As artificial intelligence quietly enters deposition rooms under vague terms like “live notes,” court reporters are being forced into a new role: boundary-setters for the legal record itself. The issue is no longer whether proceedings can be recorded, but who controls what is captured, who is accountable for what is created, and what truly constitutes the official record in modern litigation.
Tag Archives: CivilProcedure
The Record Is the Case – Why Saving Court Reporting Means Saving Legal Reality
The record is not a convenience. It is evidence.
Every ruling, appeal, settlement, and precedent rests on the integrity of the transcript. When courts weaken the standards governing how the record is created, they are not modernizing—they are destabilizing the very foundation of justice. Saving court reporting is not about preserving a profession. It is about protecting legal reality itself.
Vendors Are Not Officers of the Court
Court reporting agencies schedule proceedings and process invoices—but they do not create the legal record. Yet some national agencies are now attaching corporate “company certificates” to deposition transcripts they did not take and cannot lawfully certify. This quiet shift blurs statutory boundaries, risks inadmissibility, and threatens due process by substituting branding for licensure in the creation of sworn testimony.
Fool’s Gold – Why Courts Cannot Turn Depositions Into a “Profit Center”
Courts are not “sitting on a gold mine” — they’re bound by the Constitution. Turning depositions into revenue streams ignores statutes, due process, and the ethical duty to safeguard verbatim accuracy. Sworn reporters are not obstacles but guardians of the record. Replacing them with AI “light edits” risks malpractice, reversals, and erosion of public trust. Fool’s gold is no substitute for justice.
STENOIMPERIUM 