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How does one win a court reporting contract?
Hello, thank you for your question on how does one win a court reporting contract. To respond to your question, information was gathered from corporate websites, regulatory filings, user forums and review sites. Court reporting and steno services had a total revenue of $2,240 million in the year 2015. With the advent of internet along with technology that aids transcribing, grammar and formatting, court reporting has now become a highly skilled profession today.
EVOLUTION
Before the computer age, court reporters used to decode shorthand made by stenographers into a full transcript using a typewriter. They relied on an audio recording for content that was missed. This was a time-consuming process and often wasn't very reliable. Computers and laptops made life much easier for the court reports to reproduce transcripts. Sophisticated software helped improve the speed, accuracy and reliability of the recordings and transcripts. In recent times, cutting edge technologies like real time video transcription and cloud computing has helped court reporting reach a new level with improved transcripts. It is now easier to share the transcribed work in real time. Overloaded and underfunded courts are now turning to audio video recordings to save costs
CONTRACT COURT REPORTING
In the past, contract reporters had been restricted by the Judicial Conference policy, however with budget decentralization each district court receives contract court reporter funding to support reporting requirements. Competitive bidding is required if the amount involved is more than $25,000 to make sure that each firm has a fair opportunity to offer its services. However, for lower amounts, formal advertising isn't used and courts use simplified acquisition procedures. More than one may be awarded the contract if all the needs cannot be fulfilled by just one. The contracts' division provides guidance to the court in soliciting for contract reporting services. The Social Security Administration was the highest procurer of court reporter and steno services from 2012-2016 with contract spending over $127 million. The Justice departments offices, boards and divisions took the second place at $29 million. Washington D.C. has the highest reported contract spending at $23 million which is 11% of market share.
INDUSTRY TRENDS
As of January 2017, the average annual salary of a court reporter was in the range of $39,000 — $70,000. Reports with more experience and knowledge of cutting edge technologies have a higher earning potential than others. As the workforce ages, there is a huge demand in this industry. With retirements at 15%, between 2017 – 2022, there would be a demand for at least 5500 new court reporters. There have been various discussions stating that this is a dying profession, however as long as computers cannot process a 100% accurate verbatim transcript when there are two or more speakers, this profession will cease to die.
MAJOR PLAYERS
Aptara is one of the biggest court room companies in the US that provides services such as real time reporting, language interpretation, text and video streaming and videoconferencing. It helps law firm clients control their costs by offering deposition summary services. In less than a year's time Aptara became the largest provider of deposition summaries with more than 150 depositions summarized daily. Their services are billed by the page with deliveries through multiple mediums including PC, tablet, smartphone and hard copies. With the deposition summaries taken care of, the clients of companies like these can focus more towards core legal work. It has an estimated revenue of around $80 million, with more than 200 employees.
NUMBERS
The total US revenue for court reporting and steno services for 2015 was $2,240 million. There was a 3% growth from 2014, where the revenue numbers were $2,175 million.
As of May 2016, the state of Maryland had the highest number of court reporters at 2,440 and an annual mean salary of $42, 490. Massachusetts had the highest mean wage of $88,500. New York closely followed with a mean salary of $88,320 with 1,380 people employed in the profession. Texas closely follows in terms of employment with 1,370 employees at a mean salary of $78,410.
The top paying metropolitan regions are San Francisco — Redwood city which pays a mean annual salary of $109, 240 followed by Oakland — Hayward Berkeley at $102,340.
CONCLUSION
Court reporting is an under-marketed profession. It requires amazing mental processing skills that are often overlooked and don't come in the spotlight. Thank you for using Wonder. Please reach out if you have any questions.