The Courtroom of the Future

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

Chicago Court Reporter Richard Dagdigian, like any good stenographer, can take down rapid-fire testimony faster than a judge can bang a gavel. But until recently he was the only one in the courtroom who could decipher his notes. This resulted in long pauses in the proceedings while he flipped through the pages of his stenographic paper to reread testimony. Days might pass before typed transcripts were available. Now, even as Dagdigian's fingers touch the keys of his stenotype machine in the U.S. Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the unedited transcript, largely in readable English, appears on the screens of three IBM PC XT computers -- one on Judge Prentice Marshall's bench and one on each of the opposing lawyers' tables.

The Chicago courtroom and two similarly equipped courts in Phoenix and Detroit are part of a $75,000 experiment that may determine how the courtroom of the future will be set up. Says Jay Suddreth, president-elect of the National Shorthand Reporters Association, which is sponsoring the test: "Court reporters without computer-aided transcription (CAT) generally dictate their notes to a typist, who then types out the transcript. By linking the court reporters to a computer, we can put such waste and redundancy behind us."

Members of the association apparently agree. In the past ten years, more than half the U.S.'s 28,000 court reporters have upgraded from the mechanical stenotype machine, basically unchanged since it was introduced in 1910, to one of several partly computerized systems.

Even with computers, the stenotypist's technique remains the same. Pressing one or more letters on a 22-button keyboard, the stenotypist writes phonetically, omitting letters that are not sounded, or uses one of 3,000 standard abbreviations to represent a familiar word or phrase. For example, W stands for "with," KR for "consider." These abbreviations are printed on narrow strips of self-folding paper. In CAT systems, the keystrokes are also recorded electronically on a tape or magnetic disk, then fed into a computer that expands the stenographic shorthand into English and prints out a transcript that needs only minor editing.

The systems now being tested go one step further. Stenotype machines are wired directly to the transcription computer, and their output is immediately flashed on the monitors in the courtroom. To review earlier testimony, a judge or lawyer simply turns to a terminal, scrolls through the transcript and finds the passage on the screen.

Computer-aided transcription has paid off handsomely in some celebrated cases. The libel suit brought by retired General William Westmoreland against CBS generated 9,745 pages of transcripts in 68 days of testimony. Using CAT technology, Stenotypist Joel Hillman was able to produce printed transcripts of each morning's proceedings soon after the lunch break. Besides offering instant access to the record, the new bench-top machines provide an unexpected benefit. Judge Marshall, who at first found the terminals "distracting," has discovered that he can sometimes prepare for other cases during routine testimony, consulting the monitor from time to time to keep up with the proceedings.

With reporting by Arturo Yanez/Chicago