High-Tech Transcripts : Court Scribes Punch Into the Computer Age

They sit poker-faced and motionless, staring calmly into space, nimble fingers striking a silent keyboard.

Six hours a day they record the monologues and histrionics that punctuate a courtroom day. For another six hours or so, they retreat to windowless cubicles and race deadlines to translate odd-looking symbols into printed transcripts.

They are California’s more than 800 “certified shorthand reporters,” popularly called court reporters, who from their perch close to the judge’s bench are responsible for creating the record of all the state’s court proceedings.

Despite their titles, they gave up the quill pen and scratching shorthand squiggles on paper long ago. Since the Bruno Hauptmann trial of 1935, reporters have punched lettered symbols into small stenotyping machines on stands at their knees.

Their workaday world is one of 60-hour weeks, high stress that some insurers consider second only to that of air traffic controllers and fears of being replaced by tape recorders or computers.

Court reporters are unusual among government employees because they are salaried workers and at the same time independent contractors.

In California, the pay for both jobs is set by the Legislature--about $41,000 in annual salary for transcribing what happens in court and $1.38 a page to the independent contractor for producing the required transcripts on his own time. Producing transcripts can mean $10,000 or so a year.

In criminal trials, where the law requires production of a transcript, taxpayers pay for them; in civil trials, litigants pay.

It takes a certain kind of person to be a court reporter--someone who likes long hours, is self-motivated and adept at English grammar, can hide emotions and reactions and is able to handle stress.

“Sometimes I am aware of 90% of what is going on in the courtroom and could tell you about it all from memory,” said Alison Graff, president of the Los Angeles County Court Reporters Assn. “But there are times when I just turn into a machine.”

Men once dominated the career, when it was considered unseemly for young women to hear courtroom language about heinous crimes, but since the mid-1960s women have more than caught up. Female reporters now outnumber men about two to one.

Graff, who serves on the California Court Reporters Assn. recruiting committee, attributes the change partly to women’s realization that they can earn more than secretarial pay as reporters while using basic secretarial skills and to men’s failure to learn such skills as typing in high school.

“The dropout rate in court reporting school is quite high,” said Gary M. Cramer, chairman of the county association’s Municipal Court Reporters Committee.

“I think that’s because the job requires a combination of physical skill and mental ability. You can be very smart, but if you can’t move your fingers, you ain’t gonna make it.”

The state currently has a shortage.

Court reporters, administrators and educators are certain that the major reason behind that shortage is the fear that the entire profession will be eliminated by “ER”--electronic recording, or tape recorders.

It’s a false fear, the reporters and those who hire them insist. “CAT,” for “computer-aided transcripts,” is the only new technological acronym reporters should care about, they agree, and computers are there to help reporters, not to replace them.

The Legislature governs whether tape recorders can be allowed in court. Municipal courts are permitted to use them if they choose, and a bill is pending to allow experiments in Superior Court.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court, which employes 216 official reporters and about 80 others on a per-diem rate with limited benefits, has said since a 1972 study that tape recorders would be useful in only the 5% of its courtrooms where transcripts are rarely required.

“Our idea of the Superior Court of the future is that we will have computer-compatible reporters side by side with electronic recording, with the electronic recording in about 5% of courts. The standard reporter without computer skills will probably be phased out,” said Burdette Harris, director of court staff services for the nation’s largest court.

Two main problems with tape recorders, reporters and court administrators agree, are that the machines record courtroom noise as well as voices and that producing transcripts from tapes is time-consuming and expensive.

“We have been involved in the tape recorder debate every year for 50 years--at least 15 in my own experience,” Cramer said. “The bottom line argument from our perspective is the inability of the tape recorder to discriminate. It will record everything that goes on, but it can’t distinguish between words and noise.”

In the traditional system, in which a reporter dictates the transcript from the steno machine notes into a recorder for a typist to transcribe, or types the transcript herself or himself, reporters estimate that producing a transcript takes about three hours for every hour spent in the courtroom.

But because tapes must be replayed repeatedly by the typist trying to distinguish words and voices, Cramer said, experience shows that at least an eight-hour work day can be required for each hour in the hearing room.

Small wonder that tape recorders are considered less of a job threat and that the computer-aided transcript method is catching on. Producing a transcript with the help of a computer, reporters have learned, can take as little as one hour out of court for each hour in court.

In 1984, a statewide survey by the California Court Reporters Assn. showed that 22% of official court reporters were “on the computer.” This year, the number jumped to nearly a third.

Harris, who hires for the Superior Court, advertises only for computer-compatible applicants. With 28% of its reporters using computers, the court knows the direction it wants to go.

“CAT helps the court by speeding up transcript preparation,” Harris said, “and it saves us money.”

Traditionally, two reporters have worked in tandem in a courtroom where a “daily” transcript--one typed and given to lawyers the day the testimony recorded occurred, rather than months later--was required. With a computer, some reporters are able to do the work alone, transcribing throughout the court during the day and printing it out on the computer before dinner.

To encourage this, which reporters estimate can save taxpayers $500,000 annually, the court offers solo reporters 1 1/2 times the $158.39 daily salary.

Reporters do not look at the computer system as a means of saving money. They like it because it saves time and offers job security.

The equipment is expensive and, as independent contractors, they pay for it. Cramer’s computer-adapted steno machine, terminal, translator and printer, which he shares with three other reporters, cost $44,000. Veteran civil court reporter Michael W. Pettit’s system, designed for one reporter, cost $30,000.

The equipment, plus pay for a “scopist” to edit the transcript if the reporter does not do it himself, figures out to about the same amount reporters have paid typists in the past.

“It’s not really cheaper, but it’s much faster. I save 25% to 50% of out-of-court time,” Pettit said. “We are just pioneering. I got into it because I wanted to ride the wave of the future. I wanted to provide better service and not come down here every weekend just to catch up.”

Using the computer-aided system, a reporter transcribes court proceedings on an adapted steno machine that he later plugs into his computer terminal to unload the electronic notes. The notes (which can also be transmitted over telephone lines to other cities or offices outside court or translated on a courtroom screen for deaf litigants) are then translated into English by a dictionary component programmed to recognize court terms, edited on the terminal by the reporter or scopist, and printed.

The use of computers by reporters has been discussed since the mid-1960s, but the system only came into popular use about five years ago. The reasons that reporters balk at using computers include the expense of equipment and the time and effort it takes to learn the new system.

Florine Babajian, a civil courts reporter for nearly 20 years, said she has been a holdout because her transcript workload had not allowed her the estimated six months needed to learn the computer system.

But her attitude, like that of an increasing number of contemporaries, is changing.

“Now I no longer feel threatened by ER, and I have more time,” she said, “so I’m thinking of going on the computer. I think it would give me a new lease on the job. It might be kind of fun just to try it.”

Veteran reporters have more to learn than computer keyboards and electronic instructions. When they went to court reporter schools, a w on the steno machine, for example, meant either with or were, and the reporter filled in the correct choice from the context when he dictated or typed his notes.

“But the computer, although fast, is dumb,” said James Patterson, president of the Bryan College of Court Reporting, with 200 students the largest of the half a dozen schools in the Los Angeles area. “It doesn’t understand context, so (it) prints both words, causing confusion and requiring more editing.”

“So now we teach w for with and wr for were ,” said Nancy Patterson, his wife and director of the school. “We now train all students in computer-compatible language (one stroke for each word) and in using the computer.”

And reporters must also train their computers. Pettit has worked for four years on a “dictionary” for his computer, programming it to use words he commonly records in complex civil litigation. For each job--like his current case with 30 attorneys--he also creates a “job dictionary,” including names of the speakers and specific words.

“In a criminal trial, the biggest words are gun or knife , and the computer would know those words,” Pettit said. “But the computer doesn’t know a word like heteroscedasticity, so it will just make gibberish marks and I have to type the word in.”

Despite the high stress and changing technology, reporters speak glowingly of their jobs and wonder why the profession has a shortage.

“It is exciting. It is fun. It is rewarding because you know you are making a contribution and making the system work,” said Graff after 13 years on the job. “It is personally challenging because you are tested on your skills on a daily basis. And the profession offers a daily education.”