Never Waste an Opportunity to Go to CourtWhat a Court Reporter Sees From the Other Side of the Record

By the time most attorneys walk into a courtroom, they believe the real work has already been done. The research is complete. The brief is filed. The arguments are outlined. Court, to many, feels like the ceremonial end of a process that truly happened at a desk.

From where I sit, that belief is exactly backward.

Court is not the conclusion of your work. It is the work.

I have spent my professional life inside courtrooms. I have reported hundreds of trials, motions, hearings, evidentiary disputes, emergency applications, and quiet, procedural calendars that never make headlines. I have watched careers take shape in ten-minute status conferences. I have seen reputations built, and quietly dismantled, in routine discovery motions. I have watched young attorneys become formidable advocates not through grand victories, but through repetition, presence, and an increasing command of the room.

If there is one piece of advice I wish every new lawyer heard early, it is this: never waste an opportunity to go to court.

Not because you will always win. Not because every appearance matters on paper. But because court is where your craft is forged.

From the reporter’s chair, you see patterns others miss. You see who knows the rhythm of a courtroom and who is still fighting it. You hear who understands that law is not only logic but language. You watch who builds credibility not by performance, but by consistency.

The courtroom teaches in a way no office ever can.

One of the first lessons it teaches is that advocacy is physical. It has posture. It has pacing. It has tone. It has restraint. It has timing.

I can often tell within thirty seconds whether an attorney spends time in court or avoids it.

The ones who come often enter quietly. They know where to stand without asking. They wait for the judge to finish speaking. They listen, really listen, before they respond. Their papers are organized not just for argument, but for retrieval. When a question comes, they know exactly where to look.

The ones who rarely appear tend to move too fast or too tentatively. They interrupt without realizing it. They apologize unnecessarily. They shuffle papers while speaking. They talk through rulings instead of absorbing them. They sound prepared, but not anchored.

These are not moral failings. They are exposure gaps.

Court is where those gaps close.

Every appearance trains you in the small mechanics that determine how you are perceived long before the merits are reached. How you say good morning. Whether you rise when the judge enters. Whether you speak toward the bench or down at your notes. Whether your voice lifts at the end of every sentence as if asking a question. Whether you correct yourself cleanly or spiral when interrupted.

These things are never taught explicitly, yet they shape everything that follows.

Even the way attorneys address the court reveals how often they practice in it.

I routinely hear new lawyers address the bench as “sir,” or “judge,” or sometimes not at all. They begin arguments with “So…” or “Okay…” or “I just think…” They refer to “what happened” instead of “what the record reflects.” They speak to the judge as if continuing a hallway conversation.

They are rarely corrected directly. But the shift in tone is immediate.

“Your Honor” is not a flourish. It is not antiquated. It is a signal. It establishes the architecture of the room. It acknowledges that this is not a discussion between equals. It is a legal proceeding governed by rules, standards, and obligations that extend beyond the people physically present.

Judges hear thousands of voices. The ones who remain distinct are not the loudest. They are the clearest. The most grounded. The most precise.

Precision is learned on your feet.

From the court reporter’s seat, I hear attorneys discover their real voices over time. Early on, many mimic what they think a lawyer should sound like. They over-formalize. They over-argue. They over-object. They speak in paragraphs when a sentence would do. They resist conceding even the smallest point.

Then, slowly, something shifts.

They begin to answer the actual question asked. They stop filling silence. They start letting rulings land. They learn when to press and when to preserve. They learn the difference between persuasion and performance.

That learning does not come from reading transcripts. It comes from generating them.

There is also a quieter education that happens when you go to court often: you begin to understand judges as professionals, not abstractions.

From the outside, “the judge” can feel like a single authority figure with a gavel. From the inside, you come to see that each courtroom has its own culture. Its own tempo. Its own tolerances. Its own pressure points.

Some judges want tight, technical argument. Some want narrative. Some want bullet points. Some want case names. Some want outcomes. Some are patient with detours. Some are not. Some signal their thinking early. Some reveal nothing until the ruling.

You do not learn this from reputation alone. You learn it by being there. By watching how a judge handles calendars. By seeing what irritates them and what reassures them. By noticing which arguments they engage and which they quietly discard. By paying attention to how they treat clerks, bailiffs, and staff.

The attorneys who grow fastest are rarely the most brilliant. They are the most observant.

Court is also where you learn that law is not practiced in isolation. It is practiced in ecosystems.

When you appear regularly, you begin to see the same faces. You learn who is prepared. Who is credible. Who is dramatic. Who is surgical. You see which attorneys judges trust with representations and which they quietly verify. You watch how reputations precede arguments. You hear how one lawyer’s name can shift the temperature of a room.

You cannot buy that awareness. You have to witness it.

From the reporter’s chair, I have watched young lawyers arrive barely able to finish a sentence without apologizing, and leave years later able to control a courtroom with two words and a pause. I have watched attorneys lose badly and return better. I have watched others avoid court, build paper practices, and remain forever uncomfortable when the record goes live.

The difference is not talent. It is exposure.

Going to court trains you not only in law, but in judgment. It teaches you what matters and what doesn’t. It teaches you how arguments actually land. It teaches you how much weight words really carry once they are preserved, ordered, and bound.

Because that is the other reality I see every day: everything said in court becomes something.

It becomes a transcript. It becomes a record. It becomes the version of events that appellate courts, agencies, insurers, and future attorneys will rely on long after the moment has passed.

Casual language becomes permanent language. Unclear arguments become unclear history. Sloppy phrasing becomes binding description.

Court is where lawyers learn to respect the afterlife of their words.

The attorneys who spend time in court learn to speak in a way that survives review. They mark exhibits cleanly. They identify speakers. They clarify references. They build records intentionally. They protect future readers they will never meet.

They understand that they are not only persuading the judge in front of them. They are creating a document that may have to persuade someone years later, without them in the room.

That awareness changes everything.

It changes how you object. It changes how you argue. It changes how you summarize. It changes how carefully you frame even routine exchanges.

You do not develop that instinct behind a screen.

You develop it when you sit in a courtroom and realize that a small, imprecise phrase can echo through years of litigation.

Court also teaches humility. Not the performative kind, but the functional kind.

You will be wrong. You will misstate something. You will lose motions you were sure you would win. You will be corrected on the record. You will be interrupted mid-sentence. You will be told, occasionally, that you are simply incorrect.

And then you will have to respond.

That moment is where real professionalism forms.

Do you argue with the ruling, or do you preserve and move forward? Do you become defensive, or do you adjust? Do you collapse, or do you recalibrate?

Judges notice. Opposing counsel notices. Court staff notices. And, from my seat, the difference between a lawyer who grows and one who stagnates is often determined not by how they win, but by how they lose.

So when a chance to go to court arises, even on something small, even on something procedural, even on something you think “won’t matter,” take it.

Sit in the room. Watch other lawyers. Watch the judge. Listen to how the law actually sounds when spoken. Learn what arguments feel like when they meet resistance. Learn how the room responds to you. Learn how to slow down. Learn how to speak to the bench. Learn how to be corrected without being diminished.

Never waste an opportunity to go to court.

Because every time you do, you are not just appearing.

You are becoming.

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Disclaimer

This article is written from the perspective of a professional court reporter based on firsthand courtroom observation. It is not legal advice, does not represent the views of any court or judicial officer, and is intended solely for educational and professional discussion purposes.