I’m the mother of a court reporting school graduate in Phoenix Arizona. I would not recommend that anyone you care for embark on a career in court reporting here in Arizona. Pharmacy or nursing or veterinary school are much better alternatives, because these fields appear actually to want new people, whereas the requirements to get into court reporting here are so stringent that they have successfully kept anyone at all from entering the field for the past year. The powers that be have put into place professional entrance requirements that are positively hostile to newcomers. Of course, they say they want and need new court reporters, but their actions belie this, and in fact, even before the gates closed completely over the past year, only one or two people have been admitted annually in the past five years. And the people they are keeping out have all completed their schooling and are ready to work. They have student loans that they are required to start paying off, and the profession will not let them work. Unfriendly. You don’t want this for anyone you’re not actually mad at.

And anyway, who wants to waste what may very well be four or five or more years of schooling on a profession that doesn’t want you? And, (I’m not making this up) when newcomers who have completed school and who have been practicing rigorously for the exam complain about this draconian system, working court reporters, the ranks of whom these folks are, god help them, trying to join, often respond by belittling them. “Well, you are just lazy. You must not have been practicing. I passed the test, so there is not a problem.” (And it’s surprising how many people say this who have not, in fact, passed the test, but who were grandfathered in. As I said, welcoming newcomers is not a big strong point with many of these folks.) My daughter started school in 2000, and she is still trying to pass their exam. You’re not, by the way, allowed to put your training to work in Arizona at all until after you have passed the test. There’s no such thing as a paid internship, or any sort of grace period for newcomers. You don’t pass the frigging test, you don’t work. Prospective candidates had better have a regular job, because they most likely won’t be working in this one.

Oh yes, the test is offered twice a year. You get five minutes each to demonstrate that you can take down literary material, a judge’s statement to the jury, and courtroom testimony. You get one take of each of these every six months, for which you pay a hundred bucks or more. My daughter’s taken the thing eight times now, and there is so much riding on this fifteen minutes of dictation that she’s now so wound up that I don’t know how she can possibly pass the damn thing at this point. And she’s not the only person like this. Did I mention that not a single person has passed the frigging test in the past year? There are many graduates of the only court reporting program now operating here in Phoenix who have completely abandoned the field.

So don’t send anyone you love to court reporting school here now. If my daughter had started pharmacy school in 2000, she’d be a pharmacist with a couple of years of work under her belt. Send ‘em to pharmacy school. Recent Arizona pharmacy graduates pass those exams every year. According to the AZPharmacy.gov 2008 annual report, 272 people were issued new licenses as a result of passing the exam in 2008. So, for 2008, pharmacists, 272; court reporters, 0. The numbers speak for themselves.