Basics of Court Reporting

There are two major types of court reporters: official and freelance.  An official reporter is a court reporter who is employed by a state, district, circuit or federal court, or a court of similar jurisdiction. They create an official record of all court proceedings eight hours a day, five days per week, just like a regular office job. If a hearing is held or a verdict is reached that requires production of a transcript, the court reporter is required to produce is. Note that not all court records are ultimately transcribed.

Freelance court reporters are subcontracted out by court reporting agencies or hired directly by attorneys for depositions, statements, and trial testimony. They are considered self employed and most often are responsible for their paying their own taxes and health insurance coverage.

A court reporter’s job is to take down the testimony on their stenography machine. These machines are all computerized, storing the notes digitally as well as sometimes on paper. Reporters write in machine shorthand, hitting key combinations in strokes, multiple keys at one time to record the phonetic letters of the spoken words. After the job has been written on the machine by the reporter, they plug their machine into a computer that translates their steno notes into English text. To do this, a reporter uses a CAT system (Computer Aided Transcription) software program. These systems compare the stenographic notes digitally retrieved from machine against a personal computer dictionary maintained by the court reporter. It then will convert into English all of the words it recognizes from the court reporter's dictionary.

After the translation occurs, you have a document which appears to read mostly in imperfect English. This document is then edited by either the court reporter or a scopist, and then finalized by either the court reporter or a proofreader for final production and printing of an official transcript, which then becomes part of the official record of the proceedings.