ABOLITION OF LIVE COURT REPORTERS

In many UK courts we will soon no longer see any sign of the court reporter. He/she will be a thing of the past. Instead, courts will make digital tape recordings of proceedings. This is a terrible move. A digital recording can never capture everything that goes on in the court room. Only a qualified person sitting there can do that. Evidently, they intend to hand the job over to typists, in the mistaken belief that a knowledge of typing is an adequate preparation for learning to capture live spoken interaction. Manifestly, the powers that be think this is going to save money. Well, maybe it will. But we will lose a great deal of what is happening in courts because of it. At the end of the day this move does not bode well for justice. It is not quite on a par with the abolition of cursive handwriting, but it comes close.