If you were on trial, you would want the best, wouldn't you? And research has shown prices to purchase electronic recording equipment and transcribers equals court reporter salaries.

A lot of people don't understand what court reporters do. In addition to sitting in court hours each day taking testimony verbatim from a variety of witnesses in a variety of cases involving different subject matter, on our off time, we using a computer word processing program -- and if we can afford it, support staff for proofreading or scoping -- to produce publication-quality transcripts in a short period of time. Producing a transcript takes from one to three times the amount of time the original proceeding consumed. Tape recorders can record sound, but trained humans still need to transcribe the tapes. In the real world, people speak quickly, speak over each other, speak with accents, ambient noise interferes with sound quality, and a live person sitting in the room can ask for repeats if necessary. There is no machine existing that can compete with a court reporter for a trustworthy record of proceedings. It is exhausting, tedious, time-consuming and often times thankless work, but our commitment to being a Guardian of the Record as an officer of the court is what gives us satisfaction. I want to let our brothers and sisters in Magistrate Court know that we have heard about your situation, and support your efforts.