The Difference Between AcademicTranscription and Court Reporting

There will also be some crucial differences while similar in some ways. One important difference is that speech is transcribed by a court reporter in real time while a transcriptionist has the advantage of replaying fast verbal dialog and hard to understand language and transcribes records. Additionally, the two have very different educational requirements.

While the primary responsibility of a court reporter is really the real time verbatim academic transcription of the dialog taking place in the court room, there are really some added duties that a he or she may handle based on the judge and the court room she or he works with

Formal education and licensure or certification is required. Academic programs vary from two to four years and classes include procedures and legal terminology, legal research, medical vocabulary, company law, and the English language, grammar and mechanics. Some states require a state permit while certificates given by court reporter organizations are accepted by others. Along with earning continuing education credits these certificates require the passing of an assessment or tests.

Along with professors, school programs also teach the actual abilities needed to do the real time transcription that is verbatim. Court reporters don't use routine computer keyboards to record speech but rather stenotype machines. 

These machines have keys but do not look like the computer keyboard you are used to using. They will have much fewer keys. Court reporters type a phonetic code rather than typing out whole words letter by letter. This enables them to type in the area of 250 - 300 words per minute.