Court reporters are highly disciplined professionals, tasked with creating an official record of the spoken word. When portrayed in movies and television shows, they are often shown as a quiet figure sitting off to the side or in the background writing away on their steno machine. Don’t let that fool you though. Yes court reporters sit quietly and listen, it is their responsibility to take down everything that is being said word for word, but run into a court reporter off the record, quiet and reserved they are not.
Court reporting has its ups and downs, just as much as almost every other job in the world. And just like the rest of the world, court reporters need an avenue to express their joys and frustrations of the job. One way court reporters have been doing this lately is by creating memes and posting them on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. A meme is essentially a funny picture overlaid with a playful message pertaining to a certain subject. With a quick Google search you will find that there are hundreds of hilarious memes on the internet related to court reporting. In fact, if you look through the images you can easily get an idea of what the life of a court reporter looks like. Which is exactly what we did.
“A Day in the Life of a Court Reporter” – told through internet memes
First thing in the morning, the phone rings:
After quickly getting ready, you leave the house in a flurry and rush across town to the deposition. Once you are all settled in and ready to go, the attorneys ask for free realtime. You reply with:
With all that settled the deposition begins. The first witness speaks in a subtle, delicate voice:
All of a sudden the room erupts with laughter. Attorneys look at each other in disbelief. Did the witness really just say that?
Everyone starts talking over each other in pure chaos, its ok though:
Noon rolls around and it is time for lunch. You are so excited to take a much needed break, only to hear:
Or even worse:
The second witness of the day is a fast talker, hard to follow at certain times and:
You smile and nod your head. You caught every word. You have been trained well, aided by practicing your writing while watching John Moschitta Jr doing old Micro Machine commercials; this witness has nothing on him. Attorney requests a read back? No problem:
It’s been a long, trying day and you are ready for it to be over:
But the attorneys disclose they plan to be on the record for another hour or so:
It sounds like things are wrapping up, so you sit there waiting:
Then you hear the best news of the day:
Score! Cha-ching! You start to count the dollar signs in your head as you leave for the day and begin your drive home. The work of a court reporter is never done though. The job for today was a rush and the attorneys are expecting a rough draft tomorrow:
Knowing you have plans that evening, you sit at your computer editing away as fast as you can:
Finally the rough is completed, but unfortunately it is later than you expected and you missed meeting up with your friends. You are beat. As you get ready to crawl into bed you take one last look in the mirror and say:
As you close your eyes and slowly drift into slumber you think to yourself “Even though my days get crazy, I truly love my job and wouldn’t change it for the world.” Soundly you sleep, resting up for what tomorrow may bring, dreaming, dreaming:
