`Let’s go,” says the young woman in the blue suit, glancing at her watch.
Moments later, she’s pulling her favorite contraption-a steno machine-on a dolly through the streets of downtown Chicago.
We’re headed for the mandatory arbitration center of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Carla Wilson, court reporter, must be there for a 2 p.m. hearing. Room No. 26. Arbitrator George Layer in charge.
It’s a twice-a-day ritual in Chicago’s legal district. At 9:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. the free-lance court reporters, most of them women, set off for their 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. assignments.
Some are taking depositions in lawyers’ offices. Others are going to hearings of one kind or another.
“People see me pulling my equipment, and they think I’m a flight attendant,” Wilson says. “They have no idea what I do.”
In truth, that pretty much tells the story of court reporting as a career. Most high school graduates are only vaguely aware that such an occupation exists. Maybe they noticed a court reporter on “L.A. Law” or some other TV show, sitting ramrod straight in a courtroom, tapping on what appears to be a miniature typewriter.
More likely, they’ve never given court reporting a second thought.
But the demand for court reporters is so great, and the supply so slim in many cities, that court reporting agencies can’t cover all the assignments that come their way.
“It hurts to turn away business because we can’t find a warm body,” says Catherine Mrozek, a partner in Rubin Mrozek Associates. “Like it or not, we live in a litigious society. There’s a huge demand for court reporters in Chicago.”
Mrozek, 38, is a crack court reporter in a business that demands finger-flying typing speed (at least 225 words a minute for state certification), total concentration, enormous self-discipline, a flexible attitude and a pleasant personality.
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“What we’re looking for,” Mrozek says, “is someone who gets it, someone who knows how to deal with attorneys.”
“It’s hard. It’s stressful,” says senior partner Linda Rubin. “But even if you don’t pass the exam for court reporting, you can end up as a very good secretary.”
With the stiff requirements, there are only about 45,000 court reporters in the U.S. The dropout rate in the 400 schools that teach court reporting is high and the passing rate on state exams is low.
But the rewards for those who survive are worth the struggle.
“You may earn only $18,000 the first year,” says Mrozek, “but in five years you can be making $50,000 a year.”
A study conducted in 1991 found a median income of $45,000 among court reporters. A quarter of all court reporters were making more than $64,000 a year, and now salaries are even higher.
“You can earn in excess of $75,000 in 1994 by working with us,” says an ad in Journal of Court Reporting, published by the National Court Reporters Association. “Fringe benefits include steady work and assignments you’ll really enjoy.”
Carla Wilson, who is 24 and comes from Munster, Ind., earned more than $40,000 last year as a free-lancer working out of the Rubin Mrozek office. “I’m really happy with it,” she says.
Job stress? “You get used to it,” she says.
Wilson, a graduate of the College of Court Reporting in Hobart, Ind., took the Illinois licensing exam four times before passing, even though she’d studied the subject for 34 months.
Originally, she wanted to be a nurse, but “court reporting is more lucrative and more flexible than nursing,” she said. “I like being an independent contractor.”
She earned $87.50 for less than two hours’ work at the arbitration hearing and $105 at a court hearing earlier in the day. A request for a transcript of either proceeding would bring in more money.
Rubin Mrozek, which has a dozen free-lancers on its roster, does all the billing and collects a fee from its 350 clients, usually about 30 percent, in addition to what the court reporters earn.
The arbitration hearing was typical of what Wilson might run into on a given day. Her client, an insurance company, wanted a record of a dispute over a 1990 accident involving two paralegals driving a station wagon and a delivery man driving a van. Each side said the other driver ran a red light.
There was a lot of back-and-forth sparring among two lawyers, three arbitrators, the two paralegals, the delivery man and a witness who saw the accident.
“It wasn’t that difficult,” she said on the way back to Rubin Mrozek, where she pays $125 a month for use of office space. “The hard part of this job is working on short deadlines, staying up all night to do a transcript for the next day.”
Wilson, like many free-lancers, has no desire to become an “official” court reporter, someone who works on salary at a 9-to-5 job for a court or some other government agency.
About two-thirds of court reporters are free-lancers. Many find official courtroom work too gloomy or monotonous, even though they get no health insurance, pension or paid vacation as free-lancers.
They would rather do something different each day, stay home when they choose and take out-of-town assignments when asked.
Women taking over
Wilson, Mrozek and Rubin all are married, but many court reporters, says Rubin, are single women supporting families on one income. The pay is high enough to make that possible.
Traditionally, court reporting was a male-dominated occupation, but most of the men still in the business are over 50. More than 96 percent of court reporters under 35 are women, according to a 1992 report by Laurence Levin, an economist at Santa Clara University, and Joyce Jacobsen, an economist at Wesleyan University.
Jacobsen favors official court reporting over free-lancing. The benefits are better, she says.
“Court reporting is clearly a step up the ladder for those who join it,” she writes. “It is an occupation that people strive to enter, rather than fall into by default.”
For some, the technology can be daunting.
The primary tool, a steno machine, is based on phonetics, with the left hand hitting keys that create the beginning sound of a word and the right hand hitting end-of-word sounds.
Court reporters learn how to link a steno machine to a computer, a process known as computer-aided transcription. Testimony is displayed on a screen for editing or easy viewing.
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The fear among some court reporters is that audiotapes, videotapes and voice-to-print technology will make their jobs obsolete, but Rubin isn’t worried. “We’ll be the ones using the technology,” she says.
Besides, she says, technology doesn’t always work. “We’re not threatened by what’s out there currently,” she says.
Only a few court reporters have a four-year college degree; most spend two or three years at a business school or community college, studying such subjects as legal and medical terminology, learning how to take live dictation and honing typing skills.
For information about education programs approved by the National Court Reporters Association, write to the NCRA at 8224 Old Courthouse Rd., Vienna, Va. 22182-3808. Or call 703-556-6272, extension 20.