Court and Deposition Reporting

Court reporters, the guardians of courtroom records, are literally front and center in courtroom proceedings.  High-profile criminal cases, multi-attorney cases, trials involving complex issues, and courts where anyone from a juror to the judge has a hearing impairment – these are the courtrooms where judiciary reporters are called upon to preserve the record to safeguard everyone’s rights in the legal process. When lawyers want to exercise their right to appeal an unfavorable decision, they look to the transcript to provide an accurate record of what transpired during their case.

StenoTech offers a 3000-clock-hour diploma program in both day and evening divisions at our Fairfield campus with a daytime program at our Piscataway campus. The average completion time for a full-time student is 30 months. During the first 9 months of the program, students learn realtime theory, which forms the foundation for conflict-free machine writing (stenotype). Theory is followed by self-paced progression through five speed-building levels until the student reaches a speed of 225 words per minute.

Students graduate with confidence and highly marketable skills that allow rapid placement in the field. Most graduates enter the lucrative field of freelance court reporting, where there is a never-ending source of reporting assignments. Much of the freelance work involves the taking of pretrial deposition testimony, hearings, and conferences. Compensation is derived from attendance fees and a per-page fee for transcript production. Judicial reporting assignments in the courts are available for realtime reporters on either an official (permanent) or freelance assignment basis.

Graduates may also choose employment in one of the many new areas where realtime writing skills are required, such as broadcast captioning, CART (Communications Access Realtime Translation), webcasting, text editing and scoping, and many other medical, legal, and corporate transcription applications. The flexibility and variations are endless and include work for those who wish to travel extensively or prefer to have a home-based career. Income is generally determined by the type and amount of work that a court reporter is willing to handle. Average annual earnings are $62,000, though ambitious reporters earn well upwards of $100,000 annually.