Court reporting alive and well despite new technology. Charles Dickens, perhaps the most famous court reporter of all time, said learning the ''noble art and mystery of stenography'' plunged him ''into a sea of perplexity.'' More than 150 years after Dickens wrote those words about shorthand in ''David Copperfield,'' the noble and perplexing art remains a lucrative and fulfilling profession…for those who can master the craft. Dickens made a lot of money as a shorthand reporter for Parliament and various newspapers. Modern stenographers are also handsomely paid, said E. Duane Smith, president of the National Court Reporters Association. While some believe technology will make court reporting an obsolete profession, it hasn't happened yet, and Mr. Smith's booming business and work as president of the National Court Reporters' Association is evidence that the profession is healthy and growing. The image of the court reporter reading back lines in dramatic courtroom scenes is familiar to most of us. But Mr. Smith said the bulk of work for reporters happens in the pre-trial discovery process. Mr. Smith, who has been a court reporter for 32 years and owner and chief executive of reporting business CRC-Salomon for the last 10 years, said most people love reporting because every day is different and it's a very mobile profession. ''There's a huge variety in the kind of work you can do, the kind of cases you're involved in,'' Mr. Smith said. ''I've traveled to every major city in the United States, to Europe and to Asia doing reporting in various kinds of cases, so I love that part of it.'' Speed and accuracy make up the backbone of court reporting, and Mr. Smith said reporters should be able to take down a mind-boggling 225 words per minute before they can graduate and work in the field. ''It's a service kind of business, and what we really do is we sell trust,' Mr. Smith said. ''People hire us because they trust us to perform a service at a high level, and I like that. I really like that.'' Learning shorthand for some people would be as difficult as learning Chinese. What makes a good court reporter? Are there specific characteristics or traits people have that make them naturals as court reporters? Mr. Smith said he wishes he knew, but said excellent English skills and a broad, worldly education help. There is talk within the profession that court reporting should become a graduate-level course, requiring a bachelor's degree to attend court-reporting school. Although he has no scientific evidence, Mr. Smith believes musicians have a natural proclivity to court reporting. That makes sense, because piano players read music and directly translate what they have read to their hands. Court reporters listen and immediately translate words and syllables to their hands on the keyboard—often simultaneously striking keys to form multiple words. ''Piano players in particular seem to have a much easier time,'' he said. ''And I think a lot of it is the process we go through listening to words, to information, and then it goes directly from your brain to your hands without making a stop anywhere else.'' Mr. Smith became interested in court reporting early in the 1970s when his then wife was studying the craft and he was working as a management trainee for a finance firm. She eventually dropped out, and he enrolled in the McMahon College or Court Reporting in Houston. Mr. Smith said he didn't foresee becoming a business owner but is glad he did. He bought the company he'd been working for in Baltimore in 1985 and now employs six full-time staff and about 25 freelance reporters. Freelance reporters make up the bulk of the profession, working on everything from depositions and arbitration, closed captioning for television, and as one-on-one reporters for the hearing impaired. CART, which stands for Communication Access Realtime Translation, is becoming increasingly common for court reporters, Mr. Smith said. ''We have right now a full-time student at the University of Maryland Law School who is completely deaf,'' he said. ''One of the reporters travels to every class with this person and writes in real time, in other words they write on the machine, and it's displayed on a laptop computer right in front of this student. So this student has complete access to everything that's going on in the classroom.'' Since nearly all stenography software is in English, Mr. Smith believes a major trend will be a growing demand for foreign-language court reporters, particularly for Spanish court reporters in the United States for closed-captioning television. Because reporters must be independent, they do not work directly for law firms. ''Under our code of professional ethics, we're required to be impartial and independent, and to be an employee of an insurance company or a law firm would violate that portion of our code of professional ethics,'' he said. Being freelance is the reason court reporters can make so much money, because they can work as much or as little as they like. The median income for court reporters across the country is $60,000, but Mr. Smith said that includes reporters working in low-paying courtrooms, and most reporters make much more. Even as chief executive, Mr. Smith was CRC-Salomon's top producer, continuing to go out on reporting jobs while performing his administrative duties. That changed last summer when he became president of the NCRA. Mr. Smith, who is originally from a tiny town in Missouri called Climax Springs, said since he became president of the association on August 1, he has traveled to various meetings and conventions every weekend. The most successful court reporters do plenty of research before a job, he said. If a court reporter is handling a deposition on a patent case, for example, the reporter should speak with the attorneys about the case first and research the products involved. ''You could be working on a personal injury case involving a car accident, and the next day you could be working on an intellectual property case that has to do with the creation of a new drug to treat hepatitis or AIDS,'' he said. ''A lot of it is just knowledge and experience—how to deal with certain situations, how to deal with fast witnesses or difficult subject matter, and the key to doing all of that successfully is lots of preparation. Knowing the subject matter, knowing the people you're going to be working with.'' And if a reporter mishears a word? It happens, but Mr. Smith said most court-reporting software comes with digital audio backups that also have timestamps linked to the transcripts. ''So you can go to any word in the transcript, point your cursor at the word, and play the audio,'' he said. ''More and more it's becoming the trend that transcripts are verified in-house against the audio to insure 100-percent accuracy. But you have to remember that even 99.5-percent accuracy is pretty darn good.'' Witnesses are able to go online to check transcripts for accuracy and say if they disagree with something in the record. ''We always strive for perfection, and I think the huge majority of times we get there,'' he said.

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