Alexandra Pais/New Jersey Local News ServiceViola Zborowski, a director of the National Court Reporters Association, says court reporters provide a more accurate transcript of legal hearings than electronic recorders.WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP — Viola Zborowski was at a high school career day in Old Bridge when she first considered a future in court reporting.
She was intrigued by the possibilities, pursued the opportunity and graduated Edison’s Cittone Institute in 1981.
In the three decades since, the Long Valley resident, has been told – on too many occasions to count – that her beloved profession was on its way out. The job, which has afforded her the opportunity to travel around the world, set her own hours and provide for her family would soon no longer exist, she was told. She would surely be replaced by a machine.
Hasn’t happened.
And Zborowski, 54, who was recently elected as one of eight directors to the National Court Reporters Association, doesn’t think it ever will.
Sure, the profession’s popularity has waned in recent years, but it is picking back up, Zborowski said.
The U.S. Department of Labor expects an 18 percent growth in jobs by 2018.
“We need reporters,” Zborowski said. “There aren’t enough to do the work.”
Court reporters come in many forms. Some work in courtrooms transcribing legal arguments, others take depositions, some perform closed-captioning work for live television and others transcribe lectures for the deaf.
They type at a speed at which most people read.
To become certified, the National Court Reporters Association, which has more than 20,000 members, requires being able to type 225 words per minute.
Stenography machines have consonants along the side and vowels at the bottom. Reporters spell words phonetically.
Zborowski was elected after leading a “steno only” campaign, which she said means aggressively pushing back against the idea that electronic recorders are comparable to the work of a certified court reporter.
Many courts have made the switch as a way to save money.
There are about 60 professional court reporters in New Jersey, according to Winnie Comfort, spokeswoman for the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts, down from 78 in 2005.
The state uses digital recorders in approximately 250 court rooms, Comfort said. Most are in family court, though some are also used in civil and criminal court.
There will always be a need for court reporters, Comfort said. Oral arguments for the state Supreme Court, for example, are streamed online, with real-time closed captioning provided by court reporters.
And despite the availability of electronic recorders, which have ousted some professional court reporters, the industry is booming for reporters outside the courtroom, particularly for those who sit in a high school or college class with the hearing impaired.
“So many people in school weren’t getting serviced,” said Heywood “Woody” Waga, a past president of the National Court Reporters Association. “The demand far exceeds the supply.”
But in an era when cash-strapped governors across the country are looking for ways to cut spending, court reporters are an easy target.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently estimated his state could save $100 million by switching to electronic court reporting.
“We do not need any people there,” Schwarzenegger said last month. “We have the technology now to do the reporting and the recording.”
Not so, Zborowski said.
Court reporters, she said, can distinguish between two voices speaking at once, they are not thrown off by papers shuffling and can pick up faint murmurs or mumbling that escape electronic recording devices.
“It’s a superior way of making the record,” she said. “You deserve, you have a right to, an accurate record.”
Fast Facts
• Mark Kislingbury, of Houston, holds the record as the fastest court reporter in the world, for having transcribed text in 2004 at 360 words per minute with accuracy surpassing 97 percent.
• Women make up 89 percent of the National Court Reporters Association.
• The average annual income for reporters nationwide is $64,000.
• Charles Dickens was a Parliamentary reporter in London. His struggles to learn shorthand became a subplot in “David Copperfield.”
Al Betz has put together a resource that anyone even remotely considering court reporting as a career would do themselves a favor by reading this book. The NCRA is thrilled to be partnering with Al on distribution of this great new resource.
