Career Options:
In addition to court reporting, skilled stenotypists can now pursue alternative careers as captioning experts, scopists, cyber-conference moderators (World Wide Web), legal and medical transcriptionists, rapid data operators or working with individuals or groups representing persons with hearing or vision loss.

Court reporters are in the forefront at controversial and highly publicized cases -- criminal trials, millionaire divorces, federal government corruption trials, lawsuits against everyone from celebrities to politicians to embezzlers.

Career Catagories:
Official Court Reporter
Deposition/Freelance Court Reporter
Hearing Reporter
Realtime Reporter
Realtime Classroom Captioner
Captioner of Business/Organizational Meetings
Medical Transcriptionist
Text Entry Specialist
Realtime Broadcast Captioning
Scopist for a Court Reporter

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Income Potential:
Income varies depending on the type of reporting jobs and experience of the individual reporter.  The median income for court reporting is about $50,000 to $60,000 per year.  However, earning potential is only limited by the amount of time court reporters are willing to work.  Official court reporters earn a salary plus a per-page fee for transcripts.  Freelance court reporters are paid per job, and receive a per-page fee for transcripts.

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The Future of Court Reporting:
The opportunities in the court reporting field are plentiful.  Court reporters will continue to work within the legal community as it expands in the future, as well as develop their role in Information Technology (IT), information processing and management in the business and multimedia communities. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that employment in the field will grow by 18 percent within the next ten years. This career allows persons to choose whether or not to be their own boss, as many court reporters work as independent contractors or own their own agencies.

Despite the media hype about alternative technologies, court reporters will not be replaced by audio, video, or voice-to-print software in the foreseeable future.  There is always a need for competent, professional court reporters.