When different law offices are shopping around for Boca Raton court reporters, I usually get a lot of questions. And, of course, that’s more than fair. After all, hiring the wrong court reporter could very well make or potentially break your legal case.

Many clients who approach me do so because they are looking for a seasoned, experienced court reporter to help them with transcribing a deposition (or several). Depositions are very important for legal proceedings, even though most Hollywood crime dramas likes to gloss over this less-than-sexy yet very important part of our legal system. Of course, it is not difficult for me to reassure them that I have many years of experience in the field. During the entirety of my court reporting career, I’ve reported thousands of depositions in and around Broward, Miami-Dade County, and Palm Beach. And I always offer up previous happy clients as potential references so that new potential clients can give me a fair evaluation.

Another popular topic of conversation comes up when a client asks me about my educational background. I always like to start with the funny story of how I actually got pretty bad grades in English class up until 8th grade. Before that, I worked really hard at studying and my parents even tried several different tutor services, but I still kept getting C+ and B- grades. It wasn’t until I took Mrs. Neely’s 8th grade English class that everything finally started coming together in my head. I don’t know what it was exactly, but she had a magical way of teaching that cleaned the cobwebs out of my brain and helped me understand everything that I had previously failed to grasp. After that, it was straight A’s all the way through high school and college. I grew to love the English language so much that turning my passion into a full time career as a court reporter was the only thing that made sense. And I’ve never regretted that decision for a moment.

I also like to explain to future clients that I consider myself to be more of a court reporter than a stenographer, just to make sure they understand the difference. Many people get the two terms confused. Whether you’re talking about Boca Raton court reporters, or a court reporter in any other part of the country, becoming a professional court reporter takes time, several additional years of education, and special testing in order to earn your court reporter credentials. I worked hard to earn those credentials for myself, and I take pride in the fact that my hard work paid off and developed into the fruitful, interesting, and rewarding career I’ve enjoyed over the past couple of decades.

It has also been interesting to see technology change and grow in the field of court reporting. My career originally began in the mid 90’s, back when carbon copies and physically searching for cases in the library of the Broward County Courthouse were daily staples of the job. But I’ve evolved accordingly, and I’m just as adept at using newer forms of technology designed for modern day depositions as any of the other young Broward County court reporters are.