Project Steno President Jim DeCrescenzo and Executive Director Nancy Varallo recently sat down with MarketScale for a podcast in which the two discuss the demand for court reporters, its career opportunities, and how students can defray the cost of court reporting school through Project Steno.
On the podcast, DeCrecenzo dispelled a common misunderstanding about court reporting, which is that it will succumb to other technologies. “Computers are never going to replace the ability of a human to sit there and distinguish between accents, people speaking over each other, clinking of glasses, ripping of paper,” he said. “The human brain simply ignores those sounds and listens to the words and records them. Stenotype reporters have been in the legal profession since the legal profession existed. We’re going to be there for many decades to come. I’m so sure of that that our youngest son is beginning court reporting school.”
For her part, Varallo suggested that, rather than replace court reporters, technology actually is increasing the demand for court reporters. “I’ve been in this business since 1979; it’s in demand more than ever,” she said. “I think our remote technology has increased our ability to cover assignments anywhere, whether we’re covering them for deaf people and hard-of-people who are going to college somewhere or we’re handling a courtroom in Arizona when we live in Boston or when we’re handling a deposition across the world via remote technology. The biggest threat we have is not enough people coming into this profession. They’re in demand. It’s what the marketplace wants—the best means of making a record and capturing the spoken word.”