What Can You Do as a Lawyer to Make Court Reporting More Successful?
If you’re looking to hire a DC court reporting company for court proceedings, you may wonder if there are things you can do as an attorney to make their reporting more accurate. While any Washington DC court reporting company has experienced reporters who are good at their job, there are some tips that can make them even better at what they do, which will in turn makes the record clearer.
- Speak Clearly and Loudly
As an attorney, you make the record that the court reporter is keeping. If the reporter from a DC court reporting company can’t hear or understand you (or your witnesses), they can’t keep an accurate record. You could have “inaudible” in place of that clever question you asked or as a stand-in for that key witness statement.
If they could change one thing, a court reporting company in Washington DC would want all involved parties at a deposition or a court proceeding to speak clear and loud. Reporters likely won’t interrupt because there is a certain flow in the room that lawyers build up and rely on to gather information.
- Carefully Reading Documents
If you have to read a document, it’s easy to speed right through it because you’re looking at what it says right in front of you. While the speed of your reading isn’t a problem — because a DC court reporting company has reporters that can type over 200 words a minute or more — reading an official document quickly could affect the clarity of your voice.
When you’re reading documents, don’t hesitate to enunciate your words so they can be recorded correctly. You may also want to provide the reporter with the document you’ll be reading so they can compare the document against their notes.
Keep in mind that if the documents are confidential, the court reporter knows how to handle them. In most cases, they will only refer to the documents while they’re transcribing and then the documents may be destroyed.
- Be Aware of Any Complicated Jargon
Court reporters are trained to be aware of technical terms and jargon related to the cases they report on. They may even have a handbook that outlines all of these terms. However, your DC court reporting company may point out that the problem is reporters often prepare the report overnight and may not know the best way to deal with industry jargon, legal citations, and other terms.
Instead of leaving it to chance, the best thing you can do is to provide a cheat sheet of sorts to the court reporter. That way, you can be sure that everything will appear on record correctly to make it the most accurate. In some cases, you or the witness can spell or define certain terminology for clarification purposes.
Now that you know some of the best tips for making a court reporter’s official report more successful, we hope that you’ll keep them in mind the next time you work with a reporter. If you’re ready to hire a DC reporting company, contact Capital Reporting Company at 202-759-2766 today.