Official and Freelance Court Reporters 

Most of the 60,000 court reporters in the U.S. work in the local, state, and federal courts or as freelancers hired by lawyers to record pretrial testimony. 

These reporters’ responsibilities include:

• Capturing the spoken word by all participants during a proceeding (e.g., deposition, hearing, trial, etc.).

• Preparing a transcript to preserve and safeguard the legal process.  When litigants want to exercise their right to an appeal, they rely on this transcript as the official record of earlier testimony.

An Official Court Reporter is normally an experienced professional who works directly for a court or a specific judge and receives a salary plus benefits. 

A Freelance Reporter works alone or for a firm as an independent contractor.  He/she takes testimony in pre-trial depositions and/or in court proceedings; receives appearance fees and, additionally, is paid on a per-page basis for transcripts and other litigation support. 

A Cyber-Conferencing Reporter captures and transmits the content of sales meetings, sporting events, press conferences, product introductions, technical training, etc. via computer across the Internet and Intranets.  As participants speak into telephones or microphones, a court reporter translates their messages in realtime.  The written words appear on everyone’s computer or TV screen, accompanied by relevant documents, graphics, and exhibits. 

A Corporate/Convention Reporter produces verbatim transcripts of corporate meetings and conferences, local and national meetings of civic groups (e.g., Rotary International), trade unions, and trade associations which also rely on court reporters for transcripts of their meetings.  Local, state, and federal congressional testimony requires reporters who can produce official records.  In the business arena, a reporter is needed to validate corporate negotiations and legal discussions. 

A Realtime Reporter is able to produce a readable transcript of any proceeding with incredible speed and accuracy.  Using a stenographic machine connected to a computer, which is loaded with translation software, the reporter no longer has to tediously transcribe paper notes to produce a verbatim copy of the proceedings. 

Realtime writing significantly increases a reporter’s productivity and provides instant feedback to participants in many environments:

• Television closed captioning – Federal legislation requires captioning of hundreds of hours of live programming each week, which is creating a surge in career opportunities.  The demand for jobs in broadcast captioning is expected to grow by 300 percent in 2006, by which date there is a federal mandate that all local TV programs be closed captioned.

• Pending federal legislation also will require that CART (Communication Access Realtime Translation) be made available to all hearing-impaired students in K-12 classrooms.

• Expediting transcripts in jury trials (e.g., O. J. Simpson criminal trial) – The seemingly unending local trials that clamor for national media attention result in the need for expedited (immediate or overnight) transcripts provided by realtime reporters.

A Rapid Data-Entry Specialist transcribes mountainous volumes of data from books, magazines, newspapers, and reports for electronic storage in computer databases; corporate sales data and police investigative reports are just two examples. 

A Medical Transcriptionist/Stenoscriptionist produces written reports from doctor’s dictation tapes.  While traditional transcription using the standard QWERTY keyboard can process information at 60-100 wpm, a reporter using machine shorthand can stroke at a rate of 180-220 wpm.