MO Court Reporter common mistakes
MO Court Reporter · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
When dictating literary material, the candidate silently normalizes the author's punctuation (adding semicolons, splitting run-on sentences, or replacing dashes with commas) instead of reproducing the passage's exact punctuation and paragraphing.
Literary passages contain deliberate stylistic punctuation (em dashes, fragments, semicolons, sentence fragments used rhetorically). Candidates used to editing prose for clarity treat dictation as a paraphrase-and-clean-up exercise, and under time pressure the brain defaults to 'what reads well' rather than 'what is on the page.'
What to do instead
Before dictating, read the passage once silently and mark every punctuation character and paragraph break with a slash or caret. Practice dictating short literary excerpts and have a partner check punctuation character-by-character against the source; score yourself on punctuation fidelity separately from word accuracy until exact reproduction becomes automatic.
The candidate omits or blurs the speaker labels and parentheticals in a jury charge, delivering only the body of the instruction and skipping phrases like 'THE COURT: Members of the jury...' or bracketed alternatives.
Jury charges are dense with formal boilerplate, statutory citations, and bracketed options; candidates skim to the 'meaningful' content and drop the structural markers that make the charge a complete record. Fatigue from long, repetitive charge language also encourages abbreviation.
What to do instead
Treat every line of the charge, including speaker designations, bracketed alternatives, and citation strings, as dictated content. Build a habit of reading the full charge aloud once before dictation and marking each structural element; rehearse with actual charge-style text containing brackets and enumerated paragraphs so the format becomes familiar.
In Q&A testimony, the candidate fails to dictate the question verbatim and instead summarizes it, or drops the question entirely and dictates only the answer.
Answers carry the substantive content and questions feel like scaffolding, so under speed pressure the candidate's working memory holds the answer and discards the question. Rapid colloquy with objections and interruptions also encourages skipping 'unimportant' speech.
What to do instead
Practice dictating full Q&A exchanges with a partner who reads both roles, and score yourself on question completeness as a separate metric. Develop a shorthand for common question stems (e.g., 'Q' marker plus the interrogative) and drill exchanges with objections and 'let the record reflect' interjections so the habit of capturing every utterance is reinforced.
The candidate misuses or omits the serial comma inconsistently, and confuses homophones and near-homophones (principal/principle, counsel/council, liable/libel, statute/statue) in dictation and transcription.
Court reporting demands rapid production, and homophones are the most common source of silent errors because the spoken form sounds correct. Inconsistent comma practice often reflects never having internalized a single style guide; candidates alternate between styles mid-passage.
What to do instead
Adopt one authoritative style guide (e.g., a recognized legal-writing or press style) and apply it uniformly. Build a personal homophone list from legal contexts and drill it weekly with dictated sentences; proofread transcriptions specifically for the homophone set rather than reading for overall sense.
The candidate records off-the-record discussions, bench conferences, or attorney-client whispers without noting the off-the-record status, or fails to preserve a clear record of objections and rulings.
The pressure to capture everything conflicts with the rule that certain exchanges are not part of the record; candidates either over-record privileged sidebar conversations or under-record rulings, and the distinction is rarely practiced in isolated transcription drills.
What to do instead
Study the rules governing off-the-record and sidebar treatment in your jurisdiction and rehearse with mock proceedings that include bench conferences and stipulations. Practice annotating the record with clear parentheticals ('(Off the record.)', '(Bench conference held off the record.)') and confirm with the judge when status is ambiguous rather than guessing.
The candidate confuses procedural terminology, using 'plaintiff' and 'prosecution' interchangeably, mislabeling a 'motion in limine' as a 'motion to dismiss,' or misstating the standard of proof (preponderance vs. reasonable doubt) in a charge.
Legal terms are learned by exposure, and candidates who have not worked in a courtroom absorb terminology from television and casual reading, where distinctions are blurred. The vocabulary sounds familiar, so errors pass unnoticed.
What to do instead
Build a glossary organized by proceeding type (civil vs. criminal) and by stage (pleading, discovery, trial, post-trial), and quiz yourself on paired terms. Read sample charges and motion captions from public court resources and identify each term's function; verify unfamiliar terms against a legal dictionary rather than inferring from context.
The candidate produces transcripts with inconsistent formatting: irregular line numbering, missing or misnumbered pages, inconsistent speaker designations, and no title page or certificate block.
Formatting rules are numerous and mechanical, and candidates focus on content accuracy during practice, treating layout as cosmetic. Without a checklist, small deviations accumulate and become habitual.
What to do instead
Create and use a one-page format checklist covering title page elements, page and line numbering, speaker style, exhibit marking, and certificate language. Format a set of sample transcripts end-to-end and have them reviewed against the checklist; repeat until the sequence is automatic before timed practice.
The candidate treats certification and recordkeeping as paperwork to complete later, missing deadlines for filing the transcript, failing to retain notes and audio, or not documenting the chain of custody for exhibits and recordings.
Candidates concentrate on the visible skills of dictation and transcription and underestimate the administrative obligations that carry professional consequences. Deadlines and retention rules vary by jurisdiction and are easy to overlook without a system.
What to do instead
Learn the specific certification, filing-deadline, and retention requirements for your jurisdiction and build a personal compliance log for each assignment (date received, due date, notes retention period, exhibit log). Review the log at the start and end of every job and keep backup copies of notes and audio in a documented location.
The candidate takes on assignments beyond their competence or availability, accepts rush deadlines that cannot be met, or discusses case details in public or on social media.
Freelance pressure and the desire to build a client base encourage overcommitment, and the confidentiality obligation feels abstract until a specific breach occurs. Casual conversation about 'an interesting case' is a common, underestimated violation.
What to do instead
Adopt explicit acceptance criteria: confirm deadline feasibility against current workload, decline unfamiliar proceeding types, and treat all case information as confidential by default. Draft a personal ethics checklist covering conflicts, competence, confidentiality, and deadline management, and review it before accepting any assignment.
The candidate transcribes numerical, date, and citation formats inconsistently, writing '10/5/2024' in one place and 'October 5, 2024' in another, or rendering spoken figures ('one hundred and fifty thousand dollars') incorrectly or ambiguously.
Spoken numbers are inherently ambiguous and transcription conventions for figures, dates, and citations are style-dependent; without a fixed rule set, the candidate improvises each time and introduces inconsistency that undermines the transcript's reliability.
What to do instead
Fix a written convention for numbers, dates, times, and citations and apply it uniformly (including when to spell out versus use numerals). Drill dictation passages heavy in figures, dollar amounts, and case citations, and proofread specifically for numeric consistency as a distinct pass before finalizing.