Where did people get the idea that you need a four-year college degree to get a great job and have a successful career? It certainly is not true today, if it ever was. 

Court reporters and captioners are starting out in the $50,000 pay range and moving into $100,000-plus territory within the first year or two. The skill they practice is called stenography. There is a global shortage of skilled stenographers which means certified court reporters are in ultra-high demand, both here in the U.S. and internationally. 

Professional stenographers are necessary to the operation of our court system, all legislative operations in government, and the smooth running of the business economy. Some stenographers’ work involves captioning live college and university class lectures to provide hearing-impaired students with full accessibility to higher education.

The required training to become a certified professional court reporter can take as little as two years to complete. Young people right out of high school can enroll in an on-site or an online independent court reporting training program. As some community colleges add stenography training programs to their curriculum, more students can become certified in the program while they complete their associate degree.

Project Steno — Free Introductory Course and Training Prep

Project Steno was created to offer young people a free, reliable, properly structured introductory training program to find out if court reporting is a career path they might like to try. We want more young people to enter the profession and reap all the benefits the profession offers. Project Steno encourages high schools and community colleges to establish court reporting certificate programs to respond to the shortage of stenographers and to inform students about the rewarding opportunities available to those who work in the field.

What do court reporters do? — You’ve seen it on TV and in movies.

In Court or Pretrial Discovery: Court reporters operate an advanced shorthand machine with some of the most cutting-edge technology to create an accurate record of what every person says in a wide variety of settings. Most trials conducted in the United States are recorded by a professional stenographer who uses their specialized equipment to note the exact words spoken in the courtroom. Court reporters work in both criminal and civil trials, sometimes in cases of murder, robbery, or gun or drug crimes. Family courts handle cases about juvenile offenses, parental neglect, divorce, and child custody issues. 

Law Firms: Outside of court, stenographers work every day at different law firms taking down the testimony of witness at depositions in cases from all areas of the law. Typical deposition testimony could focus on injuries from car accidents, medical malpractice, dangerous product liability, environmental law violations, or multimillion dollar business disputes.

Public Service – Government: Court reporters are relied on to record the speeches delivered and debates engaged in by representatives and senators in the United States Congress and in state legislatures. 

Law Enforcement: In many states, court reporters listen to tape recordings of grand jury proceedings and transcribe the audio recordings produced by law enforcement during secret surveillance authorized by search warrants. 

Corporate Meetings: Every large corporation or organization is required to memorialize some communications between directors or department heads. Many employ stenographers to ensure accurate records are made of high-level meetings or official internal investigations involving potential wrongdoing by employees or managers.

Captioning: Who creates the captions appearing at the bottom of videos, movies, or live TV? Court reporters using their highly developed skills instantly produce the script of the words spoken by the people on the screen. 

The National Institute of Health reports that there are ten million hearing-impaired people in the U.S., and that one million of them are functionally deaf. Millions of hearing-impaired Americans depend on stenographic captioning to remain informed about their world and to enjoy full access to a visual medium that would otherwise be of limited value to them.

Why Is There a Shortage of Certified Court Reporters?

Several events contributed to the present shortage of qualified stenographers. The overpromotion of four-year college diplomas as the key to success led young people to look past lucrative alternative careers like stenography. We often say that court reporting is the best job you’ve never heard of.

It’s sadly ironic that so many young people who pursued four-year degrees now find themselves shackled with student load debt and unable to find a job offering more than a minimal salary.

Some colleges and universities experimented with stenography courses, but they learned quickly that the high degree of proficiency demanded in stenography did not permit students who did just “well enough” to advance. To advance in stenography, a student needs to achieve a speed of 225 words per minute. If a student needed to repeat a college course, the financial aid rules used disqualified them from some Pell grants. Four-year educational institutions soon discontinued the stenographic programs.

Over time, as the availability of student loans and grants increased, so too did the appearance of fly-by-night private colleges that took advantage of young people by offering degrees they never delivered. The natural government response to this exploitation was to apply regulatory pressure to smaller, independent higher-ed programs, forcing many to close, including some highly valuable court reporting schools.

With too few available training programs, and too little public recognition of the benefits offered by a stenography career, fewer people entered the profession. The result is what we see now, a booming demand for many more young people to become certified court reporters.

Equal Opportunity / Equal Pay

The stenography profession is structured in such a way that it is free of the basic inequities so common in the larger economy. Court reporting is paid at a standard rate for both men and women. Demand for the skill makes jobs available to everyone who can perform the skills with the necessary high level of accuracy.

Free Preliminary Training and Prep Courses Are Available Now!

Try Project Steno’s FREE, hands-on, six session Basic Training Course to find out how to participate in learning about the techniques and equipment you will use as a court reporter or captioner. You can take the course right from home on your choice of available class schedules. 

Does high-speed verbatim court reporting sound like it might be right for you? The introductory course provides you with a real sense of what it’s like to do the work. If you think it is right for you, Project Steno will help you follow up with more extensive training from expert instructors who made careers of stenography.

To learn more and find out how you can participate in the free introductory course, register on ProjectSteno.org, or email info@ProjectSteno.org, or call 508-438-0314. You will receive all the information needed to get set up. Project Steno will arrange for you to have access a machine “writer” to use and provide you with the course material and instruction.

Mike Lewis is a Director with Discovery Legal Services, a provider of court reporting, deposition, trial and videography services in Nevada. He can be reached at 702.340.5818 or mike@discoverylegal.net.