Keep Calm, and Report On: 3 Traits of a Good Court Reporter and Why You Should Adopt Them Immediately
With any profession, there are lessons that travel: qualities required to get the job done that carry over to other walks of life. Court reporting requires a lot out of those who do it, and there are a few things court reporters learn from experience that can’t necessarily be taught.
Court Reporters: Keeping it Simple When the Proceedings Get Complicated
Court Reporting can be a highly stressful career, and the transcriptionists at Infinity Reporting Company spend a lot of time in the charged environment of courtroom, mediation or deposition area, dutifully recording the proceedings for precedence and posterity. A few things I tell all of my court reporters to keep in mind during a contentious trial:
Quality: Our records are used to establish precedence for future cases, in addition to being a requirement for a successful trial.
In many cases, the defendant or plaintiff’s quality of life depends on the quality of our records—so we make sure that they’re 100% accurate, every time.
Conciseness: Court Reporting and transcribing of official records happens in real time, and we use a system of shorthand coding to accurately record events, conversations and lines of questioning as they happen.
In that way, being concise is sort of a “built-in” feature of our work, and it helps us get things done faster and more accurately than other methods.
Calmness and Composure: An even keel can be hard to come by in the middle of a courtroom that has become embroiled in a heated debate. Many of the court cases we record touch on sensitive subjects like family law and accident litigation, and all the parties involved have very real interests at stake.
Any reaction by the person transcribing the proceedings might tilt the testimony or the judgment in one way or another—it’s easy to get swept up in the rush of a defendant’s indignant reaction, but as court reporters it’s our duty to keep the record in a calm and dispassionate manner.
How you can follow suit if you're not in our industry: Anyone can apply these qualities and practices to their own professional and personal lives. You'll get better results if you remain focused on quality, not quantity, and remaining "zen," so-to-speak, when you're confronted with life's challenging moments will keep your own record in check.
Infinity Reporting Company, LLC: Dedicated to Our Craft, and the Qualities That Come With It
We strive to provide the most accurate transcription of any legal proceeding or important meeting we transcribe, whether it’s a deposition, mediation, recorded statement, video deposition, on-site municipal minutes, or courtroom trial.
About Infinity Reporting Company: Our agency is a boutique court reporting service that provides services across Florida. Infinity court reporters have been trained so that clients receive the best in legal transcription services. Our office in DeLand works with courts in Daytona Beach, Port Orange and elsewhere around Volusia County to make sure that the record is kept straight—we also have satellite offices around the state of Florida! Call us today at 386.675.4045 to get a quote on a transcription or to schedule a court reporting service from one of our dedicated transcriptionists.