Speaker 1: Hi guys and welcome back to my channel and welcome to episode 1 in this new court reporting series. I really wanted to start this series just kind of talking about the career that I am in because I don't really share a lot about that in my YouTube videos. I don't really share much about my career but it is very interesting and we are very much needed of more court reporters so I thought this would be a good way to also get the word out there of what it is, how good of a career it is, what you can do with it and things like that. A lot of people don't know about it so again I wanted to get the word out there a little bit more. So this is episode 1 and we are going to be talking about the introduction into court reporting, basically what it is, how much you can make, schooling, things like that, how to get started. So the first things first, what is court reporting? So basically the best way for me to describe this as and how most people can register what it is, is if you are watching a movie or a TV show and you see a courtroom setting and you see usually a female in the corner typing down everything everyone is saying, that's what a court reporter is and a lot of people don't know but it's not a normal keyboard. I will put a picture of what the machine looks like here. So basically this is shorthand, so it's shorthand typing. I know that there used to be a shorthand way before my time where they actually wrote out shorthand which is basically like a little code to help you like write faster and you kind of learn that code or language kind of and anyway so that's what this is but it's with a machine and it's with typing and this is what the machine looks like. So that's the best way for me to describe and maybe to get you to relate what a court reporter is with something you've seen and you can do a lot of different things other than just writing down what everyone is saying in the courtroom. I actually don't do that, I'm a freelance court reporter and I will talk more about that but there is multiple different things that you can do with it but basically you're getting down a verbatim record using shorthand of what everyone is saying in a legal proceeding. And the reason why we are so needed is because if you've ever seen like a transcript from either a court proceeding or any other legal proceeding that basically is what if something does go to trial they will be referring to while making decisions on that said matter. So that is a legal real record document, that's what we are writing down so what we are typing is the legitimate record of someone's case. So it is extremely important and just a little bit about like digital recording slash AI. Yes they have tried it in courtroom settings and legal settings but it just doesn't work as well as you can imagine there's all these kind of errors with computers and technology and yes humans have errors too but we are able to connect with the other humans that are in the room with us, stop them if we need to, ask questions. We also can identify speakers who are there and you know artificial intelligence can do that to a certain degree but you really need a human court reporter and most high up judges and attorneys know that there's nothing better than an actual physical human court reporter in the room so I just wanted to talk about that because I'm sure some people are maybe thinking like well can't we just record this, things are pretty good at recording. They've tried, I know that there was something they tried in the Supreme Court and it ended up being like a disaster and someone like got off. So anyway, there's a bunch of like horror stories about that so there's just nothing better than a human court reporter. So that's how important we are needed, it is very important and not a lot of people know about this field. I don't know why younger people don't know about this very much, I really only know about it because my mom does it so I'm here to tell you more about it. Okay let's talk about schooling slash what kind of degree you need so you kind of know a little bit more about it and if you want to go into it. So you do not need a like associates or bachelors degree, you really just need to be certified in your state. You can also get nationally certified but that's kind of like a step up. So really you just need to be certified in your state. It's basically like the attorneys need to take the bar to get certified. That's kind of like you're taking a state exam to get certified and the state exam in the court reporting world is known to be difficult but I will say if you are well prepared and take your schooling seriously, you will pass your first try. I passed my first try, I thought that the exam was not hard. I will just say that the hardest part was my nerves, that was the biggest hardest part. I do have an associates degree along with that because while I was in court reporting school, I actually went to university about a year before I started court reporting school so I did have some basics under my belt but I also continued them while I was in court reporting school so I do suggest doing that if you can because it's nice to have the associates degree, I don't know, just kind of as a backup or just to bump up your overall education as well as that state certificate. Schooling, I got out in about two years but it is very varied. It's very self-paced with school so it's basically like you have to practice like you're an athlete so you have to practice on your machine, your speed building, things like that and just you really need to practice if you want to be in school and you want to get out on a good time. I know a few women who were in there for five plus years but usually they were a little bit older, they were married, had kids and sometimes even other jobs and so I understand why it took so long. I was blessed to be able to move away for this and be able to just focus on just that while not having many other distractions so I feel like I was able to put all my focus on court reporting so it is something that if you do want to consider it, any stage of life you can do this. You can start school, you can do court reporting but you know, it is going to take you longer if you do have other things going on but don't let that deter you because it is very much worth the wait. But I will say if you put your mind to it, you can get out in about two years. Also it's a lot cheaper to go to like a specific program like this versus going to university. I'll just tell you my university expenses versus my court reporting school expenses were astronomical and my parents were thankful for that. That court reporting school was cheaper. Now I'm not saying it's cheap and I don't know what other programs, I just know from the program I went to but it was very reasonable compared to like university costs. Also we are in such high demand and needed that you are pretty much guaranteed a job as soon as you get out and that was what was really important to me is, you know, I was going to university, not sure what I wanted to do and I would get a four year degree, be in all this debt and I wasn't guaranteed a job in my field and I just saw other people doing that and I didn't want to do that so I wanted to do more of like a trade school type thing with a specialty and yeah, you're pretty much going to literally start working the next day if you want to. I will share in the description box a NCRA, a National Court Reporters Association website that has a list of court reporting school programs that they have verified and I think it goes from state to state. You can message me or comment down below if there's information that you don't see on here or I'm not talking about and you want to know more, just message me or comment and I will try to get you that information but I will link a list of schools if you want to look more into that and then there's so many people who are willing to help you once you email them or call that school and just get more info. Okay, what everyone wants to know, how much we make and it is kind of an annoying answer because again, it is super varied. I would say that the median earnings of a court reporter and this is just off the top of my head of being in the career and knowing other court reporters, I would say is between $60,000 to $80,000. That would be my guess but I know actually quite a few people who make over $100,000 and usually those are people who are in a courtroom setting so they are an official court reporter which I don't really know why they use the term official court reporter because we're all official court reporters but they just use the term for someone who is a court reporter in a courtroom and they're with the same judge every day, 9 to 5, punch in, punch out job. They have a salary, they have 401k benefits, things like that. They call those official court reporters. I don't really know why but you can make really, really good money doing that because it's kind of set money and you're getting paid from the county and then you can also get transcript orders on top of that. So I know a few people who have made around $130,000 to $140,000 doing that but that's also like working a lot, working on transcripts. So yeah, you can make quite a bit doing this. Now for me, I do freelance court reporting and what that is is I go to depositions which depositions are basically pre-trial meetings within the parties in the case and they are usually taking one witness's deposition in that case. So like I actually have one tomorrow and we are going to meet in one of the attorney's offices and they have one witness for that day, let's say it's a plaintiff in the case and they want to question the plaintiff and just get more discovery on that case that they later potentially could take to trial. So that's what my record will eventually go to if they go to trial. So I will go to their office and set up and they will ask questions to the witness, it's question answer and I will just take it down and then I will come home and work on it and just fine tune it and send it to the attorneys and they could again potentially can use that in the future with their case. So most of my work is from home. I go and take the deposition but most of my work is from home which I really like the freelance side of it and I also get to create my own schedule with that if I don't want to work for two weeks, I just don't schedule a deposition. I can talk more in another video about depositions in particular because I don't want to get in too much about that here because I feel like I can talk about it forever but those are just the two main things that people use court reporting for in a court, an official court reporter and also depositions. You can also do captioning which you sometimes see on TV, the captions of what people are saying live usually on sports. You can also do cart riding which is riding for someone who maybe can't hear. I've actually done that while I was in school. I would follow a girl around her classes and she was hearing impaired and I would write down what the teacher was saying and she could see it. So there's a lot of different things that you can do with it. Again maybe I'll do a separate video going more into depth of that. But back to pay, I wanted to quickly talk about that because an official court reporter ships kind of like a set pay with benefits. Freelance which is what I do, I do not have benefits so that is a big con to doing freelance depositions but I like the freedom side of it as well. And also a good thing about depositions is you can really make as much as you want to or as little as you want to. So like let's say you know one day I have a baby and I don't want to work for three months. Well I don't have to. I don't have to call in and get sick days but I'm not making money. So I don't have maternity leave. So it's kind of a prone con within itself but yeah let's say that year I want to take three months off. Well I wouldn't make that much that year versus a year where I worked all 12 months. So really it's however much you want to work. Also you can get rush orders on something which you get paid a lot more. So deposition freelance work is very very up and down with pay so that's why I can't give you a set number but I will say that working a median amount because I like to be balanced. I'm not obsessed with like my job where I'm literally sitting at my computer from 8am to 6pm everyday like that's not happening. I have a very lax lifestyle and I like to be very flexible so I would say I do make a median amount of money within those numbers that I was telling you. So kind of keep that in mind. You can really make as little or as much as you want to like if you want this to honestly be kind of a part time job or you want to help your family out sometimes of the year you know you can do that. That's why this job is so awesome because it is really flexible. So the next thing that I just want to touch on is the pros of this career and I've already touched on a few of them which are it's super flexible. You can make a really really good amount of money. School can be short. You're very much needed so you will pretty much always have work. Those are just some off the top of my head I can think of but yeah it's just a really good career. I really like it. It allows me to be able to dive into other things that I really like like YouTube. I feel like if I worked at a different kind of job I wouldn't be able to have time to you know keep this consistent but with my job because I get to kind of work however much I want to I am able to dive into some other hobbies. So to me that's like the biggest pro. The last thing that I want to talk about and probably one of the most important things is how to get started and where to get started. So again I will leave in the description box a link to some schools. I will try to leave a little bit more information in there as well. It's pretty much that simple on where you want to find out more. You can do your research but I do suggest going onto NCRA National Court Reporting Association dot com because you can find however much information you want on there. Also look up you know court reporting TikToks Instagram things like that because they're really fun to watch and you get to see more of what actual court reporters do. One more thing about the schooling that I kind of forgot to touch on is that when you go through school you're basically speed building trying to get you up to that certified speed amount which is 225 words a minute. So that's how fast you get certified at. So yeah you definitely can't type that on a normal keyboard or writing it out. So it's really cool the machine and the shorthand thing and I just wanted to mention that because that's basically what schooling is and you're learning a lot more in depth to English and grammar than primary school obviously but pretty in depth into that so that you have a good understanding of that of when you turn in transcripts everything reads nicely. You know you're not making any grammatical mistakes and then you're also doing that speed building building up to that 225 and that's what you take the state exam at. There's a little bit more involved in the state exam and again I won't go into it in this video but basically the highest speed that you get certified at is 225 words per minute. So that is pretty much the introduction into court reporting. I'm sure I have missed stuff but I kind of just wanted to talk straight from my mind. I had a few points written down but I didn't write down too much. I kind of just wanted to blab on about it and I'm sure I did miss something. So again if you have any questions really reach out to me because I love to talk about this and I do want to help if you are interested in it and you are very needed. If you're even a little bit interested in this just look into it. The next video that I will be doing in this series is talking more about the machine and maybe even learning some of the basics of the machine. So before you go into school or even if you're just interested in learning more about it keep up with the series because I want it to kind of be to where by the end of this series you know the basics of court reporting and maybe even the basics of the machine. So I will talk more about the machine and all the shortcuts and how everything means everything in the next video so stay tuned for that. Let me know if you like this series if you want me to continue if you have any questions if there are certain videos you want. I really have a pretty broad idea of this. I don't have anything too specific with this series so I really want it to be based on what people want to see so let me know. But thank you guys so much for stopping by my channel and I hope to see you guys soon. Bye.