The legal system can't function without court reporters, the trained and certified stenographers dutifully recording every utterance in a trial or hearing. But the profession that some court reporters call a "best kept secret" is facing growing shortages at a time when the volume of work is increasing exponentially.
“It’s a bedrock of people’s constitutional rights, in my opinion,” said Illinois Court Reporters Association President-elect Lorie Kennedy, “is having a live court reporter in that courtroom.”
Kennedy is a federal court reporter in Little Rock, Arkansas now, but spent 14 years as an official court reporter in Cook County. She said the demand for court reporters is constant.
“The demand increases every year,” she said. “Every year that goes by, the demand is increasing because retirements are outpacing students coming out of school.”
This means supervisors need to find on-the-spot solutions to ensure coverage in every court. Supervisors like Teresa Ozuna, the court reporting services supervisor for the 10th Circuit.
Ozuna oversees nine reporters: five in Peoria County, three in Tazewell and one that covers Putnam, Stark and Marshall Counties. Ideally, she said, she would have nine or ten reporters just for Peoria County alone.
“I feel like the shortage has kind of been around as long as I can remember,” Ozuna said. “I’ve been in court reporting in some form or fashion since I was a student in 1992.”
The needs of the job have changed over time, too, particularly following last year's implementation of the SAFE-T Act. The new procedures for pre-trial detention involved more work for Illinois courts. That's particularly true when it comes to appeal hearings, which now outweigh all other criminal appeals 3 to 1 in the 4th District that includes the Tri-County area.
But, Ozuna said the 10th Circuit has adapted. When an appeal happens, the court reporters have to prepare a transcript.
“But those are generally about 15- to 20-minute hearings,” she said. “So really, other than a little bit more transcript production, it really hasn’t made much of an impact here.”
But, the 10th Circuit also is uniquely positioned with a "blended system" of live court reporters and electronic recordings monitored by "court specialists." As Ozuna explains it, court specialists monitor the recordings of around four courtrooms at a time from a control room, specifically for non-felony cases.
“So, if later we wanted to come back and prepare a transcript from that, we know exactly what day, courtroom and what time the audio starts and ends and we can prepare a transcript from electronic recording,” she said. “And at this time, we really couldn’t function with having a record in all of our courtrooms without having the blended system we have.”
Sometimes, Ozuna said, the specialists will be hired on later as a court reporter. However, that's not just from on-the-job experience.
It takes an average three years to get certified. Students have to learn shorthand, possess extensive legal knowledge, learn to use a special stenograph machine keyboard, memorize thousands of shortcuts known as "briefs" for commonly used legal phrases and pass tests looking for around 200 words per minute typing speed in three distinct styles.
“When they’re speaking it’s not like writing a paper,” Ozuna said. “They interrupt themselves and throw a sentence in the middle of a sentence and people cut each other off and those types of things. So you have to learn how to punctuate the spoken word, which is much different.”
Future reporters have to learn these skills at specialized programs.
Lorie Kennedy points out that, though the availability of these programs have fluctuated over the years, even now there are new opportunities opening up.
“So, as a matter of fact, I think it’s within the last 18 months to two years, Lake Land College [in Mattoon, Illinois] started a court reporting program,” she said.
Ozuna also mentions a new program at Black Hawk College in Moline, as well as longer-running programs like MacCormac College in Chicago.
It's been suggested Artificial Intelligence might be useful for court reporting. But Ozuna sees issues with relying on technology like Apple's Siri or the Amazon Alexa to distinguish between different speakers and understanding legal intricacies.
“If I were on trial where my reputation, financial well-being, or freedom were at risk, I certainly wouldn’t want either of them preparing my transcript.” she said.
Ozuna said some students are warned away from court reporting as a "dying" profession. But she said it's not dying, it's just adapting and searching for more dexterous, knowledgeable and detail-oriented applicants.
