COURT REPORTING

Career Opportunities

The invaluable skill you will learn as a Court Reporter can lead to a career not only in the courtroom or deposition, but also in the field of Broadcast Captioning or CART Reporting.

Here’s some additional information on the opportunities available:

Court Reporting – Judicial Reporting
This is the largest area of employment for Court Reporters. These reporters take records of court proceedings, depositions, and administrative hearings. The cases may be controversial and highly publicized, like criminal trials, millionaire divorces, government corruption trials, and lawsuits against everyone from movie stars to elected officials to professional athletes.

  • The average income for judicial reporters is about $62,000 and the highest paid 10% earn more than $75,000.
  • Deposition reporters are typically paid per job and receive a per-page fee for transcripts. How much they earn depends on where they work, how much they work and how fast they can produce the transcripts.
  • The salaries and page rates for Court Reporters in New York City are among the highest in the country.

Closed / Broadcast Captioning
Those little captions that you see scrolling on TV are actually created by a stenographer with special equipment and a live-feed to a broadcast network. This work can be performed either at a central office or in the comfort of the captioner’s home, depending upon the agency.

  • The FCC mandated that by 2006 all new TV programming had to be captioned, resulting in high  job growth and an excellent new career path for trained Court Reporters .
  • Captioners can earn from $35,000 to $75,000 per year or more, depending on experience and the number of hours they work.

CART – Communications Access Realtime Reporting
These reporters provide specialized services to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. They may attend classes and translate the lectures and classroom discussions into readable text so students with hearing problems can follow and participate. These reporters also provide services for deaf and hard-of-hearing people in churches, weddings, business settings, doctors’ offices, and anywhere there is a need for communication access

  • CART reporters can earn from $35,000 to $65,000 per year or more, depending on the client, location and the number of hours they work.