AB 711 – A Well-Intended Bill That Undermines the Realities of Court Reporting

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inUncategorized

California Assembly Bill 711, introduced in 2025, is the latest legislative attempt to address access to the official record in civil courtrooms. Backed by respected organizations like the Deposition Reporters Association (DRA) and the California Court Reporters Association (CCRA), the bill is built on the right intentions: to prevent hearings from going off record, to improve communication between parties, and to give court reporters more visibility into potential assignments.

But for those of us actually doing the work—freelance reporters, agency owners, and officials alike—the bill, in its current form, misses the mark. Despite its good-faith goals, AB 711 introduces new challenges, misinterprets how our schedules work, and may even accelerate the shift away from certified human reporting.

Let’s break down what the bill is trying to do—and why it may cause more harm than help.

🏛️ The Goal Behind AB 711

The core idea of AB 711 is to require parties filing motions in civil cases to state whether they will be providing a certified shorthand reporter (CSR) at the hearing. It also requires a similar declaration in “meet-and-confer” letters. The aim is to prevent situations where one party assumes a reporter will be there, only to find out at the hearing that no official record is being made.

In theory, it’s about transparency and protecting litigants’ rights to a transcript. And those are important goals—ones that all of us in the industry support.

But theory and practice are two very different things.

❌ Where AB 711 Falls Short

1. It Assumes Scheduling Predictability That Doesn’t Exist

Freelancers and agencies already know: the legal calendar is a moving target. Hearings are vacated the morning of. Motions are rescheduled without warning. If I, as a freelance reporter, commit to a job two weeks out, I’m taking a real financial gamble that it won’t fall through. And often, it does.

AB 711 creates a false sense of certainty. It assumes that if an attorney declares they “will provide a reporter,” a reporter will show up. But most of us don’t work that way. We book in real-time based on confirmation—not intention.

Agencies face this on a larger scale, juggling multiple requests with limited resources. A “maybe” two weeks in advance isn’t enough to staff a job or turn away other guaranteed work.

2. It Encourages a Checkbox Mentality

Let’s be blunt: attorneys are busy. Many don’t fully understand how reporter scheduling works. Requiring them to check a box—yes or no, will a CSR be present?—invites minimal effort and maximum misunderstanding. Some may default to “no” just to avoid follow-up logistics.

Worse, it could normalize skipping the record altogether. If it’s easy to say no to a reporter, many will. That’s a dangerous precedent for access to justice.

3. It Produces Phantom Demand

If a lawyer declares they intend to bring a reporter, but never follows through or communicates with an agency, the job may never get booked. That “demand” exists on paper only. Agencies and reporters may start chasing ghosts—jobs that were declared but never confirmed.

This creates scheduling inefficiency, wasted energy, and a distorted view of actual service need.

4. It Opens the Door to AI and Substitutes

By putting the onus on attorneys—and giving them a clear off-ramp to say “no reporter”—the bill paves the way for AI transcription tools or uncertified digital audio recordings. As costs rise and availability shrinks, this checkbox could become a path toward low-quality, unverified alternatives.

In the long run, that erodes our professional standing—not just in the courtroom, but in the public’s understanding of our value.

5. It Doesn’t Solve the Core Problem: Coverage Gaps

We all agree: too many hearings go uncovered. But AB 711 doesn’t fix that. It shifts responsibility onto litigants instead of addressing the real cause: a shortage of reporters, lack of real-time coverage tools, and a disconnect between attorneys and service providers.

The bill creates paperwork—not a pipeline to coverage.

✅ What Could Work Better? Real Solutions for Real Problems

Rather than asking lawyers to guess about coverage weeks in advance, here’s what might actually move the needle:

✔️ Real-Time Coverage Platforms

Technology exists that can match open jobs with available reporters in real time. Courts and agencies should invest in systems that make on-demand coverage seamless—not dependent on declarations.

✔️ Court-Provided Reporting by Default

Let’s push for official coverage at all civil hearings—and treat freelance as the overflow, not the default. That would increase baseline coverage and reduce the pressure on attorneys to arrange their own.

✔️ Funding for Recruitment and Retention

Legislation should invest in training programs, tuition assistance, and licensing incentives. If we want more CSRs, we need to build the pipeline—not just regulate around its absence.

✔️ Standardized Procedures, Not Disclaimers

Instead of asking parties to declare whether they’re bringing a reporter, courts could require that any hearing not being reported include a written disclaimer signed by both parties. This adds friction to going off-record—not to hiring a professional.

🗣️ Final Thoughts

DRA and CCRA deserve credit for trying to fix a real issue. AB 711 is a step in the right direction in terms of raising awareness, but it falls short of creating a practical, functional solution. It misunderstands how our industry operates, adds burden without benefit, and may even push us further out of the room.

We don’t need checkbox compliance. We need investment, infrastructure, and innovation. Let’s build solutions that reflect the actual work of today’s reporters—and protect the record with the urgency it deserves.

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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