Partners in Justice: Court Reporters
As “guardians of the record,” court reporters must document every word of hearings and trials. Their accuracy and timeliness make them essential to the Ohio justice system.
The Ohio case drew national attention. Two Steubenville high school football players were accused, and eventually found delinquent, in the rape of a 16-year-old girl. Social media posts and text messages shared by teens the night of the crime and in the subsequent days became key evidence. The largest TV networks and print news media covered the trial. Susan White of Jefferson County had a front row seat to every day of the court proceedings.
But it wasn’t a typical front-row seat in the courtroom gallery. White had a unique vantage point as the court reporter for the 2013 trial. Stationed in front of the judge’s bench, White’s job was to take down everything said for a record of the five-day trial. She was a pro at the time of the trial, having joined the Jefferson County Common Pleas Court as a court reporter in 1982. She was also quite familiar with the case.
Months earlier, she had served during the grand jury proceedings as the court reporter. Those proceedings took 16 days of testimony over seven months.
White, who documented the record of court cases for 38 years, said the facts stood out to her – the “scenario of teenagers drinking and partying and the trouble that ensues from that.” She also noted it was unusual for a court reporter to be assigned to a juvenile court case. But given the seriousness of the allegations, and the news coverage the case was attracting, it was determined a record of the proceedings needed to be captured by a court reporter.
This responsibility is why court reporters are referred to as the “guardians of the record.” They are tasked with documenting a word-for-word account of court proceedings. The record is essential when someone wants to appeal a decision to a higher court. It also might be requested by attorneys or judges at the end of a day in trial court. To produce an accurate record, court reporters need a specialized skill set and focus. Plus fast fingers.
“What goes on in the courtroom is very important for litigants,” White explained. “We have to get everything down perfectly.”
“When you're in school for court reporting, you have to commit a lot of time to practicing outside of class.”
Court Reporters Use Special Tools and Language
To graduate from a program in court reporting, students must complete a series of tests at specific speeds. Court reporters, though, don’t use the standard QWERTY computer keyboard. They instead capture words on special machines, which are smaller and more compact than a keyboard. And the speeds students must reach to graduate are much faster than regular typing.
The American Society of Administrative Professionals says the average typing speed with an everyday keyboard is about 40 words per minute (wpm), and advanced typists clock in at 80 wpm. Students learning court reporting must pass three tests, three times each – one presented at 180 wpm, a jury charge at 200 wpm, and testimony that includes two voices at 225 wpm. Each test must be passed with a 95% or higher accuracy rate.
The shorthand language used by court reporters is called “steno,” explained Crystal Hatchett, a court reporter for eight years in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
Hatchett spent her childhood reading crime stories and wanting to be an attorney. She changed direction when someone visiting her high school spoke about court reporting. She started her career in Franklin County in 2013, spending six months in domestic relations court, then moving on to court reporting for criminal and civil cases. In 2021, she made a switch to federal court.
Hatchett, who is certified to teach court reporting, explained that students first learn the theory of steno. After that, it’s several required classes, and drill after drill to build speed in taking down dialogue.
Personalized Dictionary Central to Fast, Timely Work
On each side of a steno machine sits a set of common consonants. The vowels sit near the bottom. Once court reporters learn the basics, they start compiling an electronic dictionary. It’s their own personalized style for abbreviating words and phrases in as few keystrokes as possible.
“My dictionary translates my steno into English,” Hatchett said. “The goal is one stroke for each word.”
Court reporters refer to these shorthand forms of words and phrases as “brief forms” or “briefs.” One that Hatchett uses for the phrase “we the jury” is “WEJ.” On a steno machine, those letters are pressed down simultaneously, reducing the time it would take for separate keystrokes.
Andrea Hodapp, assistant chief court reporter at the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, thinks of compiling a dictionary as a set of “building blocks.” She keeps adding to her dictionary – creating new abbreviations for words, phrases, and even sentences. The 13-year veteran said court reporters create their own one-stroke brief forms for the most common legal terms and phrases heard in the courtroom. “Prob” could be shorthand for “probation” and “murd” for “murder.” Hodapp explained that when she presses a set of letters at the same time, her dictionary translates that combination into the full word, phrase, or sentence.
“We can't drift. Our attention has to be on all the time.”
To be prepared for a hearing or trial, it helps to research the case beforehand. Hodapp reads case documents, such as pleadings, and gathers crucial pieces of information likely to be mentioned in court. One example is prior case decisions. She’ll load the case names into her electronic dictionary and come up with a brief form to quickly identify a case when someone in the courtroom refers to it.
“It requires that kind of attention to detail,” Hodapp said. “It’s a high pressure, high stress job.”
Hodapp started her career as a teacher. Openings in education were sparse about 20 years ago, she said. It was her park ranger husband who suggested court reporting. He had to give a deposition, which was documented by a court reporter. Knowing Hodapp was looking for a change, he talked to the court reporter and told his wife what he learned. When Hodapp graduated, there was no shortage of opportunities in her new field.
Doug Bettis, a court reporter in Summit County Common Pleas Court, discovered court reporting in high school. He went to school for a half day and worked in the clerk’s office for a juvenile court during the other half. He later learned what court reporters did, went to court reporting school, and never looked back. It launched a career of more than 20 years and counting across three counties - Carroll, Columbiana, and Summit.
When Bettis has an upcoming case, he creates a “job dictionary” for it. In advance of a court proceeding, he pulls the case file and adds case-specific details to his electronic dictionary – such as individual’s names and employers, street names and important locations, and terms relevant to the case he expects will be used in court. He also asks for witness lists and exhibit information, loading basics about those into his job dictionary, too.
An Important Role: Assisting Judges and Attorneys
In some courtrooms, court reporters work with judges who also like to use “realtime” software. Bettis said his steno machine and software connects to an iPad the judge can see. Using steno, Bettis enters what’s being said, and software powered by his dictionary converts the shorthand version into full words and phrases. “It’s a live first draft,” he explained. Although it’s not yet a final, official version of the proceeding, the judge likes the instant feed to make rulings on objections and review other statements as needed, Bettis said.
Helping the judge in the courtroom is part of the profession, said Kristi Lipscomb, a court reporter in Belmont County Common Pleas Court since 1996. One way Lipscomb assists is by keeping an eye on people in the courtroom. She’ll alert someone if she sees a juror needing a tissue, a cough drop, or water. She may notice jurors falling asleep. It’s something to address discreetly, Lipscomb said. In the midst of taking down the proceedings, Lipscomb will jot a quick note like “Juror #5” and get it to the judge, who will call for a break to stir the slumbering juror.
“My first job is to protect the record,” Lipscomb said. “The second is to protect the judicial process. That helps the judges by ensuring the proceedings go right.”
Lipscomb’s high school typing teacher encouraged her to consider a career as a court reporter. Lipscomb was uncertain. But her dad, who worked for a coal company, contacted someone he knew who had become a judge. The judge invited the teen to court and then told her to enroll in a court reporting program.
Today, she alerts new attorneys who are nervous and talking quickly that she may need to stop them to repeat something. Offering an insight from nearly three decades of experience, she will point out, “If you’re talking so fast that I can’t understand you, then the jury is going to turn you off and stop listening.”
Repetition Required for Success
If it seems that anyone can reach a court reporter’s speed with practice, consider how few reach the words per minute needed to graduate from court reporting programs. Nationally, only about 14% of students graduate within two years.
“When you’re in school, you have to commit a lot of time to practicing outside of class,” said Hatchett, who was the only one from her court reporting class of 14 who finished.
White agreed.
“I tell new attorneys who are talking fast, 'If I can't understand you, then the jury is going to turn you off.'”
“You had to practice every night,” she said. “I sat in front of the TV to practice taking down every word that was said on the different television shows. I would get a variety of words from the medical shows, the legal shows, the nightly news. That helped with learning the different verbiage that you would need since there are so many different types of cases a court reporter hears.”
Just half of White’s class of 25 students graduated.
Video and Audio Recordings Impact Profession
Times have been changing for court reporters. The arrival of new technology prompts some to ask court reporters whether they’re obsolete.
Advancements in audio and video recordings definitely shifted the landscape. Hodapp notes nearly all common pleas courtrooms are staffed by court reporters, but their numbers in Hamilton County Municipal Court have declined. In 2011, the 14 municipal courtrooms had court reporters. Today, there are four. Instead, court proceedings in most municipal courtrooms are now recorded on video. But a recording isn’t all that’s needed in the legal world. A recording isn’t a transcript that can be filed for an appeal. Lawyers, judges, and others rely on court reporters to produce transcripts as the official, certified record of a proceeding.
Hodapp spends part of her day triaging requests for official transcripts as a supervisor of the Hamilton County court reporters. Requests arrive most often from attorneys, sometimes from bailiffs or judges, and occasionally from defendants or victims, she said. If a court reporter was present and logged the proceedings using steno, there’s a rough but comprehensive version ready to begin with. The court reporter gets to work on refining it into a formal and formatted transcript.
For proceedings recorded by audio or video, though, one of the 29 full-time or two part-time court reporters will generate the transcript. The court reporter listens to the recording, taking down the words on a steno machine as if sitting in the courtroom for a live proceeding. However, problems arise frequently with recordings: background noises occur, people talk over each other, someone coughs or mumbles, papers are shuffled, or an expert who is testifying crinkles a bag while removing evidence – obscuring what’s being said, and making it impossible to compile a verbatim record.
“For a recorded proceeding, there is no one there to regulate the record,” Hodapp said. “These issues don’t happen with live court reporters. We can stop people in the moment.”
A further downside with recordings is humans forgetting to turn on the recording systems or other key technology. Hatchett mentioned that a microphone wasn’t flipped on for a hearing in a courtroom, and the witness had to return later that day to testify again. These situations raise serious concerns for the justice system – the delays caused, the legal implications of redoing proceedings, and the potential effect on case outcomes.
Advent of AI Presents Challenges
Another new technology confronting court reporters, and the legal profession, is artificial intelligence. One AI tool courts have experimented with is digital recording with speech-to-text technology. Lipscomb likened this technology to virtual voice-activated assistants, such as Siri or Alexa.
“Think about when you dictate a message into a phone with these tools and look at how it transcribes your words when you’re trying to speak clearly,” Lipscomb said. “In court, though, attorneys at times talk so fast. And people testifying often don’t enunciate well.”
Hodapp pointed to difficulties in identifying who is speaking. With audio alone, it can be hard to discern who is who. With video, it’s not always possible to see who is talking. But when a court reporter is in the room, it’s usually easy to identify the speaker, she said.
“Court reporters are a neutral party there for everyone's benefit.”
The National Court Reporters Association, which represents, certifies, and sets ethical guidelines for people working in the field, published a white paper late last year on the ethical and legal issues surrounding AI, automatic speech recognition, and digital recordings. The report points to chain-of-custody concerns when transcripts are outsourced, higher error rates from software when the speaker is a person of color, and technology that omits or changes words it misses. These mistakes can alter the meaning of what was actually said, resulting in inaccurate transcripts, the association noted.
“Individuals charged with determining the future of people’s lives — from juries to judges — must have total faith that transcripts reflect the actual stated words and/or testimony of those involved in or presenting a case,” the report stated.
And although court reporters can be subpoenaed about their work and actions, the report explained that “AI and its subset technologies have no loyalty to the rule of law.”
Of course, there are upsides to innovative technologies that are trustworthy and reliable, something court reporters readily acknowledge.
Hatchett noted that software advances now offer court reporters possible corrections and brief forms for words and phrases said repeatedly in a proceeding. Lipscomb added that the Belmont County court relies on digital recordings for domestic relations cases, such as divorces, because transcripts are rarely requested or needed for appeals. The recordings save some money because a court reporter doesn’t have to attend every domestic relations proceeding, she said.
Career Brings Fulfillment
Court reporters across the state, in counties large and small, juggle in-courtroom needs along with ongoing requests for full transcripts. The workload and hours can be demanding.
Lipscomb said one Belmont County judge has “docket day” every other Monday. Hearings on roughly 40 cases will be considered on those days, she said. Trials are scheduled every Tuesday and Thursday, and civil cases are worked in around those. Hodapp noted that trials can go on day after day, for weeks. Her most difficult was a seven-week jury trial.
“We can’t drift. We can’t zone out,” Hodapp said. “Our attention has to be on all the time.”
White added that court reporters must deliver their work on time.
“You have to have a good work ethic,” she said. “You don’t want people involved in a case to be waiting in limbo.”
White learned about court reporting at a high school career event. She started as a freelancer, occasionally assigned to the Steubenville courts. When she was hired for the common pleas court in 1982, there were three court reporters covering proceedings across three county courts, the municipal court, and all divisions of the common pleas court. By 2009, though, White was the only court reporter. That was the situation for the next 10 years, when she opted to downshift a bit by taking a position as secretary for a judge.
The decades these court reporters have spent in their careers illuminate something transcending the hard work and periodic late nights – a passion for, and dedication to, their profession.
Hodapp said she never has a boring day at work.
“I never thought I’d have a career this fulfilling,” she said. “I leave at the end of the day, and I feel I’ve accomplished so much.”
The gravity of their responsibilities and the consequences for the public and for the justice system do not escape them.
“We are officers of the court,” Hodapp noted. “This case we’re assigned to affects someone’s livelihood. Or someone’s freedom.”
Bettis added that court reporters are a neutral party there for everyone’s benefit.
“The record we document protects everyone involved,” he said.
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