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Overview |
Court
reporters are responsible for making a verbatim record of all kinds
of hearings. The record is used primarily for discovery in preparation
for trial, or for the purpose of an appeal to a higher court after
trial. The record may be produced in realtime and displayed on monitors
at the hearing, or as a hard copy printed later.
An explanation at an open house of the income of reporters takes
15 to 20 minutes. However, the income of official and freelance
reporters in Western New York ranges from about $30,000 to $130,000.
In some cities, freelance reporters can make significantly more,
but the national average for all officials and freelance is around
$64,000. The New York State Department of Labor statistics up to
2007 put the median income for court reporters in the state at $71,970.
The
limited number of closed captioning positions with national companies
range from $50,000 to $100,000; local captioning is much lower.
CART services are as often as not provided at little or no charge.
The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics projects
that job opportunities will increase by 25% from 2008 through 2016,
a growth rate higher than the average for all fields.
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Official |
Official
reporters are found in a number of different courts. Most officials
are employed by the Office of Court Administration, in salary grades
ranging from 15 to 28. Officials are normally assigned to one judge,
but some may “float” between judges and/or courts. Some
officials share an item, that is, they share the work week with another
reporter. This may be by working alternate weeks or alternate days
of the week. |
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Freelance |
New reporters in freelance normally
start with a freelance firm. The firms provide the office space,
the clients and the support staff. They also supply most of the
equipment, including CAT (computer aided transcription) systems.
Firms range in size from as few as two or three reporters to, in
some large cities, a hundred or more. A firm is likely to want a
new reporter to be available on a full-time basis; experienced reporters
usually have very flexible schedules. There are also independent
reporters, most of whom work out of their home.
Freelance reporters most often take legal depositions, but they
do cover other areas, including Public Service Commission hearings,
town courts, zoning hearings, arbitrations, and Internet-based hearings
and conferences.
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Captioning
CART
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This is the process which provides
realtime text captioning of television programs. The reporter writes
from the audio, and that text output is encoded in the broadcast
signal by the TV station. Television broadcasts are local and national,
and the captioning coverage tends to be provided in the same way:
locally either by individuals or freelance reporting agencies, nationally
by closed captioning companies. Captioning is often done remotely,
the reporter being in a different location from the program origin,
in some cases working from home.
CART is similar to the verbatim realtime translation
of legal proceedings, but is a service primarily for the hearing
impaired, usually on a one-on-one basis. There is very little if
any funding for CART in Western New York. Therefore, it is not currently
a career opportunity in this area.
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