Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners
Use verbatim methods and equipment to capture, store, retrieve, and transcribe pretrial and trial proceedings or other information. Includes stenocaptioners who operate computerized stenographic captioning equipment to provide captions of live or prerecorded broadcasts for hearing-impaired viewers.
- Median pay
- $72,420
- Doing it now
- 19,900
- By 2035
- Down 0.1%
- Usually needs
- Postsecondary nondegree award
a year
across the country
1,800 openings a year
to get in
What the work involves
- Provide transcripts of proceedings upon request of judges, lawyers, or the public.
- Record verbatim proceedings of courts, legislative assemblies, committee meetings, and other proceedings, using computerized recording equipment, electronic stenograph machines, or stenomasks.
- Transcribe recorded proceedings in accordance with established formats.
- Ask speakers to clarify inaudible statements.
- File a legible transcript of records of a court case with the court clerk's office.
- File and store shorthand notes of court session.
- Respond to requests during court sessions to read portions of the proceedings already recorded.
What to study
The fields of study the Department of Education links to this occupation, most widely taught first.
- Legal Support ServicesSee 108 colleges that teach it
- Audiovisual Communications Technologies/TechniciansSee 64 colleges that teach it
Who it suits
O*NET scores every occupation on six interest dimensions. This one leans hardest on these three.
Organised and precise
Creative and expressive
Helping and teaching
Careers like this one
Where this comes from: the description and the task list are O*NET, which the Department of Labor maintains. Pay, workforce size, outlook and the education normally needed are the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections programme, 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections. Half of them earn more than $72,420 a year, which means half earn less, and what you would earn depends on where you work and how long you have been doing it. The fields of study come from the National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk.