Preserving the record – and their jobs

Family law attorney Melissa Buchman knows the importance of a well-kept record.

In 2022, Buchman’s client sought a domestic violence restraining order against an ex-spouse for herself and her children. A remote deposition was scheduled for the defense attorney to interview Buchman’s client under oath.

It went as planned. The defense questioned her client for five hours, with a court reporter supposedly in the digital room capturing every word.

However, once Buchman received the transcript, she noticed a severe omission: a traumatic event recollected by her client was missing. Yet the transcript seemed seamless.

"We thought we were losing our minds," Buchman said. "It was not in there and it was unforgettable."

Buchman filed a motion to strike the transcript from the record and set out to find out how such a substantial portion of the record could disappear. The defense attorney insisted nothing was wrong.

The judge denied her motion, and the proceedings continued as planned. Buchman soon discovered the problem: Although a human pressed record, it was a machine – not a human court reporter – assigned to the deposition. Somehow a tape had vanished – equal to 55 pages of transcription or an hour of audio.

The revelation came too late. The judge had made up their mind and rejected her client’s restraining order.

This snafu two years ago exposed the potential flaws of electronic recordings and deeply inspired Buchman’s fight for justice, even more so with recent developments in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

In September, an LA County judge overturned a longstanding state law that bans family, probate and civil proceedings from using electronic recordings. The judge found the original law unconstitutional due to litigants’ rights to a fair and speedy trial, especially when a shortage of reporters delays proceedings. By law, criminal trials must have court reporters present to protect the record and provide a transcript upon appeal.

The ruling shocked many, said Shanna Gray, vice president of the Los Angeles County Court Reporters Association, and was seen as even an escalation of a dilemma that each party – the state, the county and court reporters – wanted to alleviate as quickly as possible. The professional association represents court reporters employed by the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Members of the Los Angeles County Court Reporters Association, including Shanna Gray (center-right) pose for a picture at a LA County Superior Court open house. (Photo Courtesy of Shanna Gray)

While the ruling allows the court only to use electronic recordings once all other options have been exhausted, the reversal of settled law on technology in courts led to a reckoning within the ranks of the county’s court reporters and the legal world, Gray said.

Buchman said her experiences and this change led her to push for defending the record, "Until you've been burned by an electronic recording where you see that it’s dangerous, you're not going to know."

Alongside defending the record, Buchman said this meant she also had a new purpose: to advocate for court reporters.

"I believe we need to protect our court reporters. They are my co-workers," she said. "There shouldn't be this push for electronic recordings. There should be a push for more recruitment."

However, retaining and recruiting court reporters into the force is a tough job in an industry that saw a net loss of 117 court reporters since 2018 and an aging workforce in which more than two-thirds are eligible for retirement.

Gray and a few others said they are up to the job.

The upper echelon of society is often reserved for politicians, businessmen or those lucky enough to inherit a family’s fortune. For Diana Van Dyke, she heard of this possibility from her stepfather Ched Salovesh – a court marshal and former prosecutor for the city of Anaheim in the 1980s.

"They look like they have fun carrying their bowling ball bags and driving their sports cars," Van Dyke said Salovesh would tell her at 17.

He didn’t speak of the conman, the backroom deal or the corruption and ethics scandals that have plagued Southern California for decades. This lifestyle could be earned elsewhere.

There’s a job always in need, continuously evolving and ripe with community: the court reporter.

The hope for status led Van Dyke to take Salovesh’s advice and enroll in court reporting school shortly after her high school graduation. She instantly became enamored with the subject and the concept of justice, one she links directly with the profession.

Diana Van Dyke speaks at a rally to defend court reporter jobs in 2022. (Photo Courtesy of Service Employees International Union Local 721)

"I am one of those people whose point of view is our justice system is not perfect," she said. "But I do firmly feel that the court reporter, who is charged with protecting and guarding the record, is essential to the process."

Van Dyke, who is now entering her third decade as a court reporter – her second in the Los Angeles County Superior Court system – said she believes that the court reporter must be willing every day to put their name, profession and license “on the line” to certify and guard the record.

However, with the rise of electronic recording and artificial intelligence coinciding with a landmark shortage of court reporters in LA County, some say the craft may go the way of the dodo. Therefore, the risk of nobody being there to protect the record could soon be realized, as Van Dyke proclaims.

"We are really in the eye of the storm of this battle," she said.

Gray, who was mentored by Van Dyke, said once the LA County ruling went into effect, she immediately went to work to ease the concerns of her ranks.

"We knew this was going to hit our students and prospective applicants in the stomach," Gray said. "When the court comes out with these types of things, we have to come out with a counter. They're saying, 'Yes, we're doing this.' And we're doing it because of access to justice."

Many court reporters left the LA County Superior Court in 2012 after a shortfall in the California state budget ended in the courts laying off around a third of the workforce. While the county later rehired some court reporters, others went their own way and privatized their services. Whitney Kumar was one of these reporters.

Stanley Mosk Courthouse is the headquarters for the Los Angeles County Superior Court. (Photo by Matthew Royer)

Kumar, a court reporter for 18 years, launched a court reporting firm with her twin sister Kamryn Villegas shortly after being laid off in 2012. Before leaving the LA County Superior Court, Kumar was the court reporter in high-profile family law cases, including custody battles like Britney Spears vs. Kevin Federline and Oksana Grigorieva vs. Mel Gibson, as well as the divorce of former Los Angeles Dodgers owners McCourt vs. McCourt, which dealt with a dispute over the proceeds from the $2 billion sale of the Dodgers and Dodger Stadium.

Kumar continued to do trials after 2012, under her firm, but now, she has taken a new opportunity: Judge Judy’s court reporter.

Kumar has served as the resident court reporter on Judy Justice on Amazon Prime Video since 2021. The addition of Kumar was a first for Judy Sheindlin, aka Judge Judy. Shendlin added Kumar to the program for an important purpose: readback.

A poster for Judy Justice Season Three, featuring Judy Sheindlin (middle) and Whitney Kumar (right). (Photo Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video)

In the initial trailer for the show, Kumar said her purpose was to verify the record for Sheindlin, who could then use the transcript to deliver "justice."

Kumar said that while celebrity is new to her, the role has led her to promote the profession further and recruit the next generation of court reporters.

She said that by using the show and social media to show days in the life of a court reporter, she had received dozens of messages from prospective court reporters. She added that recently, someone sent her a message that they became a court reporter after watching her on season one of Judy Justice.

"I'm hoping I can use this platform to encourage more people, show people what this profession is, and get more people enrolled in schools because we need them," she said.

Gray and Van Dyke underscored the importance of enrolling students in court reporting schools at a time when the cohort of reporters in Los Angeles remains well below the needed threshold to prevent electronic recording.

Gray said a significant problem for the industry is the time it takes to get through court reporting school. For example, it took her four years to get through school as she simultaneously worked full-time and raised a toddler.

To become licensed court reporters in California, students must pass an exam that requires a speed of 200 words per minute with a 97.5% accuracy rate. For some, this is only accomplished using new theories – or methods for taking down phenomes on a stenography machine – taught by different reporting schools nationwide.

One theory, developed by Mark Kislingbury, is taught in his school – the Mark Kislingbury Academy of Court Reporting – based in Houston.

Kislingbury, a court reporter for over 40 years, holds the Guinness World Record for court reporting speed with 370 words per minute. He said he teaches students his methods to help them reach certification status.

Using shortcuts has not been the focus of other schools teaching court reporting, he said, leading to outdated methods – like teaching the typing of going syllable by syllable – instead of simple keyboard strokes that lead to quicker transcription. He added that theories like sounding out syllables created outcomes of students only reaching levels of words per minute of around 180, which plummeted graduating rates and accreditations.

According to his estimate, Kislingbury said the country went from around 170 court reporting schools to around 30 to 40, limiting students' options and providing less opportunity to join the workforce.

"I'm graduating a lot of students, but not many other schools are following suit," he said.

To ensure that court reporting stays strong outside of his home state of Texas, Kislingbury also leads workshops for the greater court reporting community, teaching his shortcuts to organizations, including LA County court reporters. He said he values the network the profession has built to encourage others to join and help those within the craft who may be struggling.

"We have a lot of comradeship among ourselves because it's quite a unique profession that people don't understand very well," he said.

While recruitment and retention may solve the short-term problems of court reporters in LA County and potentially across the country, Van Dyke said it's important to acknowledge that court reporters are not afraid of using technology when it's available to them.

She said court reporters adapt to the changing world. The advent of voice writers – a machine in which court reporters can speak the transcript into the record – or software that helps court reporters provide real-time transcripts to attorneys and judges revolutionized the craft, Van Dyke said.

Court reporters in LA County were also the first county employees to regularly electronically file their transcripts, she added.

"When we talk about technology, it's not that court reporters are afraid of it," Van Dyke said. "We are actually the ones injecting it into our court systems in a way that is still keeping up with the times but still practicing guarding the record."

Click to hear the concerns of court reporters in LA

Shanna Gray

Court reporter and LACCRA president

Whitney Kumar

Court reporter and television personality

Diana Van Dyke

Court reporter for three decades

The widespread use of electronic recording and the potential for using artificial intelligence require conversations of privacy and safety, especially if they lead to eventual use in criminal courts, she said.

Van Dyke warns that putting the fate of a transcript into the hands of a computer is a dangerous risk for cases involving the death penalty, family custody battles or simply when someone’s liberty is at risk.

As someone who believes that anytime someone walks into court, it could be their "penultimate moment," Van Dyke said the lack of a human protecting that record could overturn an entire case during proceedings.

"I don't know if anybody would be comfortable and okay with saying, 'Yeah, go ahead and turn the machine on. It'll be fine,'" she said.

Technology will not stop evolving in electronic recording and artificial intelligence. Kislingbury said some court reporting software, including Eclipse from Advantage Software, now uses artificial intelligence to help clean transcripts as a court reporter types.

He said the software uses a technique called "boost flow" that allows a court reporter to decide how much they want to rely on artificial intelligence as they work. While he said he does not use it, he has heard from colleagues and students that the technology helps considerably with real-time reporting.

"It’s not that the AI or voice recognition would replace a court reporter, but that the two working together would be even better," he said.

Kislingbury said the fear of technology cannot stop it from changing the profession. Something he hopes his students learn to embrace rather than reject.

"Court reporters have been using their machines for 114 years, and during that whole time, members of the general public have been telling court reporters you're going to be replaced by tape recordings," he said. "With technology getting better and better, they're still saying it, and court reporters are still out there making a lot of money ... So, have our jobs been replaced? Yes, but only when we couldn't fill them."

Van Dyke said that to fix the mindset of "good enough," changes must be made at the local, state and federal levels.

In LA, another hiccup the county must face is the lack of consideration for qualified candidates, Gray said.

She said she knows of several applicants who had the correct qualifications and licenses but were denied employment at the Superior Court, which Gray said she feels is disingenuous when there are so many openings to be filled. In addition to tweaking hiring practices, Gray said she has also sought paid internship programs for students and recent licensees to get them up and running within the courts.

Buchman echoed similar thoughts and said she hopes courts begin recruiting in high schools to usher in more court reporters. A position she said she wishes more people understood.

"I've met hundreds of attorneys that hate their job," she said. "But every court reporter I've met enjoys what they do, and it's sad that people are trying to eliminate or reduce their availability in the courts."

However, other fixes may come sooner.

Buchman, LA County court reporters and fellow organizations across the state supported Assembly Bills 3013 and 3252, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September.

AB 3013, submitted by Assemblymember Brian Maienschein, will allow a pilot program for court reporters in Superior Courts to work remotely from their offices in all proceedings except preliminary hearings, trials and death penalty cases. Meanwhile, AB 3252, submitted by Assemblymember Marc Berman, expedites the certification process for court reporters in the state by allowing for additional ways to become certified and lowering the accuracy needed to pass the examination down to 95%.

Gray said the progress is promising, but bureaucracy slows any immediate changes.

"It's like turning a cruise ship, right? They're not just going to sit there and say, 'Hey, that's a great idea. Let's do that tomorrow,'" Gray said.

Buchman, however, cautions that you have to ensure that the cruise ship does not become the "Titanic" and said that the courts must also ensure that court reporters are a tool available to all, and not just those who can afford to bring them in.

Van Dyke knows the days of "bowling ball bags" and "sports cars" are far behind the profession of court reporting.

But she still holds dear the memories and legacy of her stepfather. It’s what led her to defend the judicial record.

"It is an honor to make sure that our justice system is working properly and that the people in that room would only need to go through that particular proceeding one time," she said. "I know I got every single word because I protected it."