About the course
You know the case needs a team. You know it needs a CDI. You know one interpreter cannot cover a full-day jury trial. You've done your homework. And then the call comes in. The court coordinator says, "We've never done that before." The attorney says, "Why does this cost so much?" The judge looks at you over their glasses and says, "Explain to me why we need two of you." If you've ever known exactly what staffing was required and still walked away with the assignment under-staffed because you couldn't make the case in the room, this workshop is for you. Staffing Legal Cases Part 3 is the one that closes the loop. Part 1 gave you the courtroom structure. Part 2 gave you the staffing decisions. Part 3 gives you the language to explain those decisions to the people who don't speak our professional language, and to do it in a way that lands. You'll work through the conversations interpreters get stuck in most: explaining team interpreting to attorneys focused on cost, justifying CDI requests to court personnel who've never seen one, breaking down full-day trial coverage to coordinators who default to "we'll just get one for the whole thing," and holding the line when someone in authority pushes back. What sets this workshop apart: This workshop doesn't teach you what to think. You already know that. It teaches you what to say. Built on the Speak Their Language principle, every script and framing in this workshop is designed to land with judges, attorneys, and court personnel, not with other interpreters who already agree with you. Because access doesn't become real when you understand what's needed. It becomes real when the decision-maker does.
Presenter: Anna McDuffie
A native of Atlanta, Anna graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1996 with a Bachelor of Science in Interpreting for the Deaf. She began her career in Boston as a staff interpreter at The Learning Center for Deaf Children, a bilingual/bicultural school for the Deaf, and also worked part-time interpreting for graduate programs at Boston University. Anna returned to Atlanta in 1999 and has worked as a freelance interpreter for the past 25 years. She earned her Certificate of Interpretation and Certificate of Transliteration from RID in 1999, her Specialist Certificate: Legal in 2008, and her National Interpreter Certification in 2011. Anna began teaching medical interpreting workshops with her co-presenter, Heather Brown, in 2008, and together they co-authored Health Care Providers and the Americans with Disabilities Act, published in the Journal of the American Association of Physician Assistants in January 2011. She expanded into legal interpreting workshops in 2018. Anna is passionate about standardizing best practices for medical and legal interpreting — the driving force behind every workshop she designs. Anna lives in Marietta, Georgia, with her husband, Eric. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her step-daughter, Cece, her fur kids, Kiwi and Pippa, traveling, and playing tennis.