IA Court Reporter common mistakes
IA Court Reporter · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When a speaker self-corrects mid-sentence ("I went to-no, I drove to the office"), the candidate transcribes only the corrected version, silently deleting the false start and the correction.
Candidates who learned transcription by cleaning up interviews and podcasts carry over a habit of producing readable prose; under time pressure, deleting the stumble feels faster than deciding how to punctuate it, and they do not realize verbatim standards require the spoken record, not the intended meaning.
What to do instead
Before exam day, drill a fixed rule set: transcribe the false start, use the em dash or ellipsis consistently for interruption and trailing off, and mark self-correction as spoken. Practice on 10 minutes of unscripted speech and compare your output against the audio line by line, counting every deletion. Treat any word you removed as an error during self-scoring.
The candidate writes Q. and A. for every exchange in a deposition transcript, including counsel's objections, the witness's colloquy with the judge, and off-record discussions, instead of reserving Q/A for the question-and-answer examination.
Depositions are dominated by two-speaker rhythm, so candidates generalize the pattern to all speech. They also confuse colloquy formatting from hearings with deposition formatting and have never seen a transcript where objections and side remarks are set off correctly.
What to do instead
Study the standard deposition layout: Q. and A. paragraphs for examination; objections and statements by counsel as separate paragraphs under the speaker's name or "MR./MS. [NAME]:"; off-record and on-record notations as bracketed or parenthetical lines. Build a one-page formatting cheat sheet and apply it to a full practice transcript until the pattern is automatic.
The candidate answers ethics items by what colleagues or agencies commonly do-for example, agreeing to edit a transcript because the deposing attorney asks, or accepting an ex parte request to alter a certified page-rather than by the rule.
Many candidates come from freelance or agency settings where client accommodation is rewarded, and they have absorbed informal norms without ever reading the applicable rules of conduct or certification statutes. Exam items often describe a plausible, courteous-sounding request whose correct answer is refusal.
What to do instead
Memorize the core duties as bright-line rules: accuracy, impartiality, confidentiality, no ex parte substantive changes, and no alteration of a certified transcript except by the prescribed correction procedure. For every practice ethics item, identify which duty the request would breach before looking at the answer choices. Write the rule in your own words on a flashcard.
The candidate treats real-time output as a raw feed, delivering untranslated steno, unresolved conflicts, or uncorrected homophone errors to the attorney's screen, and cannot explain how conflicts, job dictionaries, and CAT translation interact.
Real-time theory is often studied abstractly, and candidates who have not written on a live feed assume translation is automatic and complete. They underestimate how many untranslates appear when a new speaker's vocabulary is not in the job dictionary and how quickly conflicts compound under speed.
What to do instead
Practice writing to a live display and count untranslates and conflicts per minute. Learn the CAT workflow in order: write, translate, review untranslates, resolve conflicts, and confirm the dictionary entry. Build a job dictionary for the case's proper names and technical terms before the proceeding, and rehearse the fix routine until it takes seconds, not minutes.
The candidate produces a transcript whose page format is inconsistent-varying line counts per page, missing or misplaced page numbers, wrong margins, inconsistent speaker indentations, and no certification page or correct certificate wording.
Formatting is learned by imitation, and candidates who have seen only a few sample transcripts reproduce fragments. Under timed conditions they focus on words and run out of attention for layout, not realizing that format and certification are separately scored and that a missing certificate can fail an otherwise accurate transcript.
What to do instead
Create a template with fixed margins, 25 lines per page, consistent Q./A. indentation, and a certification page with the required elements. Produce five complete practice transcripts from that template, checking each against a printed checklist before submission. Verify the certificate wording against the governing rule or statute for your jurisdiction.
The candidate misuses legal terms that sound alike or overlap-writing "plaintiff" for "prosecution," "conviction" for "sentence," "acquittal" for "dismissal," "deposition" for "affidavit," or "objection sustained" when the ruling was "overruled."
Legal vocabulary is acquired by exposure, and candidates often learn terms from television and news, where usage is loose. Similar-sounding pairs and related-but-distinct concepts get stored as rough synonyms, and the error surfaces only when a ruling or procedural posture must be recorded exactly.
What to do instead
Build a contrast table of confusable pairs with a one-line definition and an example sentence for each: prosecution/plaintiff, conviction/sentence, acquittal/dismissal, deposition/affidavit, sustained/overruled, complaint/indictment, appellant/appellee. Test yourself by writing the term from definition, not by recognizing it. Add any term you miss to a weekly review list.
The candidate confuses the roles and sequence of a proceeding-who opens, who examines, when cross-examination follows direct, when redirect is permitted, and where objections and rulings fall-so the transcript misattributes speech or mislabels stages.
Courtroom structure is often learned from summaries rather than from watching or reading complete transcripts. Candidates memorize labels without a timeline, so under pressure they assign a statement to the wrong speaker or place an objection after the answer when it was made before.
What to do instead
Draw the sequence for each proceeding type-arraignment, motion hearing, trial, deposition-as a timeline with speakers and permitted motions at each stage. Read two complete public transcripts and annotate the stage at each transition. Practice dictation exercises where the objection timing matters, and always record the objection at the moment spoken, before the answer.
The candidate stores deposition audio, exhibits, and draft transcripts in personal email, unencrypted cloud folders, or a shared drive with open access, and keeps them indefinitely after delivery because no one asked for deletion.
Convenience and habit drive storage choices; candidates rarely see the retention schedule or the confidentiality rule applied to their own files. They assume the agency or court handles security, and they do not connect a routine file-sharing link to a confidentiality breach.
What to do instead
Adopt a written routine: encrypted storage with access limited to the matter, no personal email for case files, unique strong passwords with multi-factor authentication, and a retention calendar tied to the governing schedule. Before exam items on cybersecurity, ask what the rule requires for transmission, storage, and destruction, and answer from the rule rather than from convenience.
The candidate treats the machine as a typewriter-striking keys with force, watching the keyboard, and pressing hard through errors-instead of writing with relaxed, minimal motion and correcting through the steno-defined stroke rather than backspacing character by character.
Beginners transfer typing habits, and tension feels like control. Watching the keys prevents the aural-to-motor mapping that real-time speed depends on, and forceful strokes cause fatigue and misstrokes that multiply as speed increases.
What to do instead
Practice slow, accurate drills with eyes on the copy and hands relaxed, aiming for clean single strokes. Learn the correction stroke for your theory and use it exclusively. Increase speed only when accuracy holds at the current level; track strokes per minute and error rate separately so you can see whether tension or theory gaps are the real limit.
The candidate punctuates by ear alone, inserting commas at every pause and omitting terminal punctuation in long answers, and misspells homophones and legal terms that spell-check will not catch ("there/their," "council/counsel," "statue/statute," "waiver/waver").
Speech pauses do not map to grammatical boundaries, so a pause-based comma habit produces comma splices and fragments. Candidates also rely on spell-check, which flags neither correctly spelled wrong words nor missing punctuation, and they have not drilled the specific homophone pairs common in legal speech.
What to do instead
Apply grammar rules rather than breath: identify the independent clauses before placing commas, and use semicolons or periods for splices. Keep a running list of legal homophones and test them in sentences weekly. Proofread once for punctuation and once for word choice, reading aloud, and never accept spell-check as the final pass.