How To Build A Career With A Court Reporting Company

What do you know about court reporting? What do you know about working with court reporting companies? If you work within the legal profession, you know the value that highly skilled court reporters bring to the legal process.

But, if you’re new to the legal profession, such as a new high school graduate or someone in a career transition, we want you to know that a court reporting career is one that offers you a wide range of variety and longevity.

To help you secure a job and build a career with one of your local court reporting companies, we’ve put together a thorough overview of how you can build a career as a court reporter. Read on to learn about what court reporters do, the education requirements, and the skills that can help you build a long career with a court reporting company.

What Do Court Reporters Do?

Court reporters have such an important role in the legal profession, that they’re often referred to as the guardians of the record. In other words, court reporters are responsible for providing an impartial record and transcript of the conversations that occur during legal proceedings.

Court reporters are called on to work in the courtroom, legal deposition suites, and other legal proceedings to provide an accurate and valid record of the entire proceedings. This transcript includes the words spoken and the body language used.

When researching your career opportunities with a court reporting company, it’s important to think of the career path you want to follow. Depending on where you live and the opportunities available to you, you can choose from a range of options within the court reporting niche:

• Judicial reporting: focusing on creating transcripts and building records of court proceedings, depositions, and administrative hearings.
• Closed/Broadcast captioning: delivering the closed captioning text for live broadcast feeds.
• Communications Access Realtime Reporting (CART): focusing on specialized services for people who are hard-of-hearing.

What Kind of Education Does a Court Reporter Need?

The education you need to become a court reporter really depends on the career path you decide to follow.

If you choose to work as a judicial court reporter, one of the key skills you’ll learn is how to use a stenotype machine to create your transcripts. If you’re interested in learning about computer-aided transcription, you’ll need to choose an education program that teaches you how to use software to translate and coordinate text and stenographic demands. And for people interested in electronic court reporting you’ll need to learn about how to use audio-recording devices.

For those of you interested in closed captioning, you’ll need to attend an education program that specializes in the tools, technology, and skills needed for live closed captioning. If you want to focus on providing services for hard-of-hearing individuals (CART), you’ll need to find a very specialized program that focuses on both the needs of court reporting and communication for hard-of-hearing people.

This specialized court reporting education is often available through technical schools, trade schools, colleges, vocational schools, and with professional court reporting associations and organizations.

Along with the specialized skills required for your chosen court reporting career path, your court reporting education will include coursework in:

• Legal procedures and terminology.
• Court reporting procedures.
• Software and technical training.
• English grammar.
• Transcript procedures and best practices.
• Communication skills.

Ideally, you should look for an education program that includes an internship with one of your local court reporting companies. This is an ideal way to get hands-on learning and to get an inside look at the day-to-day of a professional court reporter.

What Skills Can Help Me Build A Career With A Court Reporting Company?

Along with your specialized court reporting education, it helps to have the following skills when aiming to build a long career as a court reporter with a court reporting company:

• Skilled communicator.
• People person.
• Excellent writing, typing, and shorthand skills.
• Attention-to-detail.

When learning more about becoming a court reporter, it helps to contact court reporting companies to learn about the skills, education, and experience they’re looking for in candidates. We’re excited that you’re interested in a career in court reporting, and want to remind you that that the job outlook in court reporting is looking very good and you can have a bright future working in the legal profession.

Court reporting companies

The benefits of a career in court reporting