Court reporters typically take verbatim reports of speeches, conversations, legal proceedings, meeting, and other events when written accounts of spoken words are necessary for correspondence, record s, or legal proof. Court reporters not only play a critical role in judicial proceedings, but every meeting where the spoken word must be preserved as written transcript.  They are responsible for ensuring a complete, accurate, and secure legal record. In addition to preparing and protecting the legal record, many court reporters assist judges and trial attorneys in variety of ways, such as organizing and searching for procedure. Increasingly, court reporters are providing closed-captioning and real-time translating services to to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.

       Although many court reporters record official proceedings in the courtroom the majority of them work outside the courtroom. Freelance reporters for example, take depositions for attorneys in offices and document proceedings of meetings, conventions, and other private activities.  Others capture the proceedings in government agencies of all levels, from the U.S. Congress to State and local governing bodies. Court reporters who specialize in captioning live television programming for people with hearing loss are commonly known as stenocaptioners. They work for television networks or cable stations captioning, the level f understanding gained by a person with hearing loss depends entirely on the skill of the information provided in the form of captioning.