NCRA COURT REPORTING & CAPTIONING WEEK
Celebrate a career with great benefits: job security, flexibility, challenging, rewarding, and more!
The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA), the country’s leading organization representing stenographic court reporters, captioners, and legal videographers, has designated February 6-13 as the 2021 National Court Reporting & Captioning Week. The weeklong event will highlight the many aspects of court reporting and captioning that make it a viable profession, including good salaries, flexibility, interesting venues and the increasing demand for more reporters and captioners to meet the growing number of employment opportunities available in the field.
Click on the quotes below to view video testimonials from reporters about their love of the profession.
Court Reporting in the time
of COVID-19
To commemorate the National Court Reporters Association 2021 Court Reporting and Captioning Week, we’d like to honor the driven and incredibly talented court reporters and videographers on our team. During a time in history when in-person interactions are limited and virtual meetings are used to converse safely in groups, it feels extra appropriate to spotlight and show gratitude for these men and women who go to great technical lengths regularly to ensure accurate coverage of legal proceedings.
Did You Know?
Court reporters can capture the spoken word at over 200+ words per minute using a steno machine with only 22 keys!
Court reporting is one of the six rarely discussed careers that provide the potential to earn a high income without a college degree, per Forbes magazine.
Court reporters perform their steno skills not only in courtrooms and deposition rooms but also in sports arenas, television studios, theaters, universities, convention centers and other places.
Employment of court reporters and captioners is projected to grow 9 percent from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Court reporting steno translations are used to assist deaf and hearing-impaired litigants, jurors and students.
The same court reporting steno skills used in trials and depositions are also used to generate TV captions.
Although court reporting students spend a lot of time honing their steno skills, a four-year college degree is not required to become a court reporter.
The original voice-to-print method, court reporters use realtime technology, via special software, to translate steno notes into English and display the text within seconds of a word being spoken.
Learn more about Court Reporting & Captioning through these unique experiences via the Journal of Court Reporting below:
- From captioning the pope's visit to a bull auction, NCRA member shares her most unusual jobs
- Bringing captions to Coachella
- New York Times reaches out to stenographers for DealBook Conference
- A steno dream comes true amid a pandemic nightmare
- Notre Dame Law School graduate thanks CART provider
- The world isn’t all transcripts and captions
- Zoom to the future
- Reporters on the red carpet: Writing the Oscars
- A Helter Skelter Trial Memoir
- When Hong Kong became part of China again
- Reporting a PGA Golf Tournament
- Captioning the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
- Careers in court reporting: From Grandma’s diner to Rick Springfield
Why I love court reporting...
"I love my profession because it’s challenging & different every day. I get bored easily. I applied for a full TAPS (Texas Assoc of Private Schools) scholarship for Court Reporting in 1986 & got it! Only one recipient is chosen yearly out of the State of Texas. The choice was made for me! That was why I chose court reporting & have never looked back! "
Tracie Brumley
CSR, CCR 620
Years Reporting: 31
"Reporting is the most INTERESTING of careers in my opinion. I love freelancing! I get to go different places every day, and see different people. I hear a variety of cases from the boring land dispute or water erosion cases, to the divorce cases that can be pretty heated. You get to meet such great people in the lawyers, doctors and the witnesses alike. I love knowing that every day I get to find out where I am being sent the next day and the excitement of who I will meet and what kind of case it will be. It is just a very interesting profession that keeps it exciting."
Angie Kelly
IL CSR, MO CCR
Years Reporting: 21
"I love court reporting because I have flexibility with my family that I wouldn’t get with a 9 to 5 job. Every day is different and you meet some very interesting people. Even after 36 years I still learn something new every day about this industry and the legal profession. I enjoy networking with other reporters and sharing war stories."
Linda Madel
CCR
Years Reporting: 31
"I love my profession because I learn something new every single day. I also adore the luxury of going to different offices every day. I cannot imagine going back to a dedicated desk in an office."
Lisa Ballalatak
KS CSR, MO CCR
Years Reporting: 9.5
"I love the challenge of accurately writing testimony in all sorts of situations, the flexibility, and how much I learn through the wide variety of topics that are covered in depositions."
Meghan Minnick
RPR, MO CCR
Years Reporting: 3
"I love court reporting because of the flexibility and financial security it provides, not to mention that I enjoy it when the testimony gets difficult, almost like playing a video game where you have to "zap" the word before it gets away from you. Court reporting would be a wonderful profession for those young gamers out there that are language-oriented and have a strong work ethic. Also, every day is different. Sometimes people bring their adorable 240-pound St. Bernards to the deposition!"
Renee Combs Quinby
RDR, CRR, CCR-MO, CSR-IL, CSR-CA, CCR-AR, Realtime Systems Administrator
Years Reporting: 22
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