Digital Court Reporting: Trying to Disrupt the Stenographic Industry in the Same Way Uber Revolutionized Transportation

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inCourt Reporting, Legal ServicesTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the world of business, disruption often comes when an upstart challenges traditional practices with innovation and technology. Uber, for example, reshaped the transportation industry by offering a user-friendly, mobile-first platform that connected riders with drivers directly, cutting out the middlemen and revolutionizing the way people think about taxis and car services. Similarly, digital court reporting is being touted as an innovation poised to disrupt the longstanding world of stenographic court reporting.

For over a century, stenographic court reporters, equipped with specialized machines and expert shorthand skills, have been responsible for capturing verbatim records of court proceedings. Their work has been essential in maintaining the accuracy and reliability of legal documentation. However, as large “Big Box” agencies brought in equity investors driven by profit, the idea of replacing human stenographers with digital solutions—promising an immediate 50% profit boost—has started to challenge this traditional practice, much like how Uber disrupted the taxi industry.

The Stenographic Tradition: An Industry Built on Expertise

Stenographic court reporting has a rich history that has remained largely unchanged for over a century. Stenographers use a specialized shorthand machine to transcribe spoken words quickly and accurately during court hearings, depositions, and other legal proceedings. These professionals undergo extensive training to master the technique, which can be difficult to learn and requires years of practice to perfect.

However, despite the expertise and precision of stenographers, the industry has been facing mounting pressure due to various challenges, including the increasing demand for faster turnarounds, the rising costs of stenographic services, and the need for greater accessibility. However, the true driving force behind these changes is the pursuit of profit by large agencies. Enter digital court reporting.

Digital Court Reporting: The New Challenger

Digital court reporting employs technology to record proceedings, sometimes paired with real-time transcription software. These systems can capture the spoken word, which can then be transcribed, edited, and shared instantly. Unlike stenography, which requires specific equipment and a skilled stenographer to transcribe, digital court reporting uses audio recordings combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to help streamline the process.

Unlike Uber’s disruption of the traditional taxi service with its efficient, on-demand, and tech-enabled solution, digital court reporting presents a step backward, undermining the accuracy, reliability, and professionalism that stenography provides. Rather than offering a fresh, cost-effective, and scalable alternative, it introduces risks to the legal field, compromising the integrity of court records. The supposed disadvantages of this approach include:

The supposed disadvantages of this approach include:

  1. Accuracy Issues: Digital systems are prone to errors, misinterpretations, and inaccuracies, especially when dealing with complex legal terminology or overlapping speech.
  2. Lack of Human Oversight: Unlike stenography, which relies on trained professionals to ensure precision, digital reporting often lacks the necessary human judgment and oversight, leading to unreliable transcripts.
  3. Security Risks: The digital nature of these recordings increases the potential for data breaches or unauthorized access to sensitive information, which can undermine the confidentiality of legal proceedings.
  4. Dependence on Technology: Digital court reporting systems are vulnerable to technical failures, such as equipment malfunctions or software glitches, which could jeopardize the accuracy or availability of transcripts.
  5. Training and Accountability Issues: Many digital reporters are part of a gig workforce that is uncertified and unlicensed, leading to high turnover, missing transcripts, and a lack of accountability.

Uber’s Strategy: A Blueprint for Disruption in Court Reporting

Looking at how Uber disrupted the transportation sector provides a useful lens for understanding how digital court reporting could disrupt stenography. Uber’s success was not just about providing a new service; it was about reimagining the entire business model of how taxis operated. Uber focused on user-centric experiences, a streamlined app-based interface, and cost-effective pricing, which resonated with both drivers and riders.


In contrast, digital court reporting presents an inferior model for documenting legal proceedings. Despite claims of speed, cost-effectiveness, and ease of access, digital court reporting platforms often fail to deliver accurate transcripts, leading to errors and delays. The promise of faster turnaround times is often undermined by technical failures and lack of oversight. This shift from the traditional stenographic model is a step backward, as it replaces skilled professionals with unreliable, automated systems that compromise the quality and integrity of court records.

Challenges Ahead for Digital Court Reporting

Despite the claims made about digital court reporting, the shift from traditional stenography to digital platforms is far from the solution it’s being marketed as. As with any disruptive innovation, there are challenges to overcome, including:

  1. Resistance to Change: Stenographers and courts may resist adopting new technologies due to fear of job loss or unfamiliarity with digital systems. Much like how taxi drivers initially resisted Uber, traditional court reporters may push back against the new wave of digital solutions.
  2. Technological Limitations: While AI-powered transcription systems are improving, they still require a human touch to ensure the final product’s accuracy, especially in complex legal settings. Additionally, the technology must continue to evolve to handle multiple accents, jargon, and legal terminology with precision.
  3. Regulatory Hurdles: The legal system is highly regulated, and the transition to digital reporting must meet strict requirements for accuracy, security, and privacy. This includes the need to ensure that digital transcripts are admissible in court, meeting the same standards that stenographic records have upheld for decades.

The Future: A Hybrid Approach

While agencies hoped that digital court reporting would be the solution to reshape the industry, a better hybrid model will emerge—one that combines the best elements of both automated speech recognition and stenographic methods. Advantage Software is ahead of the game, quietly working on this technology for over a decade, it will emerge as the winner, keeping human court reporters at the helm of the legal transcription industry.

Just as Uber didn’t fully replace taxis, but created a complementary service, digital court reporting will never coexist alongside stenographic reporting. It may be relegated to potentially serving niche areas, like assisting the deaf and hard of hearing in university classrooms, or aiding lower courts with traffic hearings, and law firms with note-taking. However, it will likely fade out of the legal industry due to its catastrophic failures and unreliability.

By harnessing technology, stenographers can evolve to meet the needs of the modern legal environment, improving accessibility, reducing costs, and ensuring the continued accuracy and reliability of court records.

In conclusion, digital court reporting’s attempt to disrupt the traditional stenographic industry in much the same way Uber revolutionized the transportation sector, is a complete failure. Despite claims of innovation and efficiency, digital court reporting is unlikely to redefine the way legal professionals handle court transcripts. Rather than making the process faster, more affordable, or more accessible, it risks compromising accuracy, security, and reliability. As the legal system values precision and accountability, the integration of digital solutions may prove to be more of a hindrance than a help, much like how Uber’s impact on urban mobility has raised concerns about reliability and safety.



Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

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