10 Things You’ll Learn as a Court Reporter that You Probably Won’t Learn in Law School

There are a lot of things you likely won’t learn in law school. This is not a dig at any of our professors, their pedagogy, or even the Canadian legal education system as a whole. The issue is that education can’t replace real world experience. You don’t learn key networking skills poring though a textbook and sweating your way through an exam. You don’t get practice in dealing with pathologically dishonest clients. You don’t learn how to react when you find out that one of your administrative staff has been botching something very basic for months, if not years. There are also things we don’t necessarily have the means to analyze properly at this point, like the extent to which the lack of women in high-ranking firm positions is rooted in sexism (female law students being in the majority is a new and positive development, but a large firm is very unlikely to make a five-year call partner, regardless of gender). Only so much information can be packed into three years of law school and a year of articling, and most of us won’t have the “privilege” of watching legal examinations unfold while working as a court reporter. You have to learn some things the hard way, or be lucky enough to know someone who can pass on this hard-earned information.

On a related note, you probably don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes (or even Freddy Foreshadowing) to guess that I worked as a court reporter this summer. It was an interesting experience, and I recommend it for any first year student who has the luxury of being able to prioritize experience over money. However, since most law students won’t jump at the chance to sit through dozens of hours of examinations for barely more than minimum wage, here’s ten useful things I learned working as a court reporter.

1. Oaths don’t mean a damned thing to a lot of people. I estimate that at least half of the witnesses I recorded told multiple lies after swearing to tell “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. One woman claimed she had no jewellery as she covered a gold necklace with her hand, which was doubly foolish because she was wearing a gold watch. I understand that “thou shall not bear false witness” is an awfully archaic way of saying “don’t lie”, but it’s not ambiguous. You don’t have to swear on a Bible, but the willingness of some people to drag a deity into their lies was stunning in its own right.
2. You’re going to be dealing with some real jerks in this business, ranging from belligerent witnesses to opposing counsel. One lawyer told me that a witness once reached across the table and shouted “[expletive] you!” when asked about his work history. One examination featured two lawyers doing everything they could to antagonize each other for 8 hours. I’m too desensitized to be easily surprised by appalling behaviour, but I was so shocked I almost quit on the spot several times.
3. You’re going to deal with some absurdly stupid people. There’s just no nice way to put it.  It’d actually be kind of funny if it didn’t waste so much court time. I’ve seen people try to claim millions of dollars in injuries for a car accident that actually couldn’t happen. Some people just hit a car with a sledgehammer. Keeping a straight face takes practice, and it’s actually a necessary skill.
4. You might actually have some sympathy for these nonsense claimants, when you find out part of why they’re making such a nonsense claim. In a lot of cases, you’re dealing with immigrants who are coerced into making these claims to repay the people who arranged for their entry into Canada. They’re victims too, but it’s a hard thing to acknowledge when they’re repeatedly lying to your face long after you have them dead to rights.
5. Be courteous, if not unflinchingly friendly.  Few things look worse than a witness showing hostility to a lawyer who is sincerely pleasant. One thing that comes close? Counsel showing hostility to a witness. At least keep it off the record. You’re never going to benefit from looking like a jerk.
6. Speak clearly and loudly. Recording devices often pick up more paper shuffling and typing than actual words, and to some extent, yes, those whispered conversations to the insurance adjustor are going to go on the record. Someone’s going to be inconvenienced by having to listen to the record a dozen times to pick up something you probably could have said off the record and that doesn’t even have much relevance to the hearing. It’s just kind of thoughtless, and there’s definitely no excuse for mumbling an actually important question.
7. Learn as much about opposing counsel as possible. Some lawyers don’t mind you guiding your witness a little bit, in order to keep things running smoothly. Others will threaten to have you disbarred, repeatedly, on the record, for something most lawyers will let you get away with to a moderate extent. It never hurts to know what you’re up against.
8. Self-representation: in a word, NO. Hiring a paralegal to go up against an actual lawyer is risky enough. If you know of someone who’s about to represent him/herself in court, do everything you can to discourage it. If you can’t find a lawyer who will take your case, that’s probably a sign you don’t have a case. Period.
9. Make sure you thoroughly question your own client. You can’t necessarily stop someone from lying to you, but if you ask the right questions, you can avoid going into a hearing and finding out that your client’s a pathological liar. Professor Swan’s “scumbag rule” (don’t be a scumbag, don’t take a client for a scumbag, don’t advise your client to be a scumbag) is a great piece of basic professional advice for all lawyers, but determining if your client is a scumbag can be tricky. I watched a paralegal apologize to opposing counsel for unwittingly taking a scumbag client, and I barely resisted the urge to ask him how he didn’t notice the holes in his client’s obviously nonsense narrative. Actual lawyers definitely don’t have an excuse for such blunders.
10. In general, actively try to be kind and down-to-earth.  Most of us are pretty privileged in that we come from good, relatively well-off families, and are gifted in some sense of the word. As a consequence, we can come off as super arrogant without even noticing. Also, a lot of us haven’t really faced much in the way of adversity, and don’t have much in the way of real life experience. On top of all that, we’re in what one lawyer described as the “misery business”, in that you generally don’t need a lawyer when things are going swimmingly. It takes effort to put yourself in the shoes of someone who could be going through the worst time of a life that wasn’t too great to begin with. Make that effort. You’ll at least do a service to a profession that’s often associated with insensitivity to suffering.

Best of luck to you all in the upcoming school year.