Steno

What it is

Steno is a tech-enabled court reporting agency, not a software product. Founded in 2018 in Los Angeles by plaintiff litigator Dylan Ruga, entrepreneur Greg Hong, and CTO Dan Anderson, it books certified court reporters, videographers, and interpreters for depositions, arbitrations, and hearings, then layers its own technology on top: Steno Connect for Zoom for remote proceedings, a Firm Dashboard for scheduling and file access, and Transcript Genius, a generative-AI layer over the resulting transcripts. It closed a $49M Series C on 26 March 2026 led by Savano Capital Partners, on top of $38.5M raised through a May 2023 Series B and a further $46M in May 2024, earmarked for geographic expansion and deeper AmLaw 200 penetration.

That distinction shapes how you evaluate it. You do not buy Transcript Genius; you buy depositions, and the AI arrives attached at no extra charge. It inverts the usual legal-AI purchase — here the software is the tiebreaker on a services contract, not the line item.

Why it shows up in legal-ops stacks

• Transcript Genius is bundled, not metered. Steno states there is no additional charge and no usage limit for clients. It runs exact-match and semantic search across a transcript, generates summaries filtered by length and focus, compares multiple depositions to surface contradictions, syncs text to video so clicking a line jumps to the footage, and returns linked page-line citations on every answer. It ingests third-party .txt and .pdf transcripts, so testimony taken by other agencies can be pulled into the same analysis. Steno states SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance, that conversations are never used to train the AI, and that its AI partners do not retain data after a session ends.
• DelayPay moves deposition costs off the firm’s cash flow. Steno defers payment until the case concludes, with no interest, no lien, and no credit check. Ruga started the company because no agency would defer his own costs on a non-recourse basis. For a contingency-fee shop carrying discovery on its own balance sheet, this is the reason to switch, and no national incumbent matches it.
• It books from inside the case system. The Clio and Litify integrations let a firm schedule reporters and reach transcripts, exhibits, and video inside the matter record instead of a separate vendor portal.

Pricing reality

There is no public price list and no subscription. Steno bills per proceeding off a rate card carrying roughly 25 line items: reporter appearance (hourly or half/full day), original-plus-one certified transcript per page, exhibits per page, transcript production, and a litigation package priced separately for in-person and remote. On top sit conditional charges — a medical/expert page surcharge, minimum transcript fee, certificate of non-appearance, in-person attendance fees in select markets, last-minute booking fees for jobs booked after 12:00 PM local time the prior business day, waiting time — plus per-page or per-hour add-ons for video, realtime, rough drafts, expedite, and text-to-video sync.

For scale: the 2026 US market runs roughly $4.50–7.00 per page for standard transcripts with appearance fees of $150–400, and a four-hour deposition typically yields 150–250 pages. Steno reviewers on G2 consistently report that it prices above the agencies they used previously, so budget a premium over a commodity local agency. Expect the DelayPay rate card to be a separate and higher schedule than the pay-now card — deferral is not free, it is priced into the rates.

Best for

Plaintiff-side contingency firms — PI, employment, mass tort — running a steady deposition calendar, where discovery costs sit on the firm’s balance sheet until settlement and the partner deciding whether to notice a deposition is really deciding whether to fund one. DelayPay plus bundled transcript AI is the combination no other national agency puts in a single contract. Defense and mixed-practice firms get a thinner version of the case: standardized remote depositions and transcript search across offices.

Skip it if you do not take depositions — in-house legal ops, transactional practices, and contract-heavy teams belong with a contract or research tool. Skip it as well if you have a reporting relationship you will not move and only want the AI: Transcript Genius is not sold standalone, so the only route in is sending proceedings through Steno.

Versus the alternatives

Veritext, the largest agency at roughly 18% market presence, runs its own AI stack — Smart Summary since 2024, extended with Smart Search and Smart Analysis in February 2026. Pick it when coverage depth and an existing AmLaw vendor relationship outweigh payment terms. Lexitas, at about 14%, is the other incumbent worth bidding; pick it to get reporting, process serving, and record retrieval from one vendor. The fastest-growing challenger is Depositions by Filevine — formerly Parrot, acquired by Filevine in April 2025 — which returns AI-drafted transcripts in hours rather than days; pick it when first-draft speed outranks everything and Filevine is already your case system. Pick Steno when the deciding constraint is cash flow rather than coverage or turnaround. If none fit, keep a trusted local reporter and run the transcripts through a general assistant like Harvey or CoCounsel — you just pay separately for analysis you would otherwise get bundled.

Watch-outs

• The rate card is the price, not the per-page rate. Comparing agencies on transcript pages alone hides appearance fees, the litigation package, attendance surcharges, and late-booking penalties. Guard: get the full rate card before the first job and price one representative four-hour deposition end to end — appearance, per-page, litigation package, video, sync — against your incumbent’s all-in invoice for the same proceeding.
• “Non-recourse” and “not contingent on outcome” are different promises. LawSites described DelayPay as non-recourse in 2023, while the Clyde & Co. ethics analysis Steno commissioned for New York rests on the arrangement not being contingent on case outcome, citing Rules 5.4, 1.8(e)(1), 1.8(a) and 1.8(f) alongside NYSBA Op. 1181 (2020). Guard: get the recourse language in the signed service agreement before deferring a six-figure book of costs, use Steno’s suggested client disclosure, obtain the waiver, and re-run the analysis in your own jurisdiction — the opinion says requirements may differ elsewhere.
• Transcript Genius only reads final, ordered transcripts. Drafts and un-ordered transcripts cannot be interrogated, by design, to protect reporters’ work — so the AI value lands only after you have paid for the transcript. Guard: if impeachment prep is on a clock, buy expedited delivery on the specific depositions you need to question and leave the rest on standard turnaround. Confirm bulk export of transcripts, exhibits, and video at signing too, so a rate change does not strand the matter file.