Blog Category: Arbitration

As a small-town court reporter in Waterbury, Connecticut, back in 1974, Paula Eastes was looking to make a change, so she signed up to attend the Annual Convention of the National Shorthand Reporters Association’s to be held that year in Houston, Texas.

While at the convention, Paula passed two certification exams: the Certificate of Proficiency and the Certificate of Merit. Back in 1974, having a Certificate of Merit opened a lot of doors, as Paula quickly discovered, so when the chief reporter at the Superior Court in Washington, D.C. wanted to discuss a possible reporting opportunity, Paula drove to D.C., where she interviewed for that and several other positions.

Not long after returning home to Connecticut, Paula received a call from Hoover Reporting in D.C., asking if she would consider returning to Washington, D.C., all expenses paid, to work on the Rockefeller Nomination Hearings. Paula, usually known to be a smooth talker, returned the question with a stuttered, “Can I call you back on this?”

After talking it over with her best friend, Paula decided it was too big an opportunity to pass up, and began planning the trip as a “vacation.” Fearful that she might fail, Paula told no one, and swore her best friend to absolute secrecy.

Paula shared reporting duties with another reporter, switching out every hour until the hearings concluded. And so much for her secret “vacation,” the entire hearing was televised! In fact, the cameras seemed to zoom in on her nightly, plastering her picture all over the nightly news and newspapers.  Everyone in the world now knew that Paula (at that time Snyder) was in D.C. taking the Rockefeller Nomination hearings, not vacationing.

No sooner had Paula completed the Rockefeller Hearings, she was sent to the House of Representatives to report a portrait unveiling ceremony. Imagine her surprise when President Ford showed up to address the crowd! As Paula put it, “It wasn’t the State of the Union or anything, but that didn’t matter. Wow!!!!!”

Following this most exciting week of her career, Paula returned to Connecticut, where her best friend, with whom she’d shared the secret, had taken one of the hearing articles, added “Paula Snyder” after all of the congressmen, laminated it, and gave it to Paula as a memento. It remains one of Paula’s most prized possessions — and the reason for Paula’s move from Connecticut to D.C., where she remains a continued presence in the court reporting community.

On April 16, 2013, the Department of Education approved $1,068,870 in discretionary grant funding for Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) to invest in training realtime writers to meet the requirements for closed captioning.

For many deaf and hard-of-hearing students, a court reporter walks with them from class to class providing a live realtime feed of everything said. Court reporters also perform convention, theatre and television captioning. Tammy Jaffe will tell you that providing that service “was the most personally gratifying experience of her career.”

Four court reporting schools or colleges are to be awarded the funding in an effort to attract and train more realtime writers, or captioners. With hearing loss on the rise — 35 million Americans now suffer from some sort of hearing loss — court reporters are becoming increasingly more essential both inside and outside the courtroom.

Court reporting is a fascinating, rewarding career, a field that continues to be considered a “Top Job,” and the only career that opens up the television, video and movie world to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

For years states have been working hard to replace their official court reporters with digital audio and video recording systems in an attempt to save their taxpayers money. What they’ve discovered time and again, however, is that court reporters are still a necessary and integral part of the system.

In 2001, Texas Brought back stenographic reporters after trying both audio and video recording methods, citing the reporters’ “ability to have an immediate transcript,” as well as “inherent problems and inaccuracies in transcription of recorded proceedings,” and “unanticipated costs and additional personnel to perform all the functions that a stenographic reporter provides.”

Other states, like Oregon, did away with most of its official reporters, only to discover that counsel now want to bring them back. Because court reporters are needed in so many venues other than court, a shortage in qualified reporters is anticipated to hit the Kansas courts within the next five to ten years. Thanks to the National Court Reporters Association’s efforts, however, court reporting schools are seeing increased enrollment, hopeful that they will be able to stem this tide.

Voice recognition is improving daily, and is now used by “voice writers” in venues ranging from officialships to television captioners. Until voice recognition can track every speech pattern, regardless of accent, through the closing of doors, sliding of chairs and crinkling of paper, however, either a stenotype or voice writing reporter will remain the “keepers of the record.”

According to “Forbes Magazine” and “MyKelly’s” hottest jobs in 2013, court reporting ranks sixth among professions not requiring a four-year degree.  CareerCast ranked court reporting as 68th in its Top 200 Jobs for 2013, and Study.com indicates that the profession should anticipate an 18 percent growth rate between 2012 and 2018 due to “federal laws mandating that television programs and real-time broadcasts be captioned for the hearing-impaired.”

The National Court Reporters Association indicates that court reporting students can anticipate their training to take an average of between two and four years.  The Princeton Review suggests that “25 percent of those who enter the profession leave within the first year or two” due to stress; but for those who remain, the outlook is excellent.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2012 report reveals the mean annual wage for court reporters as $53,010, with the top 10 percent earning an average $90,530.

“County Woman Magazine” indicates that court reporters are among those “women who love their careers, have work-life balance with a flexible schedule, and feel that their jobs are rewarding and important to society.”  Rebecca Forman, a court reporter in the Manhattan federal courthouse, answered questions about the profession for “The New York Times” in their series “Answers from a Court Reporter.”

For more information on the profession, the National Court Reporters Association and state court reporting associations are wonderful resources.

Dawn Hart wanted to share some of her most memorable assignments with Planet Depos, “because it’s jobs like these that make her career so indescribably amazing.”

Dawn remembers with clarity an assignment that she began in 1989, and that lasted 4 years. It was a family dispute in which a child was suing a parent. Every time an argument would ensue, Dawn would be asked to mark the argument by folding her steno notes down at that point, and head out with counsel to the judge. There, Dawn would read the argument back, the judge would rule on it, a date would be set for the deposition to continue, and Dawn would be sent back. This happened over and over again for four years, and was heart-wrenching for Dawn to watch because it was a family torn apart, but as she said, “It was necessary.” Dawn’s skill set was key to bringing this discovery full circle. Had she not been able to keep up with the argument and read it back to the judge for him to rule, the case would have never made it to court.

Dawn’s funniest assignment stems from a deposition in which the witness and his counsel were in Dawn’s presence, while examining counsel was remote to the proceedings via teleconference. The line of questioning related to the fishing habits of the witness. After some time had passed, counsel asked whether the fish the witness caught at night were different from the fish he caught during the day. The question struck Dawn’s funny bone so deeply that she couldn’t stop laughing. Every time she’d almost stop laughing, she’d think, “Does he even know what he just asked?” and she’d start laughing again. As she said, “Thank goodness examining counsel was connected remotely.”

Dawn loves to listen to people’s opinions, and that’s one of the things she likes most about her job. She will often walk into a proceeding feeling one way about a topic, and after hearing the testimony, her viewpoint will be changed entirely. She thrives on challenge, and particularly loves the pharmacological, medical and scientific assignments, because she learns so much as a result of taking the testimony and researching the formulas, chemicals, and drugs. As she says, “You can never assume a spelling or meaning, unless you’re knowledgeable about the topic. A word of advice from Dawn: “In transcribing formulas, it’s extremely important that the upper and lower case lettering, numbering, and bracketing are correct, as any single error could represent an entirely different formula.

After 33 years, Dawn still loves the job — dressing professionally, meeting new people, going to new places and learning new things. She works very hard and highly recommends court reporting as a career.