The Sealed Session and Two Requests to Alter the Record
You are the electronic reporter for a contested custody hearing. Mid-morning the judge clears the courtroom and takes testimony from the child's therapist in a sealed session, ordering that the recording and any transcript be sealed. Two days later a paralegal from the father's law firm emails you directly. She asks for an MP3 of "the whole day, including the closed part," plus the transcript, saying the attorney needs it before a Friday settlement conference. The same afternoon the father's attorney calls and asks you to delete a 40-second passage in which his client lost his temper and used profanity; he says the judge "struck it" and it should not appear in the transcript.
1. How do you respond to the paralegal's request?
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The request fails on two independent grounds: it did not come through the proper channel, and it seeks sealed material.
- Sealed means sealed. A judicial sealing order is not a suggestion and not something the reporter weighs against convenience. Only the court can release sealed material, and only by order. You cannot be the person who decides the settlement conference is a good enough reason.
- Verify the requester's standing, not just identity. A paralegal is not a party of record. Even unsealed material is normally released to counsel of record, the court, and parties under the applicable rule or contract - not to staff who email informally.
- Do not confirm or preview content. Do not describe what is in the sealed session, how long it ran, or whether the therapist's audio came through. A confirming reply leaks information as surely as a file does.
- Redirect in writing. Reply that requests for sealed material must be directed to the court, and that any release will follow a written order. Copy or notify your supervising authority per office protocol.
- Document the contact. Record the date, time, requester, and exact request in your file. If a pattern of informal requests develops, that record matters.
2. How do you handle the attorney's request to delete the 40-second profanity passage because the judge "struck it"?
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Decline to alter, and separate the two things he is blending: a ruling to disregard testimony and an order to expunge a recording.
- "Stricken" is not "erased." In most courts, struck testimony remains part of the transcript, sometimes with a notation or with the jury instructed to disregard it. The record's purpose is to show what was said and what the court did about it; deleting the words destroys the very event the ruling refers to.
- You are not the arbiter of a disputed ruling. If the attorney says the judge struck it, the answer is: the transcript will reflect the ruling, not the deletion. If there is a genuine dispute about what the judge ordered, ask for the ruling to be placed on the record, or consult the court, rather than acting on a phone recollection.
- Never edit the original. The source recording is not a working document. If a court order later requires redaction, the redacted version is a derivative; the original is preserved under seal or per retention policy.
- Offer the correct alternatives: a notation of the objection and ruling, an errata-style correction if the transcript actually misstates a word, or a motion to the court if he wants the passage restricted.
- Confirm the conversation by email so the request and your refusal are documented in neutral terms.
3. Suppose the judge later signs an order directing that the profanity passage be removed from the transcript produced for the jury. How do you comply without compromising the integrity of the record?
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Comply with the order, but keep the compliance auditable.
- Get the order in writing and read its scope precisely: removed from which version, produced to whom, and what happens to the original. Vague compliance creates later disputes you cannot win.
- Preserve the unredacted original - recording and transcript - under seal or in a restricted file, per the order and the retention schedule. Deletion and redaction are different acts; only one of them is reversible.
- Produce a derivative with an unmistakable marker. The redacted transcript should show the location of the excised passage (for example, a bracketed notation that material was removed by court order, with date), so no reader mistakes a gap for a transcription failure or for silence.
- Log the sequence: date of the order, exact pages and lines affected, who was notified, what was delivered. If you must change anything in the chain, the log is what shows the change was court-directed.
- Do not extend the order. An order to redact the jury copy is not permission to alter the certified file copy or to scrub the audio. Scope discipline is the whole job here.