MCAS CHERRY POINT, NC -- On the Job: Court Reporter
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There are a plethora of different military occupational specialties in the Marine Corps; different jobs and skill sets that keep the Marine Corps mission ready. Today we dive into the court reporter MOS and take you “On the Job."
U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Paul Anderson and Lance Cpl. Christina Kim are currently the only court reporters assigned to the Legal Service Support Team at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point (MCAS), North Carolina.
Their mission is to transcribe verbatim records of legal proceedings as directed. They also prepare and supervise preparation and assembly of typewritten, summarized or verbatim transcripts, and review records of proceedings for format and technical accuracy. Although it is their main responsibility to digitally record the proceedings of special and general courts-martial, formal investigations, administrative boards, staff meetings, and other similar hearings through real-time speech recognition dictation, also known as voice writing. Except that in the last 6 months, it has evolved so that court reporters are only required to monitor a computer that records all audio during court proceedings.
“The job is always evolving, so there’s always new challenges to overcome,” said Anderson. “It really makes you think outside the box.”
Students in the court reporters course used to be taught how to operate speech recognition technology for closed-mask capture of the spoken word during hearings that had replaced stenography. They are now learning a completely new set of software and transcribing skills that will almost completely digitalize court reporting. Students in the course will now rely on a special program to record the audio which is then be ran through the program to help create a summarized or verbatim transcript.