CA Court Reporter common mistakes
CA Court Reporter · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Transcribing spoken numerals in the form the speaker said them ("twenty-five hundred," "oh-nine") instead of converting to the standard transcript form ("2,500," "2009"), and inconsistently switching between words and figures within one transcript.
Reporters train their ear to capture verbatim sound and often type what they hear in real time; under speed pressure the conversion step is skipped, and without a fixed style sheet the choices vary from page to page.
What to do instead
Adopt a written numeric style rule set (figures for 10 and above, spelled out below 10 unless part of a date, time, or money amount; convert spoken round numbers to figures) and apply it during the edit pass, not during realtime capture. Run a targeted search for number words ("hundred," "thousand," "oh," "double") at the end of every transcript.
Leaving homophone and sound-alike errors in the transcript (their/there, counsel/council, waived/waived vs. waved, principal/principle, cite/site/sight, liable/libel) because the realtime output looked plausible on the screen.
Realtime translation produces the most statistically likely word, and the reporter's attention during the proceeding is on the speaker, not on proofreading each line; familiar words pass a quick visual scan.
What to do instead
Proofread against the audio in a separate pass rather than reading only the text, and maintain a personal confusion list of the pairs that recur in legal settings. Build steno dictionary entries with distinguishing strokes for the highest-frequency legal homophones so the correct form is produced at the machine.
Misplacing or omitting punctuation that carries meaning in testimony: missing quotation marks around read-back questions, commas that change restrictive versus nonrestrictive meaning, dashes for interrupted speech, and question marks on counsel's questions.
Punctuation decisions require parsing sentence structure while the speaker continues, and reporters under speed pressure default to minimal punctuation or to punctuation that mirrors speech pauses rather than grammar.
What to do instead
Memorize a short set of transcript punctuation conventions (interruptions take a dash, trailing questions take a question mark, quoted read-back takes quotation marks, Q and A paragraphs each end with terminal punctuation) and apply them in the edit pass. Practice by punctuating unpunctuated testimony excerpts and comparing against the conventions.
Failing to mark and later resolve unintelligible or uncertain testimony, either guessing at a word or silently omitting it instead of flagging it for review.
The reporter wants a clean-looking page and fears an incomplete transcript; guessing feels faster than stopping, and the uncertainty is forgotten by the time of editing.
What to do instead
Use a consistent in-transcript placeholder (a bracketed note or a defined symbol) at the moment of doubt, keep a running list of time stamps to check against audio, and resolve every placeholder before certification. Never substitute a guess for an uncertain word without verification.
Confusing legal terms of art that look similar: arraignment versus arrangement, demurrer, voir dire, allocution, continuance versus continuance in trial settings, sustain versus overrule, plaintiff versus petitioner, and the difference between a deposition, an affidavit, and a declaration.
These terms appear in fast speech with little context, and candidates prepare vocabulary by memorizing spellings rather than the procedural meaning that distinguishes near-neighbors.
What to do instead
Study legal terminology in functional pairs and triples with a one-line definition and a sample sentence for each, focusing on words the court actually says aloud. Build steno entries with distinct outlines for each member of a confusable pair so the machine, not the ear, does the disambiguation.
Mishandling medical and technical terms: dropping syllables in drug names and anatomical terms, misrendering abbreviations and units (mg versus mcg, q.d. versus q.i.d.), and failing to verify spellings of diagnoses and procedures.
Medical vocabulary is low-frequency in everyday speech, speakers pronounce it quickly or with accent variation, and candidates rely on phonetic approximation rather than a verified reference.
What to do instead
Maintain a personal glossary of the medical and technical terms likely in your jurisdiction's cases, with verified spellings and expansions of abbreviations, and update it after each assignment. Verify uncertain terms against a medical dictionary or the speaker's own records rather than phonetic guesswork.
Breaching confidentiality or impartiality boundaries: discussing case content in public or on social media, accepting gifts or favors from a party or attorney, editing testimony to be more grammatical, or giving an opinion about a witness's demeanor.
Candidates focus on technical accuracy and treat ethics as a short list of obvious prohibitions; the subtler duties (verbatim record, no alterations, avoiding appearance of partiality) are not practiced as behaviours.
What to do instead
Learn the ethical duties as concrete rules with examples: no substantive changes to testimony, no ex parte communications about the merits, no gifts, no discussion of proceedings outside authorized channels. Rehearse responses to common pressure situations (an attorney asking you to clean up grammar, a party offering lunch) before they arise.
Producing a transcript with wrong page and line numbering, missing the title page or index, misaligned Q and A paragraphs, or inconsistent speaker identification, so the certified transcript does not conform to format requirements.
Formatting is treated as cosmetic and left to the end, when time pressure is highest; templates are used without checking jurisdiction-specific rules.
What to do instead
Work from the jurisdiction's written format checklist (page size, line count per page, margins, line numbering, title page contents, index and exhibit lists, certification language) and run the checklist against a sample transcript before the exam. Build the template so numbering and speaker labels are generated automatically rather than typed.
Misreading the record in comprehension items: answering from general knowledge or from what 'should' have happened rather than from the passage, missing negation and exceptions ("except," "not," "unless"), and overlooking qualifying phrases.
Candidates skim for familiar keywords and import assumptions from legal practice; under time pressure they select the first plausible option without returning to the text.
What to do instead
For each comprehension item, locate and underline the exact sentence that supports the answer, and specifically check for negations and exception words. Practice with passages containing embedded exceptions and compare answer choices against the text rather than against plausibility.
Failing to proofread the final certified product for mechanical errors (double words, dropped words, inconsistent capitalization of court and party names, misspelled proper names) and certifying without a final read-through against the audio.
Realtime output looks complete, fatigue sets in after long editing sessions, and the reporter trusts the earlier pass; proper names are especially prone to silent corruption.
What to do instead
Institute a fixed final-pass routine: read the transcript against the audio at speaking pace, then run targeted searches for doubled words, party and judge names, and defined terms, and verify every proper name against a written source. Do not certify until the routine is complete.