Attorneys create a record in a deposition or court proceeding, and the court reporter is responsible for preserving that record.
Here are some tips to help ensure a clear and accurate record is made by your Memphis Realtime Court Reporter:
- Know your litigation support software and how to hook up with the Realtime Court Reporter.
- If possible, use the same reporter throughout the discovery process. The Realtime Court Reporter’s translation and dictionary building gets better with each deposition.
- Provide a notice with the style/caption of the case to the court reporter.
- Provide a list of names and technical terms to the court reporter.
- Provide copies of exhibits to the court reporter, when possible.
- Provide your Realtime Court Reporter with names and addresses of all counsel on the case.
- Speak clearly and at a moderate pace.
- When reading, be sure to enunciate and read at a slower pace.
- Speak your objections out loud. Court reporters can only take down the spoken word and cannot interpret nonverbal gestures.
- Spell unusual names or terms.
- Let the witness or opposing counsel finish speaking before responding.
- If you feel the reporter misheard a term or the witness wasn’t clear, please ask the witness to clarify his/her answer.
- If steno comes up on your realtime screen, don’t worry. Court reporters write phonetically, and some proper names or terms may not be in their dictionary and, thus, the word won’t translate properly. Or, the pace of testimony may cause a misstroke by the reporter with the same result. No worries — the court reporter can read the steno and the final transcript will reflect the proper word(s).
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