RPR common mistakes
RPR · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Transcribing sound-alike words correctly by ear but incorrectly by meaning - writing 'statue' for 'statute', 'council' for 'counsel', 'your' for 'you're', 'there' for 'their' - and never catching them in proofreading.
Reporters write phonetically in real time and the CAT dictionary suggestions favour the highest-frequency spelling, so a plausible-looking wrong word passes a quick visual scan.
What to do instead
Proofread the transcript against the audio, not just the screen, and read for meaning rather than spelling. Build a personal list of your recurring homophone pairs and add them to a pre-submission checklist you run on every job.
Punctuating by ear: producing comma splices and run-on sentences in Q&A, omitting quotation marks around quoted testimony, and omitting the comma that sets off a nonrestrictive clause or the introductory element.
Punctuation decisions compete with listening at speed, so the reporter defaults to pausing where the speaker breathes rather than applying the rule.
What to do instead
Drill the small set of rules that carry most of the load (independent-clause boundaries, introductory elements, nonrestrictive vs. restrictive clauses, quotation marks in colloquy). Practise with dictation where you apply punctuation in real time, then compare against a correctly punctuated model answer.
Confusing near-homophone legal terms and their collocations - 'plaintiff'/'defendant' reversed, 'affidavit'/'affiant', 'venire'/'voir dire', 'counsel'/'consul', 'ordinance'/'ordnance'.
The reporter recognises the general sound of a legal phrase but not the term's precise function in the sentence, so an incorrect substitution still reads fluently.
What to do instead
Study legal terms in context sentences rather than as isolated words, and learn each term's grammatical role (who does what to whom). Test yourself by cloze sentences where only one term fits, not by matching spelling to definition.
Mishearing medical terms built from combining forms - 'ileum'/'ilium', 'dysphagia'/'dysphasia', 'perineal'/'peroneal', 'hypo-'/'hyper-', 'abduction'/'adduction'.
These pairs differ by a single vowel or consonant sound that is easily lost at conversational speed, and the reporter lacks the root/prefix meaning that would disambiguate them.
What to do instead
Learn prefixes, suffixes and combining forms by meaning so you can infer the correct term from the body system or procedure being described. Build a job dictionary of paired confusables and flag them for audio verification on every occurrence.
Editing the record instead of transcribing it: silently dropping a speaker's false start or grammatical error, reordering garbled speech into clean prose, or softening an objectionable word.
The reporter wants the transcript to read well and assumes the speaker 'meant' the cleaner version, conflating transcription errors with speaker errors.
What to do instead
Apply the verbatim standard explicitly: fix only what the reporter misheard, never what the speaker actually said. Preserve false starts and grammatical errors as spoken; where policy requires flagging rather than correcting, use the sanctioned device (e.g. [sic] or a bracketed note) instead of a silent change.
Discussing case content, parties, or the substance of testimony outside the proceeding - in conversation, in a professional forum, or on social media - or leaving files unsecured on shared or portable drives.
Routine handling of sensitive material blurs the line between professional discussion of technique and disclosure of case information, and convenience discourages encryption and access control.
What to do instead
Treat all proceeding content as confidential by default: discuss technique in the abstract with no identifying detail, keep files encrypted and access-controlled, and return or destroy material per the engagement terms. When in doubt, do not disclose.
Going on the record with no tested backup: no redundant audio recording, no secondary power source, no connectivity fallback, and no pre-session equipment check.
Reporters trust equipment that worked on the last job, and the pre-session minutes are consumed by setting up rather than testing failure paths.
What to do instead
Use a written pre-session checklist that includes a recorded test and playback, a second independent recording, charged backup power, and an offline method of continuing if the network or software fails. Verify, do not assume.
Running the CAT software on default settings: no job dictionary or briefs built for the assignment, no global find-and-replace pass for recurring mistranscriptions, and no conflict resolution during realtime.
Learning the software deeply feels less urgent than production volume, so the reporter relies on a generic personal dictionary and manual corrections under time pressure.
What to do instead
Before each assignment, load and top up a job dictionary with names, case-specific terms and expert terminology. Use global search-and-replace to sweep recurring errors, and practise realtime conflict resolution so flagged conflicts are fixed as they appear rather than abandoned.
Leaving the opening record incomplete: failing to state appearances, the oath or affirmation, date, time, location, and the identity of the proceedings, or failing to place exhibit markings and descriptions on the record.
Everyone present knows who they are and why they are there, so the reporter assumes the record supplies its own context and skips the formalities to save time.
What to do instead
Use a standard opening script and an exhibit log maintained in real time: mark and describe each exhibit when it is identified, note objections and rulings, and close the record with the time. Reconcile the exhibit log before the transcript leaves your hands.
Treating the knowledge test as general knowledge: answering what a careful person would do or what seems fair, instead of what the standards of practice and the rules of the forum actually require.
Ethics and procedure questions are written with plausible distractors that reflect common-sense instincts, and candidates answer from intuition rather than from the governing standard.
What to do instead
Study the standards and rules as documents - know which obligations are absolute (confidentiality, impartiality, verbatim record) and which are matters of professional judgment - and practise justifying each answer by naming the rule it rests on.