AI Should Fold the Laundry — Not Replace the Court Reporter

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

Why the push to automate everything misunderstands the value of human expertise

In nearly every courtroom hallway in America, some version of the same question echoes off the marble: “So… is AI going to replace you?” For court reporters—professionals who train for years to master a craft that looks invisible until the moment precision matters—this question lands with a particular sting. It is not merely a matter of technology. It is a matter of misunderstanding what humans actually do, why experience matters, and what society risks when short-term cost cutting masquerades as innovation.

AI promises convenience. It promises efficiency. But it also promises something more seductive: the fantasy that judgment, expertise, and accountability can be automated at will. And that, increasingly, is the real danger.

Court reporters have entered a cultural moment where the value of human skill is being questioned not because machines have caught up, but because leaders in law, tech, and government are desperate to cut costs. “Innovation,” in many cases, has become a polite way of saying cheaper labor. The uncomfortable truth is that automation is not always deployed because it works better. It is often deployed because it looks better on a budget sheet.

The Myth of Total Automation

The modern narrative surrounding AI carries a quiet but pervasive assumption: if something can be automated, it should be. But this logic collapses the moment we apply it to professions society instinctively respects. Few people would trust an algorithm to argue their criminal defense, diagnose a child’s mysterious illness, or design the beams holding up a bridge. Expertise, nuance, and ethical judgment still matter.

Yet somehow, when the profession involves language—translation, transcription, or realtime stenography—people often assume a machine can “just do it.” The irony, of course, is that language is one of the most context-dependent, culturally-laden, unforgivingly nuanced systems humans have. It doesn’t respond well to shortcuts. It demands attentiveness, agility, and understanding. And it requires something AI does not possess: accountability.

Court reporters operate in a legal environment where every comma and misheard phrase can change meaning, affect testimony, or alter the record in ways that determine someone’s liberty, livelihood, or liability. Machines can approximate language. But they do not understand it. And they cannot be cross-examined.

The Cost-Cutting Illusion

The push to replace experts with technology rarely begins with an honest conversation about quality. It begins with a spreadsheet. When decision-makers see a line item for labor that could theoretically be reduced, the temptation becomes irresistible.

In corporate America, entire divisions have been gutted not because AI performs better, but because it performs cheaply enough. Senior professionals with decades of insight are deemed “too expensive,” while junior workers and automated systems are left to perform tasks that once required mastery. The legal field is not immune to this trend. Some agencies have already embraced a model that replaces veteran reporters with digital systems supervised by inexperienced staff—systems that miss interruptions, misidentify speakers, and sometimes fail altogether.

The notion that the record—the backbone of due process—should be entrusted to an untrained person watching a screen is a profound misunderstanding of what court reporters safeguard. It is the legal equivalent of replacing air-traffic controllers with interns because “the software handles most of it.”

The Human Mind Still Outperforms the Machine

Stenographic court reporters do far more than press keys at high speed. They anticipate, contextualize, and clarify. They listen not only for words but for intention. They interrupt when necessary to ensure accuracy. They identify unclear speakers, mark interruptions, and capture critical moments missed by microphones. They understand terminology in ways that reflect years of exposure to medical testimony, construction defect litigation, technical specifications, accents, dialects, and speech patterns that AI struggles to interpret.

Ask any seasoned reporter about a difficult witness—from the chief surgeon who speaks in acronyms to the emotional victim barely able to articulate between sobs—and they will tell you the same thing: accuracy isn’t just about hearing. It’s about perceiving.

AI lacks perception. It lacks judgment. It lacks the ability to say, “Counsel, two people are talking at once.” In a courtroom, that difference matters.

AI Should Remove Friction—Not Replace Expertise

The future is not binary: humans or machines. The real future, the mature future, is collaboration. AI can eliminate tedious tasks—organizing files, formatting indexes, scheduling jobs, generating rough drafts—so that court reporters can focus on what requires human intelligence: listening, understanding, verifying, and protecting the integrity of the record.

If artificial intelligence truly aims to improve the legal system, then the first job it should automate is paperwork—not the people safeguarding constitutional rights.

When AI is used well, it augments the reporter. It accelerates processes that slow down production. It handles the digital chores, not the core responsibilities. The risk arises when institutions confuse convenience with capability. Faster does not mean accurate. And in law, accurate is the only metric that matters.

The Unseen Risk: Dehumanization of Skilled Work

In many industries, professionals are watching their livelihoods eroded not by better performance, but by the cultural narrative that expertise is optional. Translators, journalists, designers, editors, educators—all have seen their work dismissed as something a chatbot can “pretty much do.”

But proficiency is not the same as precision. Generating text is not the same as capturing sworn testimony. Producing a paraphrase is not the same as creating a verbatim legal record.

The broader issue is not technology—it is the growing societal tendency to undervalue human skill when it becomes invisible. Court reporters have long suffered from this invisibility. Their work is so seamless that observers forget it’s happening. And when something looks effortless, outsiders assume it is effortless.

The Path Forward

AI’s place in the court reporting ecosystem should not be feared—but it must be defined correctly. We need:

  • Regulation that protects the constitutional necessity of an accurate record.
  • Standards that mandate human oversight in all critical proceedings.
  • Education for judges, lawmakers, and agencies about the difference between approximate transcription and certified reporting.
  • Respect for expertise, not because it is tradition, but because it remains irreplaceable.

Court reporters are not fighting against technology. They are fighting for accuracy, for reliability, and for the fundamental premise that justice deserves the best humans can offer—not the cheapest machines available.

AI can help with laundry. It can help with indexing. It can help with formatting. But it cannot replace the human mind trained to listen with purpose.

The legal system should be clear on this: the record is too important to delegate to something that cannot hear, cannot think, and cannot be held responsible.

StenoImperium
Court Reporting. Unfiltered. Unafraid.

Disclaimer

This article reflects my perspective and analysis as a court reporter and eyewitness. It is not legal advice, nor is it intended to substitute for the advice of an attorney.

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.

  • The content on this blog represents the personal opinions, observations, and commentary of the author. It is intended for editorial and journalistic purposes and is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
  • Nothing here constitutes legal advice. Readers are encouraged to review the facts and form independent conclusions.

***To unsubscribe, just smash that UNSUBSCRIBE button below — yes, the one that’s universally glued to the bottom of every newsletter ever created. It’s basically the “Exit” sign of the email world. You can’t miss it. It looks like this (brace yourself for the excitement):

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.

Leave a comment