California Missed the Moment: What Illinois’ Officialship Training Program Reveals About a Lost Opportunity

Posted bystenoimperiumPosted inUncategorized

When Illinois quietly launched its tuition-free Officialship Training Program in January 2024, it did not issue press releases declaring victory over a court-reporter shortage. It did not celebrate disruption or promise that technology would “solve” the problem. Instead, it did something far more practical—and far more telling. It invested directly in people.

Illinois’ courts created a pipeline that places student stenographers inside courtrooms early, pays them while they train, and supports them through licensure with structured oversight. The program does not abandon stenography. It does not outsource the record. It does not pretend electronic recording is a replacement for a trained human reporter. It uses electronic recording only as a backup while reporters build speed toward full qualification.

That choice stands in stark contrast to what California did—and did not do—when it had the chance.

California had millions of dollars earmarked to promote, recruit, and stabilize the court reporting profession. Estimates place the funding in the range of several million dollars. The stated goal was to address the same crisis Illinois faced: a shrinking pool of licensed reporters, growing courtroom vacancies, and mounting pressure to rely on electronic recording.

But rather than using that money to build a structured, paid apprenticeship model like Illinois’, California allowed the moment to pass. The funds were spent, dispersed, or absorbed without producing a durable, statewide training pipeline to replace the reporters retiring out of the system every year.

The result is not theoretical. It is already visible in courtrooms across the state.

California courts increasingly operate without stenographers present. Attorneys are told—sometimes incorrectly—that reporters are unavailable. Electronic recording fills the gap, not as a temporary measure but as a default. Meanwhile, students who want to become court reporters face the same obstacles they always have: high tuition costs, years of unpaid speed-building, limited access to real courtroom experience, and no guarantee of employment at the end.

Illinois chose to confront those barriers head-on. California did not.

The Illinois Officialship Training Program recognizes a basic truth that California policymakers appear to have overlooked: recruitment alone does not solve a workforce crisis. Training, financial support, and a clear path to employment do.

In Illinois, students are not told to “just get faster” on their own time. They are placed in judicial circuits. They observe proceedings daily. They learn courtroom mechanics alongside working reporters. They earn income while building speed. And when they are ready, they step into restricted licensure roles that still prioritize human stenography, with electronic recording serving only as insurance—not as the official record.

California could have done the same.

With millions of dollars available, the state could have partnered with its courts, its lone NCRA-approved school, and experienced working reporters to build a paid officialship program. It could have subsidized tuition, covered equipment costs, and paid students to apprentice in courthouses with the greatest shortages. It could have created a restricted license pathway paired with intensive mentorship, ensuring quality while accelerating entry into the profession.

Instead, California’s response has been fragmented. Recruitment campaigns encourage interest without removing financial barriers. Students are told the profession is “in demand” while being left to shoulder years of unpaid labor to qualify. Courts quietly shift toward electronic recording, not because it is better, but because the human infrastructure was never rebuilt.

This is the core failure: California treated court reporting as a marketing problem, while Illinois treated it as a workforce problem.

The difference matters because court reporting is not interchangeable labor. It is a specialized skill that takes years to master and decades to replace. When courts lose stenographers, they do not simply lose a service. They lose real-time accountability, a verbatim record, and a neutral officer of the court whose sole job is to preserve what was actually said.

Illinois’ program is not perfect, and it is not without controversy. Some reporters worry that restricted licensure and electronic recording backups could become permanent rather than transitional. Those concerns are valid and deserve scrutiny. But Illinois’ approach at least begins from the premise that stenographers are worth saving.

California’s silence sends a different message.

By failing to create a comparable program when the money was available, California effectively signaled that the profession would be left to survive on individual sacrifice rather than institutional support. Those who make it do so despite the system, not because of it. Those who cannot afford years of unpaid training simply disappear from the pipeline.

The long-term consequences are predictable. Courts normalize electronic recording. Attorneys grow accustomed to imperfect transcripts. Appeals become harder. Judicial efficiency declines. And when the public finally notices, the infrastructure to fix it will already be gone.

Illinois offers a glimpse of an alternative future—one where courts take responsibility for cultivating their own workforce rather than outsourcing the problem to technology. California had the resources to do the same. What it lacked was the will to commit to a long-term solution instead of short-term fixes.

The question now is whether California will learn from Illinois’ example—or whether it will continue to watch other states invest in people while it invests in workarounds.

Because money alone does not preserve a profession. How that money is used does.

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.

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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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