Are your court reporters certified?

We hear that question quite often. Are your court reporters certified? The short answer is no, not in the state of Pennsylvania. Anyone – and that includes you – can go out and not only call themselves a reporter but attempt to perform the services of a court reporter. Which is kind of scary when you consider the implications of that. What will the transcript contain? Will there even be a transcript?

Many states have a certification process and reporters must be certified before they can hold themselves out as court reporters. These certifications include tests that a court reporter must pass as well as continuing education requirements. This is not the case in Pennsylvania.

But there is another way that you can be assured that your court reporter is trained and competent and able to provide an accurate transcript. The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) not only approves court reporting training programs but also provides certification designations for court reporters who choose to take their profession to the next level. So if your court reporter has attended an approved training program or has letter designations after his/her name, these are standards that you can be assured your court reporter worked very hard to attain.

There are a several NCRA certification designations, the main ones being Registered Professional Reporter (RPR) and Certified Realtime Reporter (CRR). Other certifications a reporter can achieve are a Registered Merit Reporter (RMR) and a Registered Diplomate Reporter (RDR).  Court reporters who possess these designations have passed both a written knowledge test and a test involving skills and accuracy. For instance, an RPR must achieve a 95% accuracy on a testimony Q&A skills test at 225 words per minute to pass. Also, reporters who carry these designations adhere to a professional code of ethics which includes among other things, integrity, impartiality and confidentiality.

So you can be confident that while we don’t have a state certification in Pennsylvania there are ways you can verify that your court reporter is skilled and professional.