Before Kristi Noem starts printing brochures to bring more veterans to Hot Springs to vacation, she probably ought to figure out a plan to bring more court reporters to South Dakota to work:
“We know we’re going to have positions open, and we need bodies to fill them,” Official Court Reporter Carla Dedula said.
Dedula is one of 50 court reporters in South Dakota’s Unified Judicial System. Almost half of them will be eligible for retirement over the next decade.
“Nationally there were 5,500 open positions last year,” Freelance Court Reporter Pat Beck said.
In some states court cases are even having to be rescheduled because there aren’t enough reporters to document what’s happening [Casey Wonnenberg, “South Dakota Court Reporter Shortage,” KELO-TV, 2018.11.19].
I know Jason Ravnsborg would probably rather not have court reporters accurately transcribing every moronic statement that will trickle from his mouth as Attorney General, but we’ve got to have those transcripts.
In a casual test of YouTube’s automatic transcription service, I found Google’s computers transcribed an 11-minute speech of mine with ten errors, not quite one wrong word per minute. That’s still one error per minute too many when liberty and justice hang in the balance. Maybe voice-recognition technology will improve in reliability, but at the moment, we need more court reporters to keep cases flowing smoothly through our busy judicial system. Get on that, Governor-Elect Noem!
What would be the incentive for someone to start in this field, if it’s likely to become obsolete soon? Those automatic transcription programs can’t be too far off from being near perfect.
Not sure how a machine can perfectly transcribe gibberish. My hearing aid, as happy as I am with it because I can actually hear much of what goes on around me, cannot get me to distinguish between words that sound alike when not spoken clearly. My answering machine is nearly useless for replaying messages.
I wonder how they will handle different accents and drawled words and figures of speech?
I know tech has advanced quite aways, but stuff like electronic transcriptions don’t sound feasible to me.
I was misquoted a number of times in the transcript from my 2003 restraining order hearing, and I thought a couple of those misquotes made me sound kinda stupid.
In my opinion high-quality audio recordings would be the best option.
2. How much does court reporting school cost?
Traditional for profit court reporting schools’ tuition costs range from $25,000 to $57,000. You may be surprised to learn that these colleges of court reporting and court reporting schools have 85% to 90% dropout rates and average graduation rates of 2 to 14 percent. Many factors contribute to these court reporting colleges’ and schools’ high tuition costs including but not limited to large administrative staffs consisting of financial aid officers, commissioned admissions representatives, deans and other administrators that are rarely from the court reporting professions and rarely are credentialed court reporters themselves. Most of these court reporting colleges and schools are owned by corporations with no affiliation to court reporters or court reporting education and often confer an Occupational Associate’s Degree that will not transfer to an actual college or university. Bear in mind, no degree is required for any of the careers of court reporting, broadcast (closed) captioning, or CART providing.
Hey Mike, did you even go through that website or just Google How much does court reporting school cost??? Plagiarize much?
Facts about an Associate’s degree are that they roughly cost $25,000. NOT $57,000 or even close to that unless the student wastes time with more years accomplishing the 2 year degree.
The Realtime Writer’s Alliance? No website exists for the group. Where do they come up with the data? Ignore the facts that the website looks like it’s done by Dale the “Sioux Falls Feminist/atheist/don’tbeatyourwife/zooanimals/crazies” guy. It is a awful website. The title alone in the tab section of your browser says: “Home Page.”
Honestly I expected Corey to say, “shortage? No way. Just pay more!”
The worker shortage is REAL. EVERYWHERE. Raising pay isn’t enough before you go down that path. And second, you challenge Noem to do something about it? If she did you would just scream at tax payer dollars going into an effort for workforce development as you have done because Republicans are the majority here and anything they do is bad.
And another unprofessional dig at the elected AG is just pathetic. It shows lack of professionalism, common decency, critical thinking and an all around “I’m superior than everyone in this world” attitude.
I wonder why they cannot do the courtroom reporting via skype. That is in real time and could be done almost anywhere. Same goes for the legislature, why do we have them?
Silly Person. care to show me where I tried to take any credit for what I copied and pasted. Do you know what plagiarism is? It is after four in the afternoon, do your parents know where you are? I didn’t think so.
I know a court reporter that moved to CA
Because pay was 10x as much
But so is cost of living and taxes
But you won’t get her to move back
More opportunities in l.a.
There must be some reputable schools that teach court reporting. I checked National in RC, but they don’t have it.
If you would like to see a sample of Carla’s expertise, come to the Award Ceremony for the Human Rights Day essay contest for 7th & 8th graders. She types what people are saying and we see it almost immediately on a big screen. The whole event is a heartwarming community event. The winning writers read their essays and we celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (70th anniversary this year). It’s in Sioux Falls on Human Rights Day, Dec.10, 6:30-7:30, at the Multi-Cultural Center, 515 N. Main Ave.
Steve, professionalism does not oblige me to lie about Jason Ravnsborg and his lack of qualifications for office.
Yes, I challenge Noem to do something about the shortage of court reporters, who serve a vital function in our judicial system. Your fabrication of what you think I would holler if she did something about it is false and fails to respond to the public need demonstrated. Get off your personal vendetta, Steve, and focus on solving real public policy problems.
Ben, I do wonder about obsolescence. The speech-recognition software I get to test at work still makes errors, and even a single error in a court transcript is not tolerable. But as Kurt notes, humans err as well. It would be interesting to record a court hearing, run it through Google’s YouTube transcriber (or through Otter AI, an audio note-taking product that also provides live captioning service for events like what Cathy B is talking about), and compare the results with a human stenographer’s output.
An audio or better yet video record of the proceedings would provide a fuller picture of what happened; however, as I know from blogging the Legislature, a written transcript is much more useful for searching for key terms, studying arguments, and reproducing quotes for subsequent documents. I wouldn’t mind having court hearings archived in audio/video like Legislative committee meetings, but I still want the written transcript for legal analysis and reporting.
Skype! Sure, some courts are already using remote reporters. Check out Lexitas NextGen services.
I wonder: if South Dakota signed on for remote reporting, could we get our state to pay the wages that a remote reporter based in California would expect?
Cory, your last question is very good. Pay. Would SD come out ahead if items like insurance, pension, etc, were not included in that higher wage? On the other hand, if Medicare for All comes along soon, as seems likely, health insurance won’t be relevant.
Or would the state come out ahead to offer some kind of deal like a scholarship if the recipient works in SD? Or 10% off the debt for every year the reporter works in SD?