Posted on 12/14/2018 9:24:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Melissa Grimes works on a stenographer machine at Lowndes County Courthouse on Thursday. She has worked as court reporter for 16 years. Mississippi is working to combat a critical shortage of court reporters entering the field with more awareness and recruiting programs. Photo by: Deanna Robinson/Dispatch Staff
December 1, 2018 10:04:48 PM
In college athletics, the biggest factor in success is recruiting.
But attracting talented people is not confined to the world of college sports, and when it comes to the field of court reporting, the inability to recruit people to the profession is reaching a near crisis across the country.
The job of court reporter is an essential component to the court system -- courts cannot operate without people to keep the official written record of the proceedings.
Five years ago, an industry study predicted there would be a shortage of more than 5,000 court reporters by this year, and while there are no firm numbers to verify how accurate that prediction was, anecdotally there is evidence of the shortage.
In Kansas, Illinois, South Carolina and Florida, the shortage of court reporters has led to delays of court proceedings. And while court reporters in Mississippi say there is a shortage here, too, it has not yet reached that point.
"In Mississippi, we do have a court reporter assigned to every judge in our judicial districts,'' said LaTonya Allen, president of the Mississippi Court Reporters Association. "That's not to say we don't have shortages, though. It's important to know that there are other areas where court reporters are needed outside of the court system."
A lack of interest, awareness
Melissa Grimes has served as a court reporter in the 14th District Chancery Court since 2002. She is assigned to Chancery Judge Jim Davidson, who will retire at the end of the year.
Grimes began her career in court reporting after graduating with a degree in her field from the University of Mississippi, which ended its program earlier this decade. There is no other court reporting program operating in the state.
She said the demise of the Ole Miss program reflected a decrease in interest in the profession.
"When I started at Ole Miss, there were 42 students in the program and I'd say about 25 stuck with it. I graduated with seven other students."
Grimes said a lack of awareness is a big reason for the shortage.
"It's just one of those jobs that people don't seem to know about," Grimes said. "I know, personally, I would never have thought about being a court reporter if my typing teacher in high school hadn't mentioned that I might want to try it."
A 'good-paying field'
There are total of 301 licensed court reporters currently working in the state. For those who work in the state's courts, the annual salary ranges from $49,500 to $64,000 based on years of experience.
"It's a good-paying field," Allen said.
In addition to the pay, Grimes said she likes the hours. Chancery courts work on a Monday through Thursday schedule.
"That's really one of the best parts, the flexibility," Grimes said.
According to the National Court Reporters Association, three quarters of the nation's court reporters are self-employed.
"What a lot of people don't know is that there are so many areas where court reporters are needed," said Grimes, who spent the first 10 years of her career running her own court reporting business, mainly taking depositions.
"It's a great way to have your own business," Allen said. "There so many opportunities. There's CART (computer-aid real-time translation), which is used for the hearing impaired. There is closed-captioning like you see on TV. There are conferences and meetings where transcripts are needed. Really, there are a lot of areas where court reporters are needed. It can be a lucrative, viable job. We just need to do a better job of getting the word out."
Grimes said court reporters are required to type 225 words per minute in the shorthand that is part of the steno machines.
"Other than that, you need to be able to listen well and be able to focus," she said. "It can get pretty crazy sometimes, when attorneys are talking over each other or there are witnesses who are difficult to understand. You also have to be able to control your emotions. Sometimes the testimony can be pretty upsetting, so you have to be able to keep all that in check so you can do your job."
A-to-Z recruiting strategy
Although Grimes earned a four-year degree in court reporting, most programs today are two-year courses and available through online programs.
At a time when there is some much emphasis on careers that don't require four-year degrees, court reporting isn't getting that same sort of attention.
To remedy that, the National Court Reporters Association has created a program it calls "A-to-Z" to introduce the public to the profession.
The MCRA hopes to launch its A-to-Z program in February, providing free eight-week classes in each of the state's four zones.
To prepare, MCRA members are trying to obtain as many steno machines as possible.
Last month, the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors declared two old steno machines as surplus equipment, which will allow them to be used for the A-to-Z program.
"Right now, we have about six machines," Grimes said. "A lot of them are older machines, but they're useful because the basic key-boarding hasn't changed. We'd like to have 10 machines by the time we start the A-to-Z program because we want to have one machine for every person."
Allen said the A-to-Z program is meant to give recruits an idea of what they're getting into.
"It's kind of a try-before-you-buy thing," she said. "In eight weeks, we'll show people a little about the job, enough for them to have an idea of whether court reporting is right for them. After that, if they are interested, we'll help guide them to online programs and support them anyway we can."
I was a court reporter for ten years. The job satisfaction wasn’t all that great for me, but some other facets sort of made up for that. I quit five years ago.
Love my new job.
Sounds like the pay should go up a little bit.
Maybe a percentage of the lawsuit win or lose would get some applicants.
With ubiquitous cameras and recording devices, why are they even necessary nowadays?
They seem to be an anachronism..................
Pay more, be willing to train more, and/or automate.
Sounds like the pay should go up a little bit.
Young people with finger dexterity are entering the tech fields where they have more likelihood of improved income over the course of their careers.
It is a sad fact and skilled court reporters are not so easily replaced as store clerks when the prices are gouged by the big guys.
I have a friend who does this. She tells me that she basically has to detach part of herself in order to do her job, since she works in family court.
I think she enjoys the work but I wouldn’t say that it’s a terribly high-paying job. I don’t think it’s something I would enjoy, myself.
Court reporters are not an anachronism. Compared to reading a transcript, watching a video or, even worse, listening to a recording, is very time consuming. Once there’s a transcript, it can be visually searched for particular passages and, even more important, it can be digitally searched for key words and phrases. Then it’s possible to prepare a list of vital excerpts. In a complex case involving many parties or events, a transcript can be searched to show connections and interactions, then indexed. If there’s a dispute about the accuracy of a transcript, it’s also possible to go back to a recording.
My aunt worked as a court reporter until she was 85. She would sometimes hire college students to help her type up the court records (years before computers) but she did most of the work herself. Working for decades in court under several different judges, she knew the law better than the judges. She would signal or whisper to the judge when he was about to make an erroneous ruling. ;o)
She served in trials with some rather notorious defendants and a few well known attorneys. Thurgood Marshall once complimented her and the judge for presiding over a very fair trial.
Exactly why there is now a “shortage” today. Back in the late 80’s, I believe, emerging technology threatened to make the court reporter obsolete. As a result, court reporters banded together through unions, legislation, and licensing requirements to prevent their jobs from technologically obsolete. Now, there is a human shortage, however, as you suggest there is technology that can record and transcribe courtroom interactions.
We have computer programs that can provide all that...................
As a result I spent some to sitting with only a few court officials and/or lawyers present...setting things up.
during one of those periods I asked the court reporter how she learned to do her job.She was non-specific but basically said it take a lot of training and a lot of experience.
Also,on a side note...the lawyer heading up the prosecution team in that case was Fred Wyshak,the man who successfully prosecuted Whitey Bulger and several FBI agents regarding the decades of murder,drug dealing and corruption in Boston that was just recently ended.I asked him about the film "Black Mass" in which he was briefly portrayed.He,a guy with a full head of hair,laughed and said "I wish they had found somebody with hair to play me". The guy who played him in the film was pretty much bald
Locally, the court “recorder” is there to make sure the sound recording system is working rather than using a steno machine to type as it happens. I don’t know when or how a paper transcript is made or what happens if the judge wants something repeated in the courtroom like court dramas would show the stenographer reading what she had just typed.
Thank you! I wondered about that as well. You just cleared it up for me.
Close, but no cigar. Most speakwrite programs only work when they are trained to understand the speaking peculiarities of the individual user. Witnesses, OTOH, all speak differently, often with slurred voices, foreign accents, and mumbles. In addition, there are often very many persons whose testimony is being transcribed in any given month, meaning a program can't be trained to catch the unique characteristics of each. Thus, the only machine that can really work is a human being with fully functioning eyes and ears. A court reporter often needs to watch a witness’s lips to understand the witness. Finally, if the court reporter can't understand a witness, the reporter can always ask the witness to repeat his or her testimony.
Because transcripts are still a necessity
It’s like medical records (medical transcription). It’s now done on voice recognition, but there are so many doctors from all over the world with many different accents and inflections that it still takes a person to edit the medical record. It’s scary what the program “thinks” it hears, especially when it comes to drugs and dosages.
I tried to make it as a court reporter; but, I simply couldn't get to the 225wpm. I was fast on a typewriter; and, I was fast taking Gregg Steno; but, the machine was different and I could only get to a certain level and I couldn't go higher.
I believe that when I was taking classes, I read an article that said that 85% of people who try to conquer machine shorthand drop out. So, the reason for a shortage is that it is a rare combination of dexterity and quickly translating what you are hearing to the "code" that is the word in the machine language. Very few people have that combination.
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