LA Superior Court system facing massive court reporter shortage
LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County Superior Court system is facing a massive shortage of court reporters, and court officials say it will be difficult to fill all those vacancies.
According to Superior Court CEO David Slayton, "we have over 100 vacancies that we have developed over time," for various reasons.
Associate Superior Court Judge Sergio Tapia blames an aging workforce and a growing freelance workforce for the difficulties filling spots. But he says another factor is the "incentives in the private sector, where they're going to be paid a lot more than [the] government can pay them, and that's a challenge."
And it's a challenge that's been years in the making.
The California Court Reporters Association said that a decade ago, "LA Courts, along with courts around the state, fired a large segment of its court reporter workforce, and has now been slow and resistant to replacing these positions."
Diana Van Dyke said she was one of those court reporters who was affected. She didn't lose her job like many others. She took a pay cut.
"When that happened, the freelance world exploded," Van Dyke said. She's been an official with the LA County Court Reporters Association for 23 years, and a court reporter for 29.
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Back then, she said, prior court management shifted budgetary priorities, which included requiring that criminal felony cases continue to have human court reporters, but "in misdemeanor proceedings, you would be provided a recording, you would not be entitled to a court reporter."
Van Dyke said you'd have to hire a freelance reporter or accept a digital recording if available. According to Van Dyke, a freelancer can make as much as three times the $120,000 a year that a staffer might get.
In a statement to FOX 11, the California Court Reporters Association said that "The court is prioritizing expanded installation and use of electronic recording equipment in courtrooms," but say those recordings can come with issues. The association says that microphones can be manipulated, that it's hard to hear people when they're talking over each other, and that there is no legal oversight or regulation for electronic recordings to prohibit edited or altered recordings.
To Van Dyke, "it takes away any accountability for the litigant to get a true record."
And still, Superior Court needs 100 more court reporters. Van Dyke says one way to fill the spots is to stop allowing freelance court reporters in Superior courtrooms.
"The court needs to mandate and put one court reporter [in] one court reporter; one court reporter [with] one judge."
Judge Tapia says he and the court "prefer humans. Court reporters are part of our court family, and we want them to stay. We want them to recruit reporters. However, the technology exists where we can provide access to every single litigant that comes into our courtrooms so they have a verbatim record."
But to that, Van Dyke says court reporters add a layer of accountability to the process.
"No machine is going to take those proceedings, type it up and certify, ‘I was there. This is what was said, and I’m responsibly telling you this is your record.'"