4-H Virtual Career Night

Brief Professional Biography:
I work in the legal field as a court reporter. While I have worked in the courtroom in the past, I mainly now report depositions, which are out of court proceedings which have the same “under oath” testimony to be used in court, but are usually held in attorney’s offices before trial. I love my job.

Brief Personal and Professional Biography:
I have worked for large court reporting agencies in the past in Los Angeles and Hawaii, but currently I have my own business in Salem, Oregon.

What is one highlight of your career field?
Every day I listen and learn about something new. It’s the original reality TV, but a front row seat! I work in the legal field, but the same skill that I have can also be used for “closed captioning,” those words you see for the hearing impaired on your TV! That person is called a captioner.

How did you get to your career?
My father was an attorney, and he talked with a reporter he had been working with

What does your average day look like on your job?
I travel to an attorney’s office, set up my stenograph machine. I am in charge of swearing in the witness to tell the truth. The attorneys ask questions related to the lawsuit and I listen, “translate” it in my brain, much as a language interpreter does, and “type” it into a keyboard phonetically. It is then cabled into my computer software and comes up in English. I take this back to my office, and read through the English, editing any transcription errors I’ve made, and correctly punctuating to make a readable transcript. I then prepare an invoice and e-mail the transcript to attorney clients for their use in court.

Are there any tips you have for individuals seeking to start this career or do you know if there are scholarship or internship opportunities available with your career?
A website called Project Steno has all this information. It is designed for people who are interested in the profession.