Court reporter

Candidates usually attend specialized certificate courses at private business schools or sometimes associate's or bachelor's degree programs at accredited colleges and universities.

Required skills of a licensed stenographic court reporter are excellent command of the language being spoken, attention to detail, exceptional hearing, and the ability to focus for long periods at a time.

The most highly skilled court reporters can provide real-time transcription and have significant earning potential, with salaries up to six figures possible in some areas.

[5] In 2004, Mark Kislingbury secured the title of fastest realtime court reporter through Guinness World Records by writing 360 words per minute on his stenographic machine.

Licensed court reporters are required to attend yearly continuing education courses of at least 10 hours in order to maintain active licensure.

Stenographers can also join the National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA), a professional organization dedicated to the practice of voice writing, which is another method used to take down court proceedings in certain states.

For court recorders who also operate audio equipment, there is the American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers (AAERT).

[8] The NVRA offers the title Certified Verbatim Reporter (CVR) to voice writers who pass a four-part examination, including both a skills and written exam, and participate in continuing education programs.

The growth rate of the profession was projected to be 2% to 3%, which is lower than the average of 7%, but the demand has remained high due to a national rise in litigation overall.

[13] Some states have experienced budget cuts in recent years that have reduced the number of state-funded court reporters.

This has resulted in law firms hiring stenographic court reporters directly, as they are independent contractors, to ensure proceedings are verbatim.

[16] A Certified Realtime Reporter (CRR) and a Certified Broadcast Captioner (CBC) offer the ability to show live transcription of the spoken record by captioning what is said to display it on a screen in real time, and as the latter is a stenographic court reporter, they can provide instant read back of testimony unlike a recording.

Stenographic court reporting most often allows for a quality transcript produced on an hourly, daily, expedited, or standard turnaround.

There is one NCRA-approved captioning and court reporting program in all of Canada, which is found at the Northern Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton, Alberta.

This multi-channel feature especially helps during moments of extraneous noise such as laughter, shouting, coughing, and sneezing, but it is still deemed inferior to having a stenographic reporter during the proceedings.

This training requires a person pass dictation speed tests of up to 225 words a minute in the United States, as set forth by the National Verbatim Reporters Association (NVRA).