When Not to Disseminate Copy Sales

It’s 10 o’clock Monday night, and the agency number is blinking on your Caller ID. Reluctantly, you pick up the receiver. It’s the Scheduling Manager, and she’d like to know if you’d be interested in taking a 3- or 4-hour job tomorrow morning close to home. Thrilled at the prospect of a close assignment, you accept; and in less than a minute, the assignment information lands in your email Inbox.

The next morning at the law firm, you are ushered into a very large conference room, where you set up, input your job dictionary, and warm up. Within minutes, the conference room begins filling with people not listed on the Notice, so you get their appearances, create a seating chart, place the witness under oath, and the deposition begins and ends all within five hours. Not a single term the expert chemical engineer testified about was in your dictionary, but you’re not worried. You have 48 hours to get the job out, so you head home and begin editing.

Everything is going well until a journalist from the local newspaper calls and asks if she may purchase a copy of the transcript. Not knowing what to tell her, you give her the name and telephone number of the Production Manager for followup. A few minutes later, the agency returns the call and thanks you for not promising the journalist a transcript. She explains Provision 4 of the Code of Professional Ethics and Advisory Opinion 9, which speak about the confidentiality and security of information entrusted to the reporter, including depositions not filed with the Clerk of Court or agreed by all parties to be disseminated.

Satisfied that you did the right thing, you return to the dense testimony, and are reminded of your teacher’s words: As a court reporter, you aren’t just a cog in the wheels of justice, you are one of the very wheels upon which justice depends.