It's All Down in Black and White:
A Court Reporter Speaks Out
The court reporter is a vital and essential part of our legal system.
He or she is the silent person who listens to every word spoken in the courtroom
and mechanically gets it all down for the record, using a shorthand machine.
It is the court reporter's job to hear and record it all, thoroughly and
impartially. Essential and demanding though this task may be, the court
reporter is seldom the focus of attention, perhaps because he or she appears
to be the only one in the courtroom without opinions, flair, or a sense
of humor.
But John Reily, who was a court reporter for over thirty years, has written
a memoir of his days in the courtroom, and his book demonstrates that a
court reporter can be filled with opinions, have plenty of flair, and be
blessed with a hilarious sense of humor.
Read That Back, Please is a delightful collection of tales. Sprinkled
with chuckles throughout, the book also gives us an insider's view of how
courtroom justice really works. For those of us whose acquaintance with
the legal system is mostly a matter of traffic tickets and jury duty, this
account gives a whole new way of understanding judges and bailiffs, lawyers
and litigants. We learn a lot about the law, learning the subtle shadings
of "reasonable doubt," for example. And we learn a lot about people,
because that's what the law, and the courtrooms, and this book, are about.
Mr. Reily's experiences also provide a different way of looking at society
in change, because he witnessed and recorded cases that had to do with racism,
child molestation, and drunk driving. And since words were the very essence
of his job, we also see how the changes of society were reflected in the
changing nuances of words. Mr. Reily is a great respecter of language, which
is what made him a skillful court reporter and what makes him a most entertaining
writer.
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About the author
John R. Reily was an official court reporter in Kalispell, Montana, for
two years, and in Santa Clara County, California, for twenty-nine. Now retired,
he lives in
San Jose, California. |
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