Capture every word said in a courtroom at over 200 words a minute. Two years of school, no degree needed.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $72,420 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $42,130 at the lower end to about $130,560 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
2 to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.
$7,000 to $45,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
It depends where you work. You need a license, certificate or registration in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington. Elsewhere there is none to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$72,420
Bottom tenth
$42,130
Top tenth
$130,560
The national median is $72,420 a year, the bottom tenth earn $42,130 or less and the top tenth $130,560 or more (2025 federal wage survey). The survey covers court reporters and live captioners together. The spread is wide because transcript sales and freelance work sit on top of any salary.
$42,130 to $53,760
The bottom tenth and bottom quarter of court reporters and captioners, 2025, where first-year reporters usually sit
New reporters usually take deposition work from agencies while they build speed and confidence. An official court position with a steady salary normally comes later.
$116,020 a year
The median in California, the highest of any state
Texas ($110,080) and Washington State ($107,670) come next. Delaware is the lowest, at $44,760. On top of salary, transcripts are a second income: an official reporter earns a salary for being in the room and then sells the written transcript to the lawyers who need it. A long trial can be worth thousands of pages.
Roughly, all in
$7,000 to $45,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a public community college program where one runs near you, a student shorthand machine at around $1,500, and the certification exam. The high end is a private court reporting school plus a professional machine at $4,000 and up. What the numbers hide is the dropout rate: the speed requirement stops a large share of students partway through, so budget for extra terms. File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), since accredited programs take federal grants and loans, and expect continuing education fees every three years once you are working.
Fill in the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). Most accredited court reporting schools take federal grants and loans, and a Pell Grant can cover a large share of a community college bill.
Official court reporter
Salaried by a county, state or federal court, plus page rates for transcripts.
Freelance deposition reporter
Paid per job by an agency. You choose your workload and you pay your own taxes and insurance.
Broadcast captioner
Live captions for television and streaming. Work from home, often on a contract.
Communication access realtime translation
Live text for deaf and hard of hearing people in classrooms, meetings and courts.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Speed is the whole thing. The classes are short, the practice is long.
High school diploma or GED (General Educational Development certificate)
Grade 12
No degree is required for this career. English, grammar and typing are the useful preparation.
Court reporting program
2 to 4 years
An associate degree or certificate. The College of Court Reporting runs 7 semesters, about 28 months full time. Most of it is machine shorthand theory and daily speed building.
Hit the graduation speed
The hard part
You must pass dictation tests at 180 words a minute on literary material, 200 on a jury charge and 225 on two-voice testimony, at 95% accuracy. Many students take longer than the catalog says because of this step.
Certification
Weeks
23 states require a state license or certificate. Elsewhere, courts and agencies often ask for the Registered Professional Reporter credential from the National Court Reporters Association instead. Check your own state before you enroll.
Start working
After certification
Usually freelance depositions first, then an official court seat when one opens.
English and grammar
You are producing a legal document. Punctuation changes meaning.
Keyboarding
Not the same keys, but the habit of accuracy at speed transfers.
Music
Reporters often say rhythm training helps with sustained speed work.
Anatomy or health science
Medical testimony is full of terms you have to spell correctly the first time.
There is no single national license. 23 states, including California, Texas, Illinois and Hawaii, require a state license or certificate before you report. Many of them accept the Registered Professional Reporter credential from the National Court Reporters Association, a written test plus three skills tests at 180, 200 and 225 words a minute. The rest, including New York, Florida and Pennsylvania, do not license reporters, though some courts there hire only certified ones. Find out which kind your state is before you pick a school.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Certified Realtime Reporter
A five-minute live test at 200 words a minute. Realtime reporters feed text to screens as people speak.
Certified Realtime Captioner
For broadcast and live captioning work. A workshop, a written test and a live test at 180 words a minute.
Registered Merit Reporter and Registered Diplomate Reporter
Higher speed and accuracy credentials that mark you as one of the fastest in the field.
Certified Legal Video Specialist
Lets you handle the video record of a deposition as well as the transcript.
A strong medical and legal vocabulary
Expert witnesses do not slow down for you.
Business sense
Freelance reporters are running a small business: invoicing, taxes, equipment and insurance.
A quiet home office
Transcript editing takes hours and captioning is done from home.
Voice writing
An alternative method using a mask and speech recognition instead of a steno machine. Accepted in some states, not all.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Arrive early, set up the machine and load the case dictionary with names and terms you expect. Then write everything: lawyers, witnesses, the judge, objections, the moments where two people talk at once and you have to stop them. Breaks are for marking exhibits. Afternoons or evenings go to editing what you wrote into a clean transcript, checking spellings and proofreading. Deadlines are fixed, and a rush order for an overnight transcript costs you the evening.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A steno machine has around two dozen keys and you press several at once, writing whole syllables or words in one stroke. That is how a reporter keeps up with speech that would take hundreds of keystrokes on a normal keyboard.
O*NET OnLine (the Department of Labor's occupation database) counted about 19,900 court reporters and live captioners in 2025. It projects little or no change to 2035, with about 1,800 openings a year as reporters retire.
The captions scrolling under a live news broadcast or a sports game are often written by a trained stenographer in a home office, not generated by software. That branch of the field never requires you to sit in a courtroom.
If a case is appealed, the appeal is argued off the written transcript. What the reporter typed is what the higher court reads. That is why a reporter can interrupt a judge to ask a witness to repeat themselves.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Courts and legal support first, then the rest of the field. See every career in law and public safety.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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