CCVS Media Room

It would be a glaring inaccuracy to confuse the perfection produced by Teresa Forbes with the work of an average court reporter.

Based in Toronto, Forbes, 52, is a real-time court reporter. Think of her as the bionic woman of the typing world, capable of documenting complicated dialogue at the finger-breaking rate of 260 words per minute.

That's not a personal record, just the highest level she's been tested at – a point she adds with obvious pride.

Court reporting was recently added to a list of "Great Six-Figure Jobs You Don't Need a Degree For," on Forbes.com. A starting salary could be $60,000, but cranking out an exact figure is tricky.

"That's part of the problem," said Kimberley Stewart, founder of ASAP Reporting Services Inc.

The business is slow to attract new blood in great numbers, she said. Real-time reporters can make more than $200,000 a year, she said. But with fewer than 100 in Canada with an average age of 50, a shortage is looming, she said.

Stewart's solution? Cough up $500,000 of her own money to create the Canadian Centre for Verbatim Studies on St. Mary St., near Yonge and Bloor Sts.

Classes, full- and part-time, start in January. Enrolment is ongoing. To graduate, students must produce 225 words a minute with 98 per cent accuracy.

Which means students will learn to type like Forbes. She uses a shorthand steno machine writer that turns a combination of keystrokes into a digital transcription.

Along with titanium-laced fingers, real-time court reporting requires nerves of steel. She has worked on high-profile police trials and at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. She can't let gory details shock or slow her down, she said.

"It's like music coming in and the words go down in shorthand," Forbes said. "You just have to think of it as words to paper."

As for the 38-year-old Stewart, she got into court reporting after high school. She apprenticed as a court reporter in Ottawa and got hooked. Her first teacher, now 74 and still working, is one of the top real-time court reporters in the country, she said.

There are few places to train to be a real-time court reporter in Canada, she said, adding the U.S. has more than 140 schools.

The Centre for Verbatim Studies will be just the third of its kind in Canada. There is a program in Alberta and a small school in Montreal that trains exclusively in French, Stewart said.

There's room for 46 students in each program. The tuition for the two-year full-time program – classes run Monday to Thursday – is just more than $30,000. That includes all equipment and supplies. It's the same cost for the part-time program, with night classes two days a week for three years.

Real-time reporting is also how closed-captioning for television broadcasts is produced. Those practitioners are "basically the concert pianists of court reporting," and can make more than $200 an hour working from home*, Stewart said. They provide the text running with live broadcast programs, like sports events. Typically, the service is geared toward the hearing impaired.

"What is driving the demand is the baby boomers," said Fred Sharp, president of the Chartered Shorthand Reporters Association of Ontario.

Canadians working in broadcast captioning deal with feeds from across North America, he said. They could be sitting in Toronto but working for U.S. companies willing to pay top dollar for skilled people, he said.

*The author of the article gleaned this information about Broadcast Captioning from the NCRA website, which actually was referring to Webcasting: “Internet information reporters, who remotely caption to the Internet or provide Webcasting services, are usually paid at an hourly rate of $100-$200 per hour.”

Source: http://www.ncraonline.org/NewsInfo/MediaRoom/Facts/default.htm

Great Six-Figure Jobs You Don't Need A Degree For
Matthew Kirdahy, 11.05.07, 6:00 AM ET

You don't always need that piece of Latin-laden paper to pull in six figures. You don't need to invent something to get rich. And you don't need to look far for a lucrative opportunity.

There are plenty of honest livings to be made in the U.S workforce that can earn you six-figure salaries sans a college degree. That's not to say you won't be required to undergo extensive training or work long hours, but at least you won't be lugging around that student debt. It's important to note that they're not all "blue-collar" jobs, a term that has become outdated when describing skilled-trade work.

These positions run the gamut--from air traffic controller to information technology specialist to videogame player. While it may be difficult to digest that last one as a potential career move, it's a legitimate one and could help you rake in more than $100,000 if you play it right, no pun intended.

With further technological advancements in the world, there's been a greater demand for these IT specialists for big companies in major U.S. cities. Among the most popular jobs are Web and software developers, said Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals.

"It would be extremely unlikely for a high school graduate to obtain a position as a developer making six figures," Lee said. "But after some years of experience, and in the right marketplace like the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Boston, Seattle or Washington, D.C., where technical skills are in high demand, a talented person could make $100,000 lacking a college education."

The same applies for a technical writer, who just needs to understand the parlance of the industry and be willing to transcribe the information so it's readable to the masses. Executive job recruiters can make big money too in their commission-based profession.

"It's all about networking," said Paul DiNardo of 6figurejobs.com, adding that these recruiters can make up to 25% on an executive salary. He put these "national recruiting managers" in a salary range of $120,000 to $175,000.

All considered, though, no matter how you slice it, the numbers are still in favor of the college grad.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said workers with a bachelor's degree or higher average almost twice what workers with just a high school diploma earn weekly. Workers with a bachelor's degree or higher average $1,393 per week and have an unemployment rate of 2%, while workers with a high school diploma average $704 and have a 4.3% unemployment rate.

"Our country is transitioning to a knowledge-based economy, and workers with higher skills and more education are being paid a premium," Chao said.

"Higher education is not necessarily a college degree. Some of the strongest demand is for workers in the skilled trades and those with associate degrees in technical occupations from community and technical colleges," she said.

Employment is projected to grow much faster than the average, reflecting the demand for real-time broadcast captioning and translating. Job opportunities should be excellent, especially for those with certification.

Employment change. Employment of court reporters is projected to grow 25 percent, much faster than the average for all occupations between 2006 and 2016. Demand for court reporter services will be spurred by the continuing need for accurate transcription of proceedings in courts and in pretrial depositions, by the growing need to create captions for live television, and by the need to provide other real-time broadcast captioning and translating services for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Increasing numbers of civil and criminal cases are expected to create new jobs for court reporters, but budget constraints are expected to limit the ability of Federal, State, and local courts to expand, and thereby also limit the demand for traditional court reporting services in courtrooms and other legal venues. Further, because of the difficulty in attracting court reporters and in efforts to control costs, many courtrooms have installed tape recorders that are maintained by electronic court reporters and transcribers to record court proceedings. However, because courts use electronic reporters and transcribers only in a limited capacity traditional stenographic court reporters will continue to be used in felony trials and other proceedings. Despite the use of audiotape and videotape technology, court reporters can quickly turn spoken words into readable, searchable, permanent text, and they will continue to be needed to produce written legal transcripts and proceedings for publication.



	Media Room January 9th, 2008 Source: The Toronto SUN Online Link to the original article Download the same article, Published by the Vancouver 24 Hours Lucrative Careers in Realtime Reporting Canadian centre for Verbatim Studies open for business David Chilton Special to the Sun At first glance the Meech Lake Accord, the David Milgaard case and a patent infringement lawsuit in Hungary don't seem to have much to do with each other. But there's at least one single thread running through all of them: Kimberly Stewart was a verbatim reporter for each of them, dutifully noting every word that was said during the failed constitutional negotiations, the Supreme Court of Canada hearing for the wrongly convicted Saskatchewan man and the arguments, pro and con, in Budapest. Verbatim -- or real time --reporting is a great career, says Stewart, whose work has taken her to more than 30 countries, but there are far too few reporters for the work that's available, she says. That's why Stewart has opened the Canadian Centre for Verbatim Studies in downtown Toronto. Approved by Ontario's Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, the centre is the only English language school of its kind in eastern Canada and one of just three in the entire country. The other schools are in Edmonton and in Montreal, where the language of instruction is French. The centre's first class of full-time students began its studies Jan. 7, with part-time students following them the next day. Class size is capped at 46 students to ensure a good student to teacher ratio, says Stewart, the centre's president and an 18-year verbatim reporter. Her students come from "virtually all over," she explains. "We've even had a call from New Zealand." Irrespective of where they come from, Stewart says most of her students will be women. Full-time students will take courses for 44 weeks for two years, part-timers will study two evenings a week for three years. Richard Williams, the centre's executive director, says the students will learn what is essentially machine shorthand writing. That means they record the sounds they hear -- not the words -- on a steno machine and software translates their reporting into a real time transcript that can then be edited if necessary. When fully trained, Williams says, real time reporters can record speech at 225 words a minute. Normal conversation speed is about 200 words a minute. As well as working in courtrooms and similar venues, the centre's graduates will also be qualified to work supplying closed captioning to TV broadcasts. Stewart says to enrol in a real time reporting course students must be native English speakers or have native-like fluency. There is also an entrance exam to test spelling, hearing and listening -- including the ability to distinguish homonyms (two words with the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings). Applicants also have to write an essay and be able to type at 30 words a minute. That test is to see if they have the necessary dexterity to succeed, Stewart says. Because of the skills involved and the scarcity of real time reporters -- there are fewer than 100 of them in the entire country and their average age is 50 -- it's hardly surprising trained reporters can earn six figures and new graduates can expect to be snapped up. "They do get paid exceptionally well," Stewart says, pegging the average annual income at $120,000 a year, with the more established practitioners earning a heady $200,000 plus. Closed captioning work is also highly lucrative, with trained reporters earning up to $200 an hour. Of course, as with any highly paid occupation tuition isn't cheap. Full-time students pay $1,200 a month, Stewart says, with those studying part time spending $850. The centre isn't yet OSAP eligible but Stewart notes there is flexible financing available, and tuition fees cover books, software and the steno machine. QUICK FACTS - The Canadian Centre for Verbatim Studies is the only private real time reporting school in Canada. - Applicants must be native speakers of English or have native-like fluency. - The full-time course takes two years, the part-time course takes three years. - The centre expects most of its students to be female. November 27th, 2007 Source: The Toronto Star Online Link to the original article Speedy court reporter's flying fingers in high demand November 29, 2007 Emily Mathieu Staff Reporter It would be a glaring inaccuracy to confuse the perfection produced by Teresa Forbes with the work of an average court reporter. Based in Toronto, Forbes, 52, is a real-time court reporter. Think of her as the bionic woman of the typing world, capable of documenting complicated dialogue at the finger-breaking rate of 260 words per minute. That's not a personal record, just the highest level she's been tested at – a point she adds with obvious pride. Court reporting was recently added to a list of "Great Six-Figure Jobs You Don't Need a Degree For," on Forbes.com. A starting salary could be $60,000, but cranking out an exact figure is tricky. "That's part of the problem," said Kimberley Stewart, founder of ASAP Reporting Services Inc. The business is slow to attract new blood in great numbers, she said. Real-time reporters can make more than $200,000 a year, she said. But with fewer than 100 in Canada with an average age of 50, a shortage is looming, she said. Stewart's solution? Cough up $500,000 of her own money to create the Canadian Centre for Verbatim Studies on St. Mary St., near Yonge and Bloor Sts. Classes, full- and part-time, start in January. Enrolment is ongoing. To graduate, students must produce 225 words a minute with 98 per cent accuracy. Which means students will learn to type like Forbes. She uses a shorthand steno machine writer that turns a combination of keystrokes into a digital transcription. "Sometimes I am under a lot of pressure, I try to stay focused," Forbes said. Along with titanium-laced fingers, real-time court reporting requires nerves of steel. She has worked on high-profile police trials and at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. She can't let gory details shock or slow her down, she said. "It's like music coming in and the words go down in shorthand," Forbes said. "You just have to think of it as words to paper." As for the 38-year-old Stewart, she got into court reporting after high school. She apprenticed as a court reporter in Ottawa and got hooked. Her first teacher, now 74 and still working, is one of the top real-time court reporters in the country, she said. "I was smart enough to hang out with smart people," Stewart said. There are few places to train to be a real-time court reporter in Canada, she said, adding the U.S. has more than 140 schools. The Centre for Verbatim Studies will be just the third of its kind in Canada. There is a program in Alberta and a small school in Montreal that trains exclusively in French, Stewart said. There's room for 46 students in each program. The tuition for the two-year full-time program – classes run Monday to Thursday – is just more than $30,000. That includes all equipment and supplies. It's the same cost for the part-time program, with night classes two days a week for three years. Real-time reporting is also how closed-captioning for television broadcasts is produced. Those practitioners are "basically the concert pianists of court reporting," and can make more than $200 an hour working from home, Stewart said. They provide the text running with live broadcast programs, like sports events. Typically, the service is geared toward the hearing impaired. "What is driving the demand is the baby boomers," said Fred Sharp, president of the Chartered Shorthand Reporters Association of Ontario. Canadians working in broadcast captioning deal with feeds from across North America, he said. They could be sitting in Toronto but working for U.S. companies willing to pay top dollar for skilled people, he said. "There are more jobs than there are people to go around." The author of the article gleaned this information about Broadcast Captioning from the NCRA website, which actually was referring to Webcasting: “Internet information reporters, who remotely caption to the Internet or provide Webcasting services, are usually paid at an hourly rate of $100-$200 per hour.” Source: http://www.ncraonline.org/NewsInfo/MediaRoom/Facts/default.htm Date: November 5th, 2007 Source: Forbes.com Link to the original article Great Six-Figure Jobs You Don't Need A Degree For Matthew Kirdahy, 11.05.07, 6:00 AM ET You don't always need that piece of Latin-laden paper to pull in six figures. You don't need to invent something to get rich. And you don't need to look far for a lucrative opportunity. There are plenty of honest livings to be made in the U.S workforce that can earn you six-figure salaries sans a college degree. That's not to say you won't be required to undergo extensive training or work long hours, but at least you won't be lugging around that student debt. It's important to note that they're not all "blue-collar" jobs, a term that has become outdated when describing skilled-trade work. These positions run the gamut--from air traffic controller to information technology specialist to videogame player. While it may be difficult to digest that last one as a potential career move, it's a legitimate one and could help you rake in more than $100,000 if you play it right, no pun intended. With further technological advancements in the world, there's been a greater demand for these IT specialists for big companies in major U.S. cities. Among the most popular jobs are Web and software developers, said Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology, a leading provider of IT professionals. "It would be extremely unlikely for a high school graduate to obtain a position as a developer making six figures," Lee said. "But after some years of experience, and in the right marketplace like the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Boston, Seattle or Washington, D.C., where technical skills are in high demand, a talented person could make $100,000 lacking a college education." The same applies for a technical writer, who just needs to understand the parlance of the industry and be willing to transcribe the information so it's readable to the masses. Executive job recruiters can make big money too in their commission-based profession. "It's all about networking," said Paul DiNardo of 6figurejobs.com, adding that these recruiters can make up to 25% on an executive salary. He put these "national recruiting managers" in a salary range of $120,000 to $175,000. All considered, though, no matter how you slice it, the numbers are still in favor of the college grad. U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said workers with a bachelor's degree or higher average almost twice what workers with just a high school diploma earn weekly. Workers with a bachelor's degree or higher average $1,393 per week and have an unemployment rate of 2%, while workers with a high school diploma average $704 and have a 4.3% unemployment rate. "Our country is transitioning to a knowledge-based economy, and workers with higher skills and more education are being paid a premium," Chao said. "Higher education is not necessarily a college degree. Some of the strongest demand is for workers in the skilled trades and those with associate degrees in technical occupations from community and technical colleges," she said. Court Reporter Job prospects are expected to be excellent as job openings continue to outnumber job seekers. Demand for real-time and broadcast captioning and translating will spur employment growth. The amount of training required to become a court reporter varies with the type of reporting chosen. Job opportunities should be best for those with certification. Special skills are always in demand. If you can type 200 or so words a minute, a six-figure job transcribing court testimony or captioning Web casts can be had in some areas. (Source: BLS) Source: US Department of Labor Link to the original article Job Outlook for Court Reporters Employment is projected to grow much faster than the average, reflecting the demand for real-time broadcast captioning and translating. Job opportunities should be excellent, especially for those with certification. *Employment change.* Employment of court reporters is projected to grow 25 percent, much faster than the average for all occupations between 2006 and 2016. Demand for court reporter services will be spurred by the continuing need for accurate transcription of proceedings in courts and in pretrial depositions, by the growing need to create captions for live television, and by the need to provide other real-time broadcast captioning and translating services for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Increasing numbers of civil and criminal cases are expected to create new jobs for court reporters, but budget constraints are expected to limit the ability of Federal, State, and local courts to expand, and thereby also limit the demand for traditional court reporting services in courtrooms and other legal venues. Further, because of the difficulty in attracting court reporters and in efforts to control costs, many courtrooms have installed tape recorders that are maintained by electronic court reporters and transcribers to record court proceedings. However, because courts use electronic reporters and transcribers only in a limited capacity traditional stenographic court reporters will continue to be used in felony trials and other proceedings. Despite the use of audiotape and videotape technology, court reporters can quickly turn spoken words into readable, searchable, permanent text, and they will continue to be needed to produce written legal transcripts and proceedings for publication.		Canadian Centre for Verbatim Studies: Home Important Dates About Us Photo Gallery Media Room FAQ What is Court Reporting? Is Court Reporting Right for Me? Why choose CCVS? Courses Careers for our Graduates Downloads Contact us LINKS: National Court Reporters’ Association Chartered Shorthand Reporters’ Association A.S.A.P. Reporting Services


	Canadian Centre For Verbatim Studies 10 St Mary St, Suite 504 (at Yonge Street) Toronto, Ontario Canada Phone # 416-960-2287, or 1-877-337-2287

Court Reporter