COURT REPORTING AND CLOSED CAPTIONING CAREERS
With the advent of realtime writing taught by the Court Reporting and Captioning at Home Program, it is not unusual for Court Reporters and Broadcast Captioners to earn over $100,000 per year.
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The two most important components in court reporting, broadcast captioning, and CART providing training in any method of training are: the theory you learn and the support you receive during your training. Either of them can ensure your success … or your failure.
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Your court reporting career may utilize your court reporting skills in a variety of ways. You may be a freelance court reporter who owns your own business, or a freelance court reporter whose job is to work for a court reporting firm or court reporting agency, or a CART (Communications Access Realtime Translation) court reporter whose job is to write for hearing impaired persons, utilizing your steno machine connected to a laptop computer, usually in the college or university environment. You may be a broadcast closed captioner, whose court reporting job utilzes your court reporting skills to capure the text of live television programs for television captioning companies. Your court reporting job may also be as an official court reporter whose court reporting job it is to report trials and hearings for state and federal courts, both civil and criminal.
COURT REPORTING FIRMS AND FREELANCE COURT REPORTERS
Freelance Court Reporters comprise about two thirds
of the total court reporters nationwide. Their court reporting job is to report depositions primarily, but other assignments include arbitrations, mediations, conventions, company meetings, etc. In some states freelance court reporters are allowed to report trials and hearings in the civil court system. Your court reporting job may be to work as a freelance court reporter who works for a court reporting firm or agency as they are sometimes called. The firm or agency will either consider you a full-time employee and take a commission from you while withholding the usual taxes an employer is responsible for withholding, or they will consider you an independent contractor and take a commission from you for the assignments you handle. You are at liberty with some firms or agencies to accept assignments directly from attorneys or from other firms or agencies. The commission charged by firms range from 10% to 30% across the United States with 20-25% being the average. In exchange for this commission, firms or agencies furnish some of your supplies, business cards, assignments, and an office if you are an employee. It is not unusual today for realtime freelance court reporters to earn six figures.
Closed captioning is performed by reporters who learn a captioning software and write the captions you see underneath the television program for hearing impaired persons. There are numerous captioning companies, and learning court reporting skills is the first step. Most closed captioning companies require the court reporter to write 180-200 wpm literary dictation with 97% accuracy (or greater) to be eligible to train for this career.
Closed Captioning requires a more refined skill, because there is no opportunity to go back and edit the captions. In court reporting, the court reporter does have the ability to edit the transcript prior to the attorneys reading it unless the attorneys have requested the reporter to write the assignment realtime. National captioning companies start their captioners out at about $70,000 per year. For detailed information regarding Closed Captioning School
REPORTING IN THE COURTS-THE OFFICIAL COURT REPORTER
As an "official"court reporter, you will work in the court system. Almost all criminal court systems employ their own court reporters, and in some states the civil courts are also covered by official reporters. As an official, you may be a county, state, or federal employee who receives a salary and in most states also receive a page rate for the transcripts of the trials and hearings you produce.
Salaries vary from state to state and even county to county from the low end of about $45,000 to the high end of about $85,000 for a federal official. The income an official earns for transcripts on top of their annual salary vary from about $20,000 to $30,000 annually.
As a county, state, or federal employee, you have the security of a set monthly income plus transcripts, and a benefits package that may include health insurance, life insurance, 401-K, paid vacation, holidays, sick leave, etc. Some officials are furnished their equipment and software in some states. About 1/3 of all court reporters are officials.
