Court Reporter: Job Description, Education & Career Outlook

Also referred to as stenographers or stenocaptioners, court reporters are responsible for transcribing speeches, cyber conferences, legal proceedings, discussions, speeches and meetings among other related events. When candidates choose to kick start a career in the field of court reporting, they should also be well informed about the related careers. In any case, the main role of these professionals is to maintain a verbatim record of the words spoken. If you wish to become a court report, you need to equip yourself with career information including the job responsibilities, educational qualification, training and career prospects that the field offers.

Job Responsibilities
Court reporters have an important role to play during judicial proceedings, meetings, discussions and other legal events. Their major responsibility is to create a written transcript of the words as they are spoken. The record they maintain needs to be accurate and complete so that the transcript (legal record) can be present where they are required. Apart from transcribing the spoken words, court reporters also provide assistance trial attorneys and judges. They may also provide useful suggestions to judges and attorneys for the betterment of courtroom administration.

To perform their work, court reporters use either the stenotyping method or the voice writing method. Those who use stenotyping perform the task with the help of a stenotype machine. Using this machine, stenotypists can strike multiple keys at a time to record the word sounds. Later, these word sounds are stored in a computer, to be further translated into text. The technology through which court reports translate word symbols into text is called computer-aided transcription.

The field of court reporting also offers some related careers. While you choose this occupation, you can also choose to work as broadcast captioner or real time reporter for webcasts. With the use of realtime technology, court reports can transcribe the spoken words into text which can be displayed on computer or projection screen. Some of these professionals also use a special technology called Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), which is used to convey speech to people who are hard of hearing or deaf.

Educational Qualification & Training
Candidates need to obtain education depending on what type of reporting they want to do. You need to know whether you want to get trained in voice writing or stenotyping. There are several technical schools and community colleges and universities offering relevant courses. The National Court Reporter's Association informs that there are around 130 courses and training programs offered in court reporting. Out of this, the NCRA has approved 62 programs. The course duration for voice writing is less than a year whereas it takes around 33 months to complete a stenotypist training program. These courses train candidates in skills including computer-aided transcription (CAT), real time technology and using speech recognition equipment.

Other Skills
Besides being formally trained, court reporters should also possess some other essential to have a successful career. These include excellent English grammar skills, vocabulary and punctuation. At the same time, the occupation requires professionals to be punctual, detail oriented, accurate and disciplined. A transcription speed in excess of 225 words/ minute is vital to make the most of your reporting career.

Career Prospects
Job prospects for court reporters are quite good. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts an employment growth much faster than the average of all other occupations. The growth rate is expected to increase at 25%. The increasing demand for accurate transcription has led to good job growth for court reporters. A majority of these professionals are employed with state and local governments. The remaining of them are either employed in court reporting agencies or are self employed.

Annual Salary
Salaries of court reporters vary depending on the geographical location, type of reporting, certification level and working experience. They earn an average annual salary of $64,672. Those who work as broadcast captioners earn between the range $45,000 and $75,000.

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