IL Court Reporter study guide
IL Court Reporter · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Illinois Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) credential is the state-level qualification that lets a court reporter work in Illinois courts and in sworn proceedings such as depositions and hearings. Certification is administered through the Illinois Court Reporters Association's certification program under the oversight of the Illinois Supreme Court, and candidates should confirm current requirements with the official certifying body rather than relying on secondhand summaries. The IL Court Reporter study guide has 8 sections and about 2,397 words.
01Machine Shorthand or Voice Writing Speed and Accuracy
Illinois certifies shorthand reporters through a CSR skills examination built from timed dictation legs - testimony, jury charge, and literary material - each transcribed and graded on accuracy rather than raw speed. Dropped, added, or substituted words, misstated numbers, and punctuation that changes meaning all count as errors, and the total is converted to a percentage standard, so a clean pass at the test speed outscores a heroic attempt above it.
316 words, about 2 min02Literary Dictation and Transcription
The literary leg uses prose - a novel excerpt, an essay, or a technical passage - read at a steady pace, with punctuation, paragraphing, capitalization, and spelling all scored. Literary dictation is often read only once, so the candidate must hold a clause in reserve while writing it and must either catch the reader's punctuation cues ("comma," "quote," "dash," "new paragraph") or mark punctuation from syntax when the reader does not dictate it.
309 words, about 2 min03Testimony (Jury Charge and Question-and-Answer) Dictation and Transcription
Testimony dictation is scored on verbatim capture of questions, answers, colloquy, and non-verbal events. Objections, argument, and rulings are reported as spoken; you do not summarize them.
292 words, about 1 min04Transcript Preparation, Formatting, and Certification
A certified transcript opens with a title page carrying the court, county, case caption, case number, judge, and appearances of counsel; an index follows, then the body, then the reporter's certificate and, where practice requires it, a certificate of transcript. Body pages are paginated and line-numbered (commonly 25 numbered lines), and each page keeps its full line count so any page-and-line citation stays stable across copies.
290 words, about 1 min05Illinois Court System, Courtroom Procedure, and Judicial Ethics
The Supreme Court has seven justices - three elected from the First District (Cook County) and one each from the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Appellate Districts. The Appellate Court sits in five districts and hears cases in panels of three.
324 words, about 2 min06Legal and Medical Terminology
Legal and medical terms are where phonetic guessing shows. The exam tests spelling, capitalization, and correct form across Latin and Anglo-French legal terms, procedural vocabulary, anatomy, diagnoses, and drug names.
255 words, about 1 min07English Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage
Transcripts preserve the speaker's grammar; the reporter's own apparatus - parentheticals, index entries, certificates, titles - must be flawless. The exam grades both: it shows a witness's nonstandard sentence and expects it unchanged, then shows a sloppy parenthetical and expects a correction.
298 words, about 1 min08Professional Responsibility, Confidentiality, and Notary/Deposition Rules
Illinois court reporters are licensed certified shorthand reporters under the Court Reporters Act, regulated by the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. At a deposition the officer's independence is structural: the officer may not be a relative, employee, or attorney for a party, must administer the oath, must record objections concisely, and must certify the transcript.
313 words, about 2 min