Planet Depos recently provided court reporting services for a week-long arbitration in front of the American Arbitration Association (AAA). For consistency purposes, one reporter was scheduled for the entire proceeding. The parties were on the record at 7:30 a.m. each day and ran some nights until almost 10 p.m. Realtime feeds were provided to all parties and rough drafts were sent out to a distribution list immediately following each day’s proceedings. The following excerpt was taken from the transcript on the last day of the arbitration.
ARBITRATOR: And then last, but not least, our court reporter. I think she did an astounding job.
(Applause)
ARBITRATOR: And I order you to put in the middle where we, I just said that, parentheses, applause, end parentheses, by everybody in the room, because it was well deserved. And as you well know –
Attorney 1: And she did it.
ARBITRATOR: – I’ve used lots and lots of court reporters in my life, and had them at hearings of mine. And this was, as I told her some time earlier off the record, the job of a court reporter is to do a perfect job and be totally unnoticed. And she not only did a perfect job, she was totally unnoticed. She never had to ask us to stop, and she never asked us she needed to take a break. She never had to ask us for a minute that said we had to turn to her and say, oh, she’s somehow interfering with the flow of this case. It was, in my view, perfect. Thank you. It’s crucial for court reporters to manage their workload effectively and develop strategies to avoid reporter burnout. By implementing self-care practices and setting realistic expectations, they can maintain their performance and well-being. This not only benefits the reporters but also ensures the integrity of the proceedings they support.