CLEs You Actually Want to Hear
Oct 14, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 10 segments
California's court reporter shortage has left more than a million civil, family, and probate proceedings a year with no means of creating an official transcript in Los Angeles County alone. In Family…
Alphonse ProvinzianoHostFerdows F. DohertyGuestLori Cripp MartinHostSo we need to turn back the hands of time a little bit, several years to a time when our presiding judge Judge Eric Taylor at the time reached the very unhappy conclusion that we did not have enough court-employed CSRs to continue to keep court reporters in family law and in probate.
A consequence of that apparent to everybody at the time was that there would be no verbatim record of what was occurring in these hearings, tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them.
It was also apparent to anybody who had been around the courthouse for very long, that there was an available technology that could address this problem, and that is electronic recording.
Electronic recording had for a very long time been permitted under law in many of our courtrooms in limited civil, so small claims, unlawful detainers, and in misdemeanors.
We could not use electronic recording in unlimited civil, in family, or probate.
The court under the leadership of then supervising, I'm sorry, presiding judge Samantha Jessner and our CEO, David Slayton, we looked at all kinds of options.
What could we do? And the thing that we wanted to do that seemed the wisest and most efficient would be to get the legislature to amend 69957 to permit electronic recording in at least some circumstances, if not all.
And we working with the bar, people probably listening to this very participated in a lobbying effort and the long and the short of it is even though a bill was drafted and considered, it died in committee and the legislature adjourned with this terrible problem still existing.
And if I can be permitted the editorial, Al, it was maybe the most courageous decision I've seen in a very long time by any judge.
that we would have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hearings with no verbatim record and accordingly, essentially no right of review.
In matters including in family law, very substantial issues were being decided.
So we need to turn back the hands of time a little bit, several years to a time when our presiding judge Judge Eric Taylor at the time reached the very unhappy conclusion that we did not have enough court-employed CSRs to continue to keep court reporters in family law and in probate.
A consequence of that apparent to everybody at the time was that there would be no verbatim record of what was occurring in these hearings, tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands of them.
It was also apparent to anybody who had been around the courthouse for very long, that there was an available technology that could address this problem, and that is electronic recording.
Electronic recording had for a very long time been permitted under law in many of our courtrooms in limited civil, so small claims, unlawful detainers, and in misdemeanors.
We could not use electronic recording in unlimited civil, in family, or probate.
The court under the leadership of then supervising, I'm sorry, presiding judge Samantha Jessner and our CEO, David Slayton, we looked at all kinds of options.
What could we do? And the thing that we wanted to do that seemed the wisest and most efficient would be to get the legislature to amend 69957 to permit electronic recording in at least some circumstances, if not all.
And we working with the bar, people probably listening to this very participated in a lobbying effort and the long and the short of it is even though a bill was drafted and considered, it died in committee and the legislature adjourned with this terrible problem still existing.
And if I can be permitted the editorial, Al, it was maybe the most courageous decision I've seen in a very long time by any judge.
that we would have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hearings with no verbatim record and accordingly, essentially no right of review.
In matters including in family law, very substantial issues were being decided.
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