CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

A great benefit to being a court reporter is the freedom, independence, and flexibility that the career offers. You can select almost any lifestyle you want by becoming one of the following:

Official Court Reporter
Freelance Court Reporter
Cyber-Conferencing (Internet/Intranet) Reporter
Corporate/Convention Reporter
Legislative Reporter
Real-time Reporter

Court/Deposition Reporter
Television Closed Captionist
Classroom Captionist (lessons for the hearing impaired)
Church Transcriptionist

Rapid Data Entry Specialist

Entertainment transcriptions
Police report transcriptions
Legal transcription
Corporate records transcription

Official and Freelance Court Reporters

Most of the 60,000 court reporters in the US 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.

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

Freelance Reporter works alone or for a firm as an independent contractor. She/he takes testimony in pretrial depositions and/or in court proceedings; she/he receives appearance fees and, additionally, is paid on a per-page basis for transcripts.

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 real-time. The written words appear on everyone's computer or TV screen, accompanied by relevant documents, graphics, and exhibits.

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.

Real-time 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 her paper notes to produce a copy of proceedings.

Real-time writing significantly increases a reporter's productivity and provides instant feedback to participants in many environments:

Television closed captionist
Classroom closed captionist for lessons in schools, colleges, and universities for the hearing-impaired
Expedited transcripts in jury trails (e.g., O. J. Simpson criminal trial)

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.