Court reporter planning school

Near the front of the courtroom sits a person who seems to be pushing levers on what looks like a xylophone, suspended on a broomstick and missing about two-thirds of its keys.

Edward C. Fennell/The Post and Courier

Janet Collins (left), who is planning to open a court reporters' school, gives instruction to Maureen McCrorie, a paralegal from Hanahan who is learning to be a scopist. Scopists transcribe court reporters' shorthand into legal documents.

That person with the flying fingers is a court reporter, someone essential to the legal process.

Good court reporters are hard to find, so the pay is good, said Janet Collins, a Mount Pleasant woman who hopes to open a court reporter school in the Lowcountry.

A 17-year veteran of court reporting, including 10 years in the federal court in Charleston, Collins left her demanding daily job in February of last year to lay the groundwork for her business, named J. Collins Reporting. Collins is a member of the Greater Summerville/Dorchester County Chamber of Commerce and a winner of the Woman of the Year citation by the Summerville Chapter of American Business Women's Association. She's already tutoring students, including a breast cancer patient she said served as her inspiration for opening the school.

A big fan of rock star Melissa Etheridge, Collins took a March trip to Hawaii and at an Etheridge concert received the opportunity for a backstage interview. Collins was able to ask Etheridge, herself a breast cancer survivor, for input concerning recruitment and training cancer patients as court reporters.

Collins told Etheridge about Lois Randall, a student from Mount Pleasant who is undergoing chemotherapy.

"We can help people in (Randall's) situation who aren't OK right now but will be," Collins told the singer.

Collins said she showed Etheridge a photo of Randall practicing at her steno machine while getting her third round of chemotherapy, and asked about reaching out to other breast cancer patients and survivors.

Collins said Etheridge told her that the best thing to do for cancer patients is to love them. She said Etheridge explained to her that cancer patients feel as if the world and their bodies are against them, and to just help them feel normal. That's all they want: to feel normal.

Randall said that she served as a court reporter in the late 1970s. She says she is trying to recoup and revitalize her skills and get back into the work force.

After working in New Jersey, "I took a break, moved to Minnesota, married and had kids," Randall explained.

Like almost everything else, the technology of court reporting has been transformed over the past 30-plus years. Modern steno machines are electronic and tied to computers.

"I had to get rid of my old, very clunky manual machine and had to relearn," Randall said.

The court-reporting lessons and the practice have helped her deal with the more serious matters in life, she said.

Collins said a court reporter can work for a firm or be self-employed, perhaps commanding an in-home business.

"There's a big call for court reporters," Collins said, adding it's projected there will a 20 percent growth in the need for court reporters in the next 10 years. "You can go anywhere in the world and have a job," she said.

The National Court Reporters Association, via its Web site at ncraonline.org, reports that work is plentiful in the government, professional firms or freelancing, and annual earnings often exceed $70,000.

According to NCRA Executive Director and CEO Mark Golden, the job market for court reporters is bullish. But while opportunities for court reporters are growing, the number of certified graduates is on a downward trend.

"These highly trained professionals are uniquely able to capture and convert spoken words into information that can be read, searched and archived," Golden said via the association's Web site.

He said the federal Telecommunications Act has boosted demand for court reporters by mandating large increases in closed-captioned television broadcasts.

Collins said her business will provide court document translation, expedited transcript services and even videography services statewide. Since leaving the court-reporting profession, she said, she's used her skills to help families, via her court reporter's steno machine, to preserve what until now has been oral histories of their families.

Reach Collins at 881-8435 or jcollinsreporting.com.

Reach Edward C. Fennell at efennell@postandcourier.com or 745-5865.