Reporter shortage a threat to courts.

Los Angeles Superior Court is bracing for a shortage of court reporters that could paralyze the movement of cases through the legal system as early as this fall.

The dwindling number of licensed court reporters and the closure of a number of court reporting schools has mired the industry in its worst employment slump since the early '90s and could cause trial delays and scheduling conflicts, court officials said.

"When the shortage does happen, we are going to have trouble staffing the courts," said Terry Weiss, manager of court reporter services at L.A. Superior Court. "We're going to try to make the impact on the public and lawyers as minimal as possible, but it may involve having to wait and not being able to start cases on time."

Efforts to boost the number of court reporters have so far not met with success.

The court system's entry-level test, which along with a state certification exam, is given once a year, has been modified in response to declining rolls. The most recent test, in February, was given to a record low of 70 candidates, said Paul Runyon, administrator for litigation support at L.A. Superior Court. Only 30 people passed, he said. With a turnover rate of more than 30 reporters a year, the court will be losing more court reporters than it is gaining this year.

L.A. Superior Court plans to offer the test again this fall, the first time the court has issued the test twice in one year, Runyon said.

Despite the additional round of testing, Runyon is not optimistic that additional court reporters will become available in time to stave off the delays. He points to the most recent statewide statistics from the Court Reporters Board of California that showed 239 applicants took the state-certified exam in 2001, down from 576 in 1993. What's more, only 50 people passed the exam last year, compared to 312 in 1993.

Blow to the system

L.A. Superior Court employs about half of the roughly 1,500 court reporters who work in the court systems. Independent contractors, predominantly, handle depositions, hearings or other proceedings.

Court reporters working in Superior Court are often the most experienced in the field.

Independent contractors, who make up 80 percent of the 7,500 or so court reporters in California, use agencies to find work. Typically, they are younger and fresh out of court reporting school--but they're also the ones who are more difficult to find.

Alternative technologies to replace court reporters, such as voice recognition recording and the placement of audio tape recorders in the courtroom, are limited and their transcriptions not nearly as accurate as those of a court reporter.

"You can put a tape recorder in any place, but a tape recorder can't stop and ask for a playback," said Dave Wenhold, director of government relations and public policy at Vienna, Va.-based National Court Reporters Association. "If my life was on the line, I would make sure there isn't anybody muttering over something on the tape that could have a consequence on my life."

The shortage of employees has caused Hutchings Court Reporters LLC, based in Los Angeles, to refer work to competing agencies this year, said Jeff Koller, its general counsel. A year and ahalf ago, the agency had 100 reporters. Now, it has 85.

Pat Barclay, chief executive of L.A.-based Barclay Court Reporters Corp., said she's had to raise reporter compensation by 5 cents per page in the past year in order to attract reporters to her agency. She said raises in compensation, which averages about $5 a page, are very rare.

Recruiting effort

Both agencies and the courts are hoping that court reporting schools will alleviate the shortage by more actively recruiting. But the numbers aren't promising at schools, either.

In the past three or four years, court reporting schools have had to close because of rapidly declining enrollment in those programs. The number of court reporting schools in the state dropped to 18 in 2001 from 32 in 1997, according to the Court Reporters Board of California.

Nationwide, the number of court reporting schools accredited by the National Court Reporting Association fell to 80 today from 114 in 1995, according to the association.

Cerritos College, which has four full-time instructors in the program, had to drop its entry-level evening class this semester for the first time because only 14 students enrolled, said Vyklti Morgan, professor of court reporting at Cerritos College. The college requires 20 students to be enrolled for a class.

School officials. are unsure why enrollment numbers are declining, though the program's length and intensity may be a factor. Morgan said the average amount of time needed to complete the program is about four years.

The California state exam requires students to type 200 words per minute with 97.5 percent accuracy, she said.

"Not everybody can become a court reporter," Wenhold said. "It takes a special skill set, and a lot of people don't want to invest the time. They're looking for the quick and easy road."

That road has been paved, in part by the proliferation of closed-captioning on television.

Students graduating from court reporting school are taking advantage of this less stressful career path. "Instead of a one-way split between court and deposition work, now there's four ways court reporters can go," Morgan said. "They can go to meetings and conventions for closed captioning work, or to broadcasters. Obviously without higher numbers, that takes away from the bank of individuals for the courts."

Officials from court reporting schools hope that a bill pending in the U.S. Senate will provide enough training and recruiting dollars to boost enrollment. The bill would earmark $20 million for training of court reporters over four years.