like you mentioned before, advocacy. But also, a lot of people in the ALC want, members willing to help us succeed in business.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Understood Luis as we reach towards the end of this interview, I can’t believe time flies, it’s been almost an hour and I want to know if someone needs to get in touch with you regarding your services or anything we discussed today, what is the best way for them to reach out to you?

 

Luis Echeverry 

Best way to reach me is by email. My email Luis at CIS-inc.com

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Alright, perfect.Luis, It was an incredible pleasure that we finally got to do this interview. I know we’ve been planning to do this for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you and learning from you. I’m sure our listeners also found at least one action item or take away that they could take and apply to their business and improve things for themselves. With that, I want to keep the door open for covering more areas in future episodes and I want to thank you for your time today.

 

Luis Echeverry 

Oh and thank you Sultan and it’s been a pleasure talking with you and I look forward to meeting you in person one day.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Likewise!

 

Luis Echeverry

OK, thank you. 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi 

Interpreting is undergoing an evolution, both with technology and the restrictions that the world saw with COVID. Unlike translation, interpreting had not yet been disrupted as much with automation, and it is still some ways away from creeping into medical and legal spaces. I believe that the  acceptance of virtual interpreting through phone, video or applications will proliferate and become more common, there lays massive opportunities and the spoken word interpretation in the form of on demand services that we may not have yet envisioned. I think Luis and other leaders in our industry have the experience and know how to guide the next pivot in change with interpreting.  

There you have it, my interview was an interesting inside look into where legal interpreting is headed. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Luis and I look forward to speaking to you again in our future episodes.

 

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Thank you for listening.