In The News
Court Reporting Gains Popularity
Story by Rebecca Baker, The Journal News. Originally published December 4, 2008.
Joanne Gleason of Yonkers found herself in search of work when she got laid off as a pediatric surgical coordinator during the summer. She remembered that her older sister was studying to be a courthouse stenographer before she decided to start a family.
So, at 28, Gleason decided to enroll earlier in the fall in the New York School of Court Reporting and Career Institute in White Plains.
So far, the career change has worked out.
"I love it," she said during a break from one of her classes. "It's hands-on learning."
Gleason is entering a field that is growing at a fast pace, despite technology that some thought would send court reporters on the same path as telegraph operators.
Instead, technology - including real-time captioning for television, Internet programs and other live events for the hearing impaired - is why their fast-fingered skills are in such demand. By 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted, the field will grow by 25 percent.
Westchester County court reporter Mark Richman, a 30-year veteran of the court system, freelances his skills for hearing-impaired clients. For years, he has helped a Chappaqua mother understand what is being said at her child's school functions.
"It gives me a certain sense of satisfaction to help her out," he said. "Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to participate."
Richman - much like Gleason - was encouraged by his sister to enter the court reporting field. When he learned how much she made selling transcripts of depositions - $1.28 a page in 1976 - he said: "That's for me."
Today, Richman charges $2.50 a page for transcripts and an extra $1 a page for next-day delivery. By selling their work in addition to their Civil Service salary, court reporters in the New York City area can easily make more than $100,000 a year. That's almost as much as the $136,700 annual salary of state and county judges.
Becoming a court reporter requires thousands of hours of training and practice, as well as thousands of dollars for equipment. It can take 10 months to two years to get through the court reporting school in White Plains, depending on the student's drive and talent.
At the school, where more than 90 percent of the class is women, students learn the steno shorthand language and record words and sentences at increasing speed until they reach 225 words per minute - the speed needed to complete the program and get certified.
Jane Matheson entered the school earlier in the fall after 30 years in the corporate world, where she lost her job as a human resources director for a New Jersey bank in 2007. After taking time off to travel, the Warwick grandmother wanted to re-enter the work force and liked the idea of court reporting's flexible hours.
"It's harder than I thought it was going to be," she said. "I practice for a couple of hours every night."
Court reporting school graduates can work on a per-diem basis until they get the two years of professional experience required to take the Civil Service test. Out of the roughly 20,000 certified court reporters in the United States, more than half are government employees, while the rest are self-employed or work for court-reporting agencies.
Stuart Auslander, who founded the White Plains school, balked at the notion that court reporters are merely glorified tape recorders. A tape recorder, he said, can't stop people who mumble, or talk too fast, or talk over each other.
"A machine, no matter how advanced, can never say: 'Excuse me, I didn't get that.' " he said. "Jurors have approached me after trials - 'How do you get every word?' They don't believe we get everything verbatim."
They get every word by using a steno machine that creates a phonetic shorthand in which a letter or two can represent whole words, and groups of letters make commas and periods. They hit several keys at once to create chords of words - more like playing a piano than typing on a keyboard.
The unmarked keys create 17 alphabet letters - 13 consonants and four vowels - and are combined to create what's missing. The letter D, for example, is written by typing TK, the letter M is symbolized by PH and HR replaces the letter L. Want to write the letter N? Hit three keys to make TPH.
This creates an alternative English in which the sentence "Your Honor, I object to this line of questioning" would read like this:
U RPB
R B G S
EU B
T O
T H
HRAO EU PB
F
KW E G
Court reporters no longer have to sort through this alphabet soup because computers instantly transform the symbolic prose into readable type. This allows court reporters to print out proceedings almost instantly.
Auslander said steno machines produce a superior record than a "steno mask," a machine in which words are repeated into a mouth cover with a built-in microphone. While some local courts allow steno mask reporting, Auslander said the devices are rare in New York and questioned the quality of steno mask transcripts.
"Who can speak that way all day?" he said.
Getting every word down is crucial because defense attorneys can use transcripts to appeal a client's conviction, and prosecutors can use the same transcript to make sure the conviction was proper.
The pressure to get everything right all the time can be nerve-racking, said Robin DiMichelle, a veteran court reporter in Rockland County.
"In criminal court, someone's life is on the line," she said. "If I'm on a big publicized case, I get a little nervous."
DiMichelle, who lives in Cortlandt, acknowledged a public misconception about what she does for a living.
“People ask me: ‘How can you sit there and type all day?’ But it’s not like that at all,” she said. “It’s like watching a movie in real life, from beginning to end. You get to see how other people live. It’s extremely interesting.”
Richman said he has taken testimony from experts ranging from cardiologists to zoologists in his 30 years on the job, and has learned about myriad topics as a result. “You gain great, great knowledge,” he said. “It’s something different every day, and you never know what to expect.”