What Do You Do for a Living?

Over the years, friends and people whom I’ve met have asked me what I did for a living; I tried to come up with a phrase that explains our industry better than “court reporting.”  Sometimes I would respond by saying, “litigation support” or “attorney consulting.” Unfortunately, neither of those phrases adequately describes what we actually do for a living.

So, how would you describe court reporting and what a court reporting service does? I would describe it as a stenographer translating the spoken word into text with the use of a stenotype machine and computer aided transcription (CAT) software such as ProCat, CaseViewNet or Eclipse.  At Planet Depos, all of our court reporters  are stenographers who transcribe the spoken word into text.   Most commonly, our court reporters perform these services at law firms, hospital, hotels and courthouses and report verbatim proceedings such as depositions, arbitrations, mediations, hearings and trials.

In a deposition setting, the court reporter will administer the oath to the witness and thereafter every word spoken is taken down unless all parties agree to go off the record.   Most of the time, the attorneys speak one at a time. It usually goes like this. The taking attorney will ask the witness a question, opposing counsel may object and then the witness answers that question. Sometimes, in a heated exchange, the parties may talk simultaneously.  This makes the court reporter’s job quite difficult as she is only able to take down one person at a time. Realtime court reporters are reporters who have achieved the highest skill level and are able to write with almost flawless accuracy.

Once the proceedings have concluded, the court reporter and/or her scopist insert the title, index and certification pages and review the transcript word for word.   The final product is then sent to our production facility, where it is subjected to an extensive quality control process and then emailed and/or shipped to our clients.

So when a friend asked me yesterday, “What do you do for a living?” I hesitated and then said to myself, “just tell him what you do. Don’t beat around the bush.” So, I responded by saying,
“We provide court reporting services,” and then explained what it was.