Court reporting is one of the oldest professions in the world.  This lucrative profession offers freedom, flexibility, and a wide variety of career options for those who prepare for it.

Court reporters record the words spoken in testimony at hearings and court trials, often utilizing realtime translations, and act as the guardians of the record.  Their transcripts help to safeguard everyone’s rights in the legal process since their transcripts provide an accurate and official record of what transpired during the proceedings.  They have a fairly defined work schedule keyed to hearings and court trial dates.

Since they are independent contractors, freelance court reporters have a more flexible work schedule.  They offer a variety of litigation support services, including covering depositions, arbitrations and hearings for lawyers and law offices, including realtime (instant) translation of transcripts and keyword indexing of transcripts. Freelance court reporters spend most of their time and earn most of their income from taking depositions and producing transcripts.  They work for themselves, set their price schedules and charge the prevailing market prices of the area for the job and per page, with rush jobs and extra copies costing more. 

Court reporters and realtime captioners provide translation services for the deaf or hearing impaired or for translation from one language to another.  By coupling shorthand machine reporting with computer-aided transcription (CAT), reporters provide realtime testimony that can appear on video monitors.  Closed captioning of television broadcasts is provided by realtime captioners, some working at home, and it is a service growing rapidly by changes in the mandatory FCC regulations of the television industry.