MIDLAND, Texas — You often hear mentions of court reporters or may have even seen them at work if you’ve ever been in a courthouse.
But it seems not a lot of people understand what they do exactly.
“When I talk to kids my kids’ age, I’ll say I’m a court reporter, they don’t even know what that is," said Stephanie Blair, a local court reporter. "‘What do you mean? What is that?’ I don’t think they know and if they do know they think that electronic recording has taken over and electronic recording cannot do what we do.”
There're two types of court reporters: official and freelance. Both do similar work but have different focuses.
"An official court reporter is the ones you see in the courtroom," said Susan Lilly, president and owner of Permian Court Reporters, Inc. "They're the ones that work for the judge or paid by the state. Then there's freelance court reporters, which is what we do; we do depositions, we do the pretrial work. So we are out at different lawyers' offices, we even go to some people's homes or other places of business to take down testimony."
Becoming a court reporter is considered a trade, so there's no need to have a college degree to be one. You just need to go to a court reporter school or attend classes online. The schooling takes about two years to finish and then you can start working in the industry.
To learn more about the industry, click here.