Two court reporters with vastly different backgrounds share industry changes
Fifty years ago, Glen Dorrough became a court reporter mostly to avoid manual labor. He stuck with the profession his entire life, serving as as an Oklahoma court reporter.
Even back then, Dorrough heard a refrain that should sound familiar to those who follow the court reporting industry to this day – tape recorders threatened to replace court reporters. As Dorrough enters retirement at age 70, he's not surprised that court reporters are still so widely used.
"[Dorrough] believes that a person will always be required to decipher things that a computer didn't translate, to look up esoteric terminology, to verify proper names, to make sure speakers are correctly identified and to insert the proper punctuation to make certain that a transcript is readable," according to the Tulsa Daily World article that profiled Dorrough.
A different perspective
Half a country away in Manhattan, Rebecca Forman also works as a court reporter. She shared with the New York Times some of her experiences since she entered the field in 2003.
And although Forman's experience isn't nearly as extensive as Dorrough's, she's still seen her own share of changes in the last decade.
When she started out, there were always murmurs that court reporters would eventually produce transcripts in real-time, so that judges and other parties involved in a trial or deposition would be able to immediately access the information. Ten years later, this has finally become a reality, in part because parties want to be able to add notes to the record as it's being produced.
Current Milwaukee court reporters have certainly heard rumors throughout their careers about how the industry would be evolving – some predictions have come to fruition and others haven't. The only constant is that Milwaukee court reporters need to be prepared for anything.
