As posted to social media, it appears that Utah Senator John Johnson, working with Libertas, is moving to remove licensing for four professions, among them, court reporting.
Our sources say this is on the radar in Utah and that it’s been tabled for the next legislative session.
P.S.
As I admitted on social media, I’ve been on both sides of the licensing argument. As a young New York reporter I thought licensure was necessary because the rates were awful. As a still-young New York reporter, I just think, well, what’s the harm? They want to transform how we do things, cool. Stick me in a senior role and let someone else worry about the transcript. But then I feel guilty because I’ve just joined the “pull the ladder up behind me” crowd.
Of course the end goal would be perfection enough to do away with human oversight.
But we’re a long way off. We’ve learned that in the best of conditions with the best recording equipment money can buy it can be hard to accurately capture a moment in time. But “good enough” is also a threat to stenographer seats. I think we’re kidding ourselves to think otherwise. And make no mistake that it’s good enough. It’s outperformed me. I’ve outperformed it. Does it get better every day? Some seem to think so. But for those tense moments where something cannot be captured correctly, do you trust its judgment?
That’s what the market’s answering every day and a big part of why we’re still here in 2026.
The National Court Reporters Association has released the following.
National Court Reporters Association AI Position StatementStatement from the National Court Reporters Association President regarding the organization’s AI Position Statement
While I commend the organization for such an uplifting message, I can’t help but point out that it sidesteps some very important issues.
Veritext and the big money brigade have all heavily invested in digital reporting. This will lead to the loss of stenographer seats in the private sector and exacerbate shortages in the public sector. As our number dwindles, so too does our bargaining power on the market. And with the digital brigade proclaiming that digital is realtime, it’s foreseeable that realtime rates will go down. The only unknown is time scale. Meanwhile, as corporate consolidation continues, corporate ability to set rates will strengthen. Game, set, match.
Let’s not forget Tyler Technologies’s recent acquisition of FTR. They’ve got a hell of a lot more money than Veritext and it’s pretty clear they intend to push AI. And NCRA as an organization purged the association of volunteers that were most concerned with AI and digital inadequacy. So what is the organization going to actually do to catch the ears of legislators and court officials and ensure they’re not fooled by flashy demos and sweet-talking salesmen? These are nice words. But there is no apparent plan. That means fewer jobs going to stenographers and fewer members for NCRA. That means that eventually NCRA may someday have to open up its membership to voice and digital to survive or die. Or it’ll become a corporate puppet if it’s not already a corporate puppet. After all, the organization lied to its members with regard to the legality of discussing rates for decades, and that helped agency owners, not working reporters.
I can’t help but feel our whole guardian of the record thing is a facade. We stress about nonsensical, almost meaningless moments like the placement of a comma, but we never developed as a group the skills required to communicate to the country our value. Sometimes I’m dumbstruck thinking about how many millions of dollars were flushed down the toilet over the years. Dollars that could’ve gone to preserving your jobs and enhancing leadership skills across the board.
I look back at past endeavors wondering if it was all for nothing. Maybe the rank and file working reporter doesn’t need to learn such skills. But our leaders and institutions spent their time trying to dissuade the corporate scumbags from being corporate scumbags with the anti-gifting, anti-contracting, and the realtime is the future push. Guardians? We weren’t even a speed bump. We said to them, and still say today, “take it all, take the whole market, because you have the money, so you dictate the terms.” These are entities that have asked reporters to change transcripts for their clients. These are entities that allegedly steal from their own employees. The record is in danger. We are currently losing and it doesn’t have to be that way. I proved that half a decade ago.
This all to explain why it became clear to me that the NCRA is not equipped to handle the challenges of our time. The willpower isn’t there. It’s never been. It never will be. The truth might be too stressful for some of us, and that’s okay. For the rest of us, forming something that pushes back independent of NCRA is imperative.
Maybe a publication that rivals the Journal of Court Reporting and draws eyes from outside the profession. Just a thought I had some time ago.
Stenonymous readership statistics released February 27, 2026
Comment from the Stenonymous Blog Post “Public Service Opinions February 2026.”Reply from Christopher Day on the “Public Service Opinions February 2026” blog post.
What can I say? From the court reporting angle we are a very high percentage white, though I don’t know how well those demographics statistics have been updated. It doesn’t always feel that way in New York City because there’s a healthy blend of culture and personalities.
The big question for me was, is that intentional? And to be honest, I don’t think so. I’ve discussed it with others. It probably has more to do with the affordability of mainstream steno. The built-in genius of the corporates was that lowering the cost of entry would dilute the workforce while making them money off the training. I doubt race was ever a factor, except perhaps with regard to hiring practices, where at least at one time it was rumored that Black women were being paid less at Diamond. Of course, I was never able to confirm that because we’re so damn decentralized and the one entity that wants to bring us together doesn’t want to talk about these things openly. I get that it was something you didn’t do historically, but I saw people getting paid a lot less for the same work. And isn’t it supposed to be different? We have laws on this, however imperfect.
But sometimes I wonder what you want me to do, Anonymous. Here I am with my crazy little typing machine trying to give a voice to anybody willing to speak up with me, and most of them just don’t have the time. Most of them work hard. You shot your shot with that lawsuit and the cards fell where they did. How can we change the system together?
Isn’t that the point of documenting all this stuff? So eventually someone with real reach might find it worth talking about? I mean, not for nothing, but the blog was cited in the lawsuit against NCRA. How long until the whole digital training thing explodes into a deluge of people upset with the outcome of their education? Could be now or never. We can’t really know. It depends on the will of those who were deceived by the whole Ed 2 Go / BlueLedge structure. I intend to do my part by maintaining this website.
Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll have funding for the accent and dialect training components I’ve written about in the past. Or maybe we’ll be systematically eliminated. Or maybe some weird blend where the big companies strike a deal with someone like Taylor Jones to create a course to make even more money.
How you contribute to it and interact may yet change our course.
How lucky we are to be the literate half of America.
Staten Island the morning after the February 23, 2026 blizzard
There’s a weird split in the way people think about public sector work. I’ve noted that those that are familiar with the work involved in any particular agency tend to acknowledge it where they can. I certainly do. Apart from court reporters, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know just how hard all sorts of people that come through the courtroom work. I have great respect for the people I work with and work for.
I have no illusions about how some people see us, though. Overpaid ingrates living off the hard work and toil of the private sector.
Christopher Day says more private sector people should unionize
Maybe therein lies the answer. Maybe public sector workers should use our free speech protections to encourage private sector people to unionize. As unionized private sector working conditions improve, it becomes more commonplace for working conditions to improve across the board, and we can all ask for the things we need.
Tax revenues would probably go up too. More money in more hands means more opportunities, no? Look at me, I had a little money in my hands and first thing I did was employ people. Multiply that by a few million New Yorkers. Yes, some people are tax cheats, but that’s inherent to the system as it is.
All I know is you have some really smart people out there who are restrained by the lack of resources the birth lottery granted them. Gotta get more money in their hands somehow. And the American right to unionize, and discuss pay and working conditions, is the legal structure to get them there on a systemic level.
And some folks view union as anti-market, but it’s all part of the market. Our labor is like all goods and services, and we have a legal right to push for more profit. This is, again, something the wealthy seem to inherently understand, as throughout my lifetime since the Citizens United ruling, there have been forces at play exerting control over our federal government, sometimes legally, sometimes not. And to the extreme detriment of working people and the poor. And the mega corporations that own our news do what they can to avoid coverage or slant coverage.
FDR saved capitalism with the New Deal almost 100 years ago. But we don’t necessarily have to wait for a great man to save us. We already know that a high concentration of the U.S. economy is in corporations. By some estimates, 20% more than they had in the 1930s. And we already have a legal vehicle with which to demand more of our corporations — the union.
I was surprised by the boldness. It’s the kind of transparency I think is needed for transformation and triumph. Some dislike the anonymity, but really guys, it’s giving us a shield against companies that are, on a systemic level, acting as barriers against truth.
Honestly, I think I saw numbers between $100,000 and $500,000. And while my information sleuthing™️ over the years made me aware of that inequality, I am reminded of just how few of us spend any time thinking about it because we’ve got busy lives.
I explained in one comment that I believe there is a systematic and a personal responsibility component. What I’ve never been able to figure out is why I have a compulsion toward being a part of correcting the system while most people kind of throw up their hands and say “that’s how it is. bro.“
And I sat behind the levers of our nonprofits and saw that they are not legally structured in such a way that they can effect change except by being acted upon. And that was pretty scary because quite honestly I think the majority of us believe that we’ve got people on this and we don’t. Or perhaps it’s more correct to say that there must be, from all I’ve documented and read, an interesting mix of interests.
And here I am, one in billions, wondering if there’s a pattern that we might be able to create and scale that cascades and impacts industries much larger than our own for the health and well-being of the workers and professionals. Because that would be a billion dollar idea. That would be worth the hours I’ve spent in union training and learning all about the law. I mean, beyond the inherent worth. A systemic cure for personal problems.
But I get busy too.
If there is anything that I have learned from my years as a court reporter and an American it’s that institutions are corrupted by people not caring about other people. Does the lion care about the feelings of the zebra? Can the zebra change his stripes?
The office of the Kenosha, Wisconsin DA’s office, headed by Xavier Solis, sees dismissal of a case due to failure to disclose use of AI.
On February 6, 2026, a criminal case, alleged to be 2023CF001060, involving over 40 counts of burglary and theft, was reportedly dismissed due to the usage of AI in a filing that led to hallucinated case law.
Of course, my favorite part was the Reddit comments.
Public sentiment regarding skewed news reporting is at an all-time high.
For what it’s worth, I agree it’s a big deal. More and more we are seeing systems that cannot be trusted used in law and by law enforcement, and the media is not holding these systems, companies, and counties accountable through reporting. This is very much the same problem we’ve always had with regard to digital recording failures where things have gone terribly wrong in some places, but it just doesn’t make the news. And then the news doesn’t reach other decision makers who go on to make similarly horrible decisions for other jurisdictions. More and more lives, jobs, and dreams destroyed, because nobody cares about truth.
P.S.
This, perhaps, explains some of my outrage from when NCRA Strong was disbanded by Keith Lemons. Here you had society collectively ignoring problems with the implementation of recording and AI in our courts, and you had a group of volunteers proactively and on their own time recording these problems, and the solution was to purge that group from the organization and destroy that momentum.
If there was ever a simpler way to show that our institutions are bought and actively working against us in some cases.
But as long as they designate a week for you to celebrate yourselves, it’s cool, right?
Don’t get me wrong, everybody deserves to.
But I’d really like something to celebrate in ten years. Because we’re telling a lot of students there’s a future here, and absent legislative guardrails or proper investment, there might not be.
Again, I point to survivorship bias so prevalent in our field. “I made it, anyone can make it.” No, they can’t. We’ve lost real graduates because the field didn’t sustain them. And that was pre-AI and when digital was marginalized. That was before big money decided change was necessary.
And it would be so disrespectful for me not to share their story. Because it hints at something larger at play here. How did we go from not enough work, to not enough reporters, to not enough work to justify raises in the middle of what was forecasted to be an incredible shortage? 50% of all the jobs are supposed to be uncovered right now but it’s business as usual, maybe we have trouble covering a job here or there.
Truth be told, private sector New York got a little better for some people because others dropped out. Public sector has trouble recruiting in some areas. There’s more to be said, but maybe when my writing finally hits it big.™️
Sucks for me, really. I was good at messing with the fraudsters. They wised up and realized they didn’t have to lie to win. Most of them. Except maybe Naegeli. Jury’s still out. But then again if I had Naegeli’s business sense we wouldn’t be having these problems to begin with. Or ruthlessness? Are they one and the same?
I can’t help this feeling that it’s kind of like watching my son. Humans can get this big burst of energy just before a nice, long nap.
Are we living the burst of energy?
What’s that nap going to look like?
Or are we living the nap?
And it’s time to wake up?
Or maybe it’s just that human desire to make sense of the chaos of billions of stories being told every day.
Isn’t it interesting that the most fascinating stories are the ones we didn’t publish online?
Staten Island is a really good community. We export a lot of media. Staten Island’s GDP is like $22 billion so you know we’re hard workers, much like our neighbors all over New York City.
Could we kick off a public reporting corporation that intakes, records, captions, streams, transcribes, and publishes the words of real people from the community, every day 24/7? Kind of like open court, but for profit, but honest about it?
I see it hitting big in today’s “don’t know who to trust for news” economy. I see it locking arms with community stakeholders eager for exposure.
Look at Mirabai Knight and what she built for free, and the businesses that were built from that. What are the possibilities if we start engaging with local and online communities to funnel money back to ours?
If I were a better fundraiser I’d have $10 million for that. We’d double it under half a decade.
And it sounds crazy but the money being poured on the field is irrational. Do they really expect the courts to stop being cash-strapped soon? No. They’re after the big law guys. Leaving untold amounts of money on the table for what our skills can provide the public.
Christopher Day addresses Court Reporter Rates Discussion Facebook Page after 20k reach post about there being no shortage.
The shortage post got a lot of reach. I’ve spent a lot of time documenting and commenting on the state and trajectory of the field. I know people are working hard and don’t have time to read hundreds of posts of modern court reporting market history.
And I honestly don’t want to alarm people, but I’ve always felt a duty to. Because the signs point clearly to lower incomes for the majority of our students absent some kind of intervention. If there’s something special about this field, it’s how we feel about our students. There you are, so many of you, giving dozens, hundreds, thousands of often unpaid hours to helping others succeed and navigate. I would be half the reporter I am today without the people who stood up for and supported me. And I would be double the reporter I am today if I had known half of you.
There’s a lot we can do. Unionization is on the table for some. A private enterprise that starts pulling in significant market share is on the table. Funding and cohesion can make these things a reality in a way that court reporting associations legally can’t. Do I know a guy in finance? Could I make it happen? Yeah. But I’d need significant buy-in from the community.
AI can be a powerful summarization tool. If you are skeptical, despite the negatives of AI, I have to ask you to use it. We can get through this with the best results possible for our students.
(The errors in the AI answer are an integral part of this piece.)
A cherished friend let me in on an article posted by JackimWoods & Co. it’s made its rounds on Facebook so I don’t expect it’ll be completely surprising to many of you. Let me go on record and say I respect Rich Jackim and the article, but I’d like to do a little bit of commentary on this one.
Right at the top, it’s written, “this transaction marks a decisive shift toward institutional-scale investment in AI-powered court reporting technology, signaling the beginning of a structural transformation that will fundamentally reshape the court reporting and legal support services sector within the next three to five years.” He’s not wrong that this is significant, but let’s not forget that For The Record was one of the companies represented on the Speech-to-Text Institute’s board. Rather than defend the organization or its fraudulent statements, For The Record and all the others let it collapse and flounder in the court case it was named in. And it was only three years ago that a For The Record transcript was called a deficit product in a high-profile case. I’ll just note generally, you have to see the guy has financial interests in the consolidation of the industry, so read it from that point of view.
But the fact remains that if big money is spending this much money consolidating the industry, that means they’ll be using their money to steer it a certain way. They have been using their money to steer it a certain way. That certain way is reducing the number of stenographer positions or pushing us into the role of transcribers, unseen, unheard, quietly correcting and/or certifying the AI’s work behind the scenes for a fraction of what we make today and a whole lot less autonomy.
Let me be really clear: You cannot skill your way out of this. This is economic warfare. This is us spending the next 10 years playing musical chairs while the big money collectively deletes stenographer seats one by one unless we start making moves. Moves like unionization. Our field has always thrived on a kind of survivorship bias. We watch this happen, it’s probably Armageddon. But at least the people who still have jobs at that point will be able to say “I made it.”
I’ll note also that people have been talking about the Veritext CEU webinar last night. Finally Veritext came out and said it, “digital is equal, we get 3,000 applicants a month and we accept 2% of those.” This is what I heard. Do I know the truth? No. Veritext habitually lies and abuses the trust of reporters. Do I blame Andrea Wecker, their current front person? Nope. She’s probably made the same exact calculation, and wants to be able to say “I made it.”
I’m exploring some ideas as to what to do about it all. I’m AI-powered too these days, so we’ve got a shot (joke).
Long-time users of the site may have noticed a little change recently. There’s an annoying speech bubble on the bottom right of the site now.
The speech bubble at the bottom right gives you access to Stenonymous bot.
Finally, a place to ask the important questions, like “Is Chris Day a nutjob communist?” I’ve spent a small amount of time training this thing, so it’s ready for the hard questions.
Bonus points if you get it to flip out and say something deluded.
Feel free to copy and paste your chats into the comments or send me funny screenshots via email and social media. I’m sure we can have a laugh at the expense of the environment before it inevitably breaks and I disable it.
I’ll just ask that if it entertains you for any appreciable length of time, please drop a donation on the front page of Stenonymous.com. I know one glorious reader knows, these things don’t come cheap.
