I have spent more than four decades in court reporting.
I started at a time when the tools of the trade looked very different, when proceedings were entirely in person, transcripts were physical documents, and the idea that lawyers sitting in different cities could simultaneously watch testimony, review exhibits and search the spoken record in real time would have seemed extraordinary.
I have watched the profession evolve through many technological changes.
But I believe what is happening now is different.
It isn't being driven by one technology, one court initiative or one change in how lawyers practice. It’s the convergence of several forces at once: digital courts, hybrid litigation, increasingly complex electronic evidence, artificial intelligence, pressure for faster delivery, capacity challenges within the profession and, perhaps most importantly, a fundamental change in what lawyers expect from the record.
Court reporting is no longer simply about producing a transcript after a proceeding.
Increasingly, it is about giving litigation teams meaningful access to the evidence while the litigation is happening.
And that changes everything.
Think about how dramatically litigation itself has changed.
Lawyers can conduct discoveries with participants in several cities. Witnesses can testify remotely. Exhibits can be displayed, marked and shared electronically. Entire litigation teams can collaborate in real time without sitting in the same room.
Canadian courts have continued to expand the use of electronic filing, digital document management and virtual and hybrid proceedings. Ontario's Superior Court, for example, now maintains processes for both digital court recordings and electronically managed court records.
Technology has become embedded in virtually every part of the litigation process.
And yet, in many cases, the spoken record is still treated largely as something to be retrieved afterward.
The proceeding happens. The transcript is ordered. The transcript is prepared. Counsel wait.
That model is not going to disappear. But increasingly, it does not match the speed at which modern litigation operates.
For most of the history of court reporting, the transcript was the end product.
I think we need to start looking at the record differently. The record can now become a litigation tool, and that distinction matters.
In a lengthy examination, arbitration or trial, counsel may want to know immediately:
Traditionally, realtime stenographic reporters have been able to give lawyers extraordinary access to testimony as it unfolds. I have spent my career working in and around that world, and I remain a strong believer in the power of realtime reporting, particularly in complex, high-stakes litigation.
But there is something else about realtime reporting that is sometimes overlooked
In high-stakes litigation, virtually everyone in the room has a role to play and a position to advance.
Counsel advocates. Witnesses give evidence. Experts offer opinions. Clients have an enormous amount at stake. But the court reporter does not advocate for anyone.
Our job is different. It is to listen, capture, preserve and protect the integrity of what was actually said. That independence has enormous value.
It gives the parties - and, depending on the proceeding, the court or tribunal - a neutral source they can turn to when the exact words matter.
Canadian court systems themselves recognize an important distinction between a recording and a professionally produced transcript. In Ontario, for example, a digital court recording is expressly not considered the official court record, and court transcripts are prepared through Authorized Court Transcriptionists (ACTs). The Federal Court similarly directs those seeking available transcripts to external court reporters.
So when we talk about innovation in court reporting, we cannot talk only about how quickly technology can turn speech into text. We also have to talk about who is standing behind that text.
There is no question that artificial intelligence and automated speech recognition will be part of the future of court reporting. They already are.
Speech-recognition technology can help create immediate text from spoken words. AI can assist with searching, organizing information, identifying terminology and accelerating parts of the transcript-production process. These are powerful tools.
But anyone who has spent time in a real legal proceeding knows why simply recording voices and converting them to words is not enough.
People speak over one another. Witnesses mumble. Counsel turn away from microphones. Accents vary. Names are unfamiliar. Technical and medical terms appear without warning. Numbers matter. Punctuation matters. Context matters.
And, sometimes, one word matters enormously.
This is why I resist the simplistic conversation about whether AI will "replace" court reporters. I think it’s the wrong question. The better question is:
How can highly trained professionals use increasingly powerful technology to create a better record?
Because a machine can generate words, but it cannot take professional responsibility for the record. It cannot independently understand that something does not make sense and needs to be checked. It cannot ensure that the right speaker has been identified. It cannot intervene when the integrity of the record is being compromised. And it cannot bring judgment, accountability and neutrality to the proceeding.
That remains the human role.
There is another reality the profession has to confront: We cannot create highly skilled stenographic reporters overnight. The training is demanding. Realtime reporting, in particular, requires extraordinary skill developed over years of practice.
Those reporters are an incredibly valuable resource.
But if demand for accurate records continues to grow while the pool of highly trained professionals remains constrained, the answer cannot simply be to hope that more people suddenly enter traditional stenographic training.
We need more capacity.
That means the modern court reporting ecosystem will almost certainly include multiple methods of capture and production, including:
All include rigorous human quality control.
I don't see those models as enemies. I see them as tools in the same toolbox.
The real skill will be knowing which solution is appropriate for which proceeding.
A complex commercial arbitration where counsel require instantaneous verbatim testimony may call for an experienced realtime stenographic reporter.
A different type of proceeding may be extremely well suited to a professionally managed digital reporting model that combines trained reporters, high-quality audio and speech-recognition technology.
A concluded court matter requiring transcription from an existing recording presents yet another need.
There should not be an ideological battle over which method "wins." There should be a professional assessment of what the matter requires.
Ultimately, I believe lawyers will accelerate this transformation, because their expectations have already changed everywhere else. They can search thousands of documents in seconds. They can pull up an exhibit instantly. They can collaborate with colleagues across the country while a witness is testifying. They increasingly use AI-assisted tools to organize, summarize and analyze enormous amounts of information.
Against that backdrop, waiting days or weeks before being able to meaningfully interact with the spoken evidence increasingly feels disconnected from the rest of the litigation process.
The transcript will remain essential. But the expectation is becoming bigger than the transcript.
Lawyers will increasingly want:
And above all: Accuracy they can trust.
That last requirement cannot be compromised, because faster isn't better if it isn't right.
Technology often creates anxiety within established professions. If software can capture speech, what happens to the court reporter?
I believe the answer is that the professional becomes more important, not less.
The more technology we introduce into the creation of the legal record, the more important it becomes to have someone who understands what a proper record actually is. Someone must know when the technology has failed. Someone must recognize an incorrect name, number or technical term. Someone must deal with overlapping speakers and poor audio. Someone must understand confidentiality and the sensitivity of the information being handled. Someone must apply judgment.
And ultimately, someone must be prepared to stand behind the integrity of the work.
The technology may change dramatically. The responsibility does not.
I have been in this profession long enough to remember when virtually every major technological change initially felt threatening…then we adapted. And generally, we became better.
I believe we are at one of those moments again, but on a much larger scale.
Canada's litigation system is not going back to a world without hybrid proceedings, electronic evidence, digital courtrooms or artificial intelligence.
Court reporting cannot stand outside that transformation. Nor should it.
We have the opportunity to preserve the very best of this profession - accuracy, neutrality, skill, accountability and trust - while using technology to make the record faster, more accessible and dramatically more useful.
That means continuing to invest in stenographic and realtime excellence. It means developing properly trained digital reporters. It means embracing artificial intelligence thoughtfully, rather than either fearing it or trusting it blindly. It means maintaining rigorous professional standards regardless of the technology being used.
And, most importantly, it means remembering what our business has always really been about.
Court reporting was never about producing pages. It was about preserving evidence.
The pages were simply how we delivered it.
What we are seeing now is the evolution of that delivery: from a record lawyers receive after a proceeding, to a record they can increasingly use while the litigation is still unfolding.
After more than forty years in this profession, I believe that is the real transformation.
And I believe we have reached the tipping point.