Busting the Digital “Mythbusters” – Why AI and Recorders Can’t Replace Stenographers

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inAI and the Legal System, Court Reporting, Judicial Ethics Watch, Legal ServicesTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The digital lobby wants you to believe they’ve “set the record straight.” They parade around “mythbusters” that sound slick on social media, comparing stenographers to driverless taxis, and insisting that technology will save the day. But let’s peel back the marketing spin. What they call “myths” are actually hard legal truths—and what they present as “facts” collapse under scrutiny.

Myth 1: Digital Reporting Is Just as Accurate as Stenography

Their claim: Digital transcripts “meet or exceed” stenographic accuracy.
The reality: Accuracy is not measured by how many words line up with audio. It’s about producing a verbatim legal record—every pause, false start, and nuance captured faithfully in realtime.

Digital reporting relies on predictive algorithms, not verbatim capture. AI guesses what was said based on statistical patterns. That’s not a transcript. That’s hearsay generated by a machine. A transcript that is not verbatim, but predictive, fails the evidentiary threshold of reliability. Stenographers don’t guess—we write exactly what is spoken, with context and punctuation determined in real time by a trained officer of the court.

Would you trust a predictive transcript to determine the guilt or innocence of a criminal defendant?

Myth 2: Digital Transcripts Are Faster

Their claim: With real-time reporting tools, digital transcripts are faster.
The reality: Digital recordings go through a messy chain of custody: audio files uploaded, sent to offshore typists, run through ASR engines, patched by multiple editors, then finally cobbled into something resembling a transcript. That’s not speed—that’s a lagging relay race across jurisdictions.

Stenographers provide immediate rough drafts, same-day certified transcripts, and live realtime feeds to counsel. Attorneys don’t need “fast” weeks later. They need instantaneous readback in trial, with the confidence that what they’re reading is admissible.

Myth 3: Digital Reporters Can Provide Real-Time Readback

Their claim: Digital reporters can offer playback, live text, or instant readbacks.
The reality: A playback of audio is not a readback of testimony. Courts have long distinguished between the two. Audio is subject to interpretation—background noise, overlapping speech, accents, technical jargon. A realtime stenographer can instantly display text and read testimony back verbatim.

Digital reporters “providing real-time” is marketing code for “push the play button.” That is not the same as a trained officer creating a legal record in real time.

Myth 4: Digital Reporters Are Certified and Trained Like Stenographers

Their claim: Certified digital reporters follow ethics and legal procedure.
The reality: Digital certifications are often weekend courses or online modules created by the very vendors selling the recording equipment. Stenographers undergo years of intensive training, licensing exams, speed tests, and continuing education.

Even if digital reporters are trained to operate software, the heart of the record—the actual text of testimony—is outsourced to anonymous, sometimes overseas workers who never swore the witness, never stepped foot in the deposition, and never even heard the legal instructions. That’s the very definition of hearsay evidence.

Myth 5: Digital Reporting Is Widely Accepted in Court

Their claim: Digital reporting is authorized in many courts and becoming the industry standard.
The reality: Permission does not equal preference. Many jurisdictions allow digital recording only as a last resort due to shortages—not because it is equal to stenography. Judges and attorneys repeatedly challenge the reliability of digital transcripts, with appellate reversals and mistrials already documented because of inaudible or corrupted recordings.

Ask any trial lawyer: do they want to rely on a redacted, error-riddled transcript patched together by an algorithm and offshore editor—or do they want a verbatim record certified by an officer of the court?

The Deeper Problem: The Myth of “Inevitable Change”

Digital advocates love to say, “If we can have driverless taxis, why not driverless transcripts?” But here’s the difference: if a driverless taxi makes a wrong turn, you’re late to dinner. If a predictive transcript makes a wrong substitution, an innocent person could go to prison, or a billion-dollar case could swing on a misheard word.

Law is not Uber. Justice is not a ride-share.

What They Don’t Want You to Ask

  1. Chain of Custody: Who actually touched the transcript? How many hands, how many continents, how many unvetted typists?
  2. Confidentiality: How many third-party vendors had access to privileged testimony? Where did those files get stored—and for how long?
  3. Admissibility: Can an attorney impeach a witness using a transcript produced by a guessing algorithm? Courts may soon start rejecting them outright.
  4. Accountability: When a stenographer errs, the reporter is answerable to licensing boards and professional codes. When a digital transcript fails, who takes responsibility—the offshore typist, the software vendor, or the contractor with a microphone?

The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

The mythbusters frame this as a “steno vs. digital” turf war. It’s not. It’s about the constitutional right to a reliable record. A record built on predictive AI is not reliable. It’s not admissible. It’s not justice.

Change may be inevitable. But regression is not progress. Driverless taxis may get you across town. Only stenographers can get you safely across the courtroom.

StenoImperium
Court Reporting. Unfiltered. Unafraid.

Disclaimer

“This article includes analysis and commentary based on observed events, public records, and legal statutes.”

The content of this post is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. All opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are based on publicly available information, industry standards, and good-faith concerns about nonprofit governance and professional ethics. No part of this article is intended to defame, accuse, or misrepresent any individual or organization. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and to engage constructively in dialogue about leadership, transparency, and accountability in the court reporting profession.

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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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