High Paying Career W/ Short Term Training: Court Reporter

The court reporter is the person endowed with the awesome responsibility of preserving the legal record. That person has to keep a verbatim account of legal proceedings. We traditionally think of the court reporter as the person who sits in a courtroom silently typing away on their machine.

The machine that the court reporter uses isn't actually a typewriter it is a stenotype machine. The stenotype machine differs from a typewriter in that it allows the user to type or "write" entire words at a time as opposed to typing a string of letters to make words. Whereas the typical typist can type about 40 words per minute a court reporter can average about 230 words per minute. There are two additional accepted ways of capturing courtroom proceedings, one is electronic recording and the other is voice writing. Voice writing has gained in popularity because of the improving accuracy of speech recognition equipment; the machine that voice writers use is called a stenomask.

An interesting way in which court reporters can use their skill is through Broadcast Captioning. Think about all of the television shows that offer closed captioning (cc) options for the hearing impaired. Even more interesting is Real Time Broadcast Captioning...imagine it, you could be the one to bring every detail of a live event to the hearing impaired community as it happens (real time).

Now is a really good time to get into this field because there is a shortage of qualified professionals. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics the average Court Reporter earns between $33,000 and $61,000 per year. The highest paid Court Reporter earns in excess of $76,000 per year. Their annual salary is dependent upon their length of time in the field for salaried workers and work they choose to do on the side or wholly upon the amount freelance work the self employed professional chooses to take upon themselves...they usually have a plentifull amount of work to complete if they so desire.

Students desiring a career as a Court Reporter or Broadcast captioner spend an average of about 33 months to complete their training. TheNational Court Reporter's Association (NCRA) has set the standards for the profession and you can obtain a list of accredited schools whose students can sit for their certification exam by clicking here.

NCRA certification will demonstrate to potential employees that you have mastered the skills necessary for proficient performance of the desired job. There are different NCRA certifications for each of the different types of subfields of Court Reporting and Broadcast Captioning.

As this short little run down shows, a career in the world of Court Reporting or Broadcast Captioning can be both financially and personally rewarding. Check out these links if you'd like to learn more about this interesting career field:

American Association of Electronic Reporters and Transcribers

United States Court Reporters Association

National Verbatim Reporters Association