95 | Norma Alicia Fame : 42 Years of Court Reporting

Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to take a quick moment to share a personal update.

I'm so honored to have recently been named the recipient of the National Court Reporter Foundation's Carl Sacita Grant, an award that recognizes court reporters who are helping to grow and support our profession.

I just want to share a little bit of what it said in the email when I first got the message from Doug Friend, who is the chair of the ncrf, the National Court Reporters Foundation.

He said, you have been chosen to receive the 2026 Carl Sacita Grant from the National Court Reporters Foundation.

Justine Aragones was your nominator.

You have an enormous social media presence.

You are a true and valuable representative of the court reporting profession who gives a lot of time and dollars to strengthen and encourage others.

And that's exactly what this grant is to award.

NCRF is honored to be able to support you as you work to support others.

This is one of the nicest emails I've ever received and I just, my heart just was throbbing with joy when I read this.

And I just want to say thank you so much to the ncrf.

I'm so grateful to everybody who has supported this podcast by listening and receiving.

This recognition has made me even more excited about where we're headed.

And I also had the opportunity to attend in person the NCRA conference in Seattle.

Well, in Bellevue, Washington, where I recorded a few different episodes with some incredible people across our profession.

And you guys are going to be in for a real treat if you are trying to learn anything about the real deal.

Stenographers who have made it from the ground up.

Amazing stories coming up on the podcast.

So stay tuned for that.

I'm not going to give it all away.

Just wanted to give a little snippet and let's jump right in.

A little confidence, a little joy, a little something.

Nils on say, isn't that overdressed?

I say thank you very much.

Overdress is my middle name and I.

Wear it with a clutch.

I mean that's what got me because I'm all in up.

This is the other thing that I say is that when I show up to work, I show up like I'm going to the red carpet and recordings on the side.

It's just something that I do on the side.

That's so funny.

I think so many of us are like them.

It's a courthouse Runway.

Columns rising to the sky, every hallways a red carpet when you're walking by.

When I started, they said the same thing.

I said, you will be replaced, they're gonna have the Dragonfly and all those other names for the ones that do the AI which is now real.

But let me tell you what AI can't do.

AI can't take down the person that when you're in court and you ask the guy, hey, did you kill the guy?

And he goes, uh huh.

And he shakes his head or he says, yes.

I see the eye roll, I see the shakes, I see the nose.

And a lot of the cases have been overturned because even though they record, even though it's video, you weren't there.

It was garbled, it's been messed up and it's happened too many times.

Who keeps the record?

We do.

We do.

Who catches every word?

We do.

Who walks in looking fabulous while making sure she's heard?

But I think I constantly tell people this is the best career on the courthouse.

One.

42 Years, thousands of proceedings, one extraordinary career.

This week I sit down with veteran court reporter Norma Alicia to talk about the lessons she's learned over four decades in the profession.

From unforgettable first day stories to the future of court reporting in the age of AI let's get into it.

My name is Norma Alicia Fame and I am an official civil courthouse in Houston, Texas.

Now 25 years, but total 42 years because I started in 1983.

In 1980, when I graduated, we had a career day.

A court reporter come in and I was fascinated by her machine love pushing buttons.

And when I got to college for a couple years, my fascination with button was such that at the time in my hometown of only 5,000 people, I was dating the judge's son and he introduced me to that court reporter that I saw on career day.

And thus came my next project was going to court reporting school because when she attended, which I believe career day is really important for reporters to be able to go.

And she suggested that I go to a school in Phoenix, Arizona.

But what she did tell me is that that one was at that time in 82, ranked second in the nation, which was the toughest school I was able to complete.

I started March of 82 and in 83 I completed.

But that kicked me into 1983, October to do my very first job.

And as we spoke about earlier, the gap of not really knowing all the intricacies.

Because when you started Stepos, you just show up and you don't know the behind the scenes up, get the record together, how it gets filled, how it gets collected, the whole smorgasbord of court reporter events.

My particular first Day on the job was one of my scariest because at the time I knew I had to get downtown at 9.

But somebody took my keys.

I should say my boyfriend took the keys.

He went off to a college class and I now didn't have a way to get into my car.

Went to a four way intersection where there's eight lanes and I just actually knocked on somebody's window at the left turn light.

And I was about 15 miles from downtown and I had my little machine and I said, excuse me sir, do you happen to be going downtown sight unseen?

Don't know who this is.

But I needed to get to my job for the very first day and I did.

Talk about determination.

Oh my gosh, you should have joined our horror stories episode.

I mean that is, that is such a good example.

Like you did whatever it takes.

I did.

And prior to that I had gotten on a bus and they clearly wouldn't get there on time.

But I was going to get there.

So then in the next day, I'm thinking this is a piece of cake.

It lasted 15 minutes.

As you know when you travel.

They sent me to another town and that one turned out to be six hours, which is fine, but I only took enough.

Back in the day we had manual machines and we had paper that you put in the machine.

And when you put in paper, you can only write like two or three hours worth.

Obviously I didn't have enough paper for six hours, so I did the next horror story.

So around noontime I flipped it and if you know anything about the old machines, it bleeds through.

And that's fine.

I'm writing and praying no one will ever ask for this.

But there was a contentious dispute between.

So they said, what's the time the court reporter read it back to us.

So now I'm reading through my double sided notes because I've written on the other side, so it's like bleeding through.

So now you have notes that are almost impossible to read.

Okay, so like back in the day when you would write on paper.

Yes.

What would you do once, like once you have your paper, your notes, like do you have to rewrite everything on a regular on your keyboard?

Back in the day it was ink, like a typewriter.

Yeah.

It's projected.

But now that I'm putting ink on the other side of that paper, it's.

You can't really read it.

But I'm curious because like if you with the paper and then it's not syncing to like a computer, is that.

Well, you don't even Have a computer.

This is back in the day when it's manual.

There's no computer.

It's just you and the paper.

And then what do you do with the paper once you're.

Once you're done?

You have to get a typewriter and type in word by word.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

When they asked me to read back, I actually found it within, like, about five minutes.

The question that they needed, and they just were appalled.

They said, man, how many years have you been doing this?

I said, no, this is my second day on the job.

And they thought I'd been doing it for years.

And I said, no, no, no, no.

This is just my second day.

And I was just shaking like a leaf back then.

You have to take a test in order to get to work in that court.

And that's great.

And I decided that I needed to, as a close to being a single mom at the time I needed to start working at the time I was in D.C. and it was time just to go see all Lincoln Memorial and all that good stuff.

But I wanted to go to the Supreme Court.

And just after a year and a half of depots, I just said, I'm going to walk in and just see if I.

If they'll give me a job.

Not knowing the ins and outs of trying to get a high court like that.

So when I walked in, they told me, they said, well, first of all, you're a newbie.

And I said, listen, call my school.

I finished in record time.

Call the judge.

He's the one who sent me to this school.

They did so.

And before I walked out the door, they said, we are willing to offer you this job in 1985, starting at $75,000 a year.

Wow.

Which is a lot of money back then.

I had previously promised before going out to D.C. i already committed to Arizona, that I was going to interview with them.

And so when I was offered this wonderful job, I told them, I said, listen, I'm going to fly on a plane and I'm going to go interview.

And if I get the job in Arizona, then I'll have to decline yours.

But if I don't, I'll be flying back out.

I went in for the interview, and they offered me the job on the spot.

But what that town did is they had three judges, which meant I did civil, criminal, family, adoption and everything.

So I worked with this judge on Monday, this one on Wednesday, this one's Friday.

And then I would do all depositions for that town.

Wow.

And it was only $22,000 a year, I did not ask that question.

How much?

How come Arizona was like, your first choice over?

Because I lived there.

That's where my family was.

And you weren't about to just, like,.

Get up and go, but although I could have.

I mean, that would have been ideal.

Looking back at that point, I was a single parent raising kids on my own.

And so, you know, you just want whatever it takes.

That was a border town.

I originally was born in Mexico, so I'm fluent.

But we were in chambers one time, and we had the.

My judge who was bilingual, and the county attorney was not, and the defense attorney was bilingual, and that client decided to confess to a murder.

So it was on the record.

And of course, the county attorney had to, at that point, object because he did not know what was said.

And it was at that point, I think I discovered that I could simultaneously write from English, from Spanish to English in my head.

So we know a verbatim record, by law, has to be in English.

But I was able to conjugate the words and put them in English.

As fast as you're speaking in Spanish, I can twist it in my head and write it down.

So when I read back, it was verbatim because my judge and also the defense attorney spoke.

So on many occasions, that's what we would do when we didn't have an interpreter.

So that's a whole other dimension.

That's something that's just in and of itself for court reporters.

Just to put it in English is hard, but doing that in Spanish, for me, it was something I had never delved into.

Oh, my gosh.

That's like.

I mean, I know interpreters, you know, they struggle to just be able to interpret the verbal.

That's.

That's pretty impressive.

Wow.

After Arizona, I decided to move to Houston because there was a.

A time in there where I decided I was going to homeschool my kids.

And Texas is the next best state to do that in.

And what I didn't know about Houston is they are a CSR state could be grandfathered in, or you could just take a test by a judge.

I don't know if that's how you did it to work in court.

I personally did not go through that process.

I just, you know, graduated from school, got my diploma, and started working.

But I think there typically is a test that you take to work in court.

What they do is at least that I discovered here for Houston is.

It's like you would in school.

You know, you have to.

Have to do the three legs.

Three literary, three jury charge three Q&A.

And it has to be the 180, 200, 225.

Well, they implemented that plus about 50 questions.

And you all, you have to pass the whole leg.

It's like the rpr, you know, if you ever take them out, you have to do it all in one swoop.

I got there like I thought I was supposed to, but there was a shutdown on the freeway and I ended up getting there late even though I was five minutes away.

But my computer toppled over, didn't work and I didn't have a backup.

So somebody brought an extra typewriter, but the ribbon ran out in the middle of the test.

So everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

But long story short, I was able to pass it.

February 14th.

I'll always remember year 2000, that was Valentine's Day.

Just went to the courthouse and I just hit number 14 on the floor.

And I didn't know that that Ford house had been built the year before.

So it was a brand new Ford house in Houston.

Ironically, the lady that allowed me to go to the back, she was the test giver that day and she said, I heard about you.

They had a glitch that year and the test was given too fast and that there was only two people that passed, a voice writer and myself.

I got hired on the spot.

Well, the way I got into the court that I am in now because of that schedule where I was working 100 hours a week for 10 years, raising two children was just too much and I didn't want to do that anymore.

But I bring up real time because you asked me about real time.

There was a judge that is the only one in all of Houston that did not like court reporters.

He had a court recorder.

She records it and she just jots down when they're talking cross in the direct because there's a tape.

And the only way to get that down is she has to ship it out to get it typed.

That's the only way to do it.

He didn't not want court reporter.

Wow.

It's interesting.

It shows they've been doing that already since, you know.

Yes, that particular judge wanted real time.

And so he was very picky about that.

He was a newer judge.

He was from Giuliani firm out of New York actually.

And so it was here in Houston.

And so what he did is he interviewed for six months and he gave every reporter a two window, a two week window.

I did not have a tape recorder back in the day.

Most reporters do.

I did not.

So if the I feel wasn't recorded, it was all on me.

So you.

Basically the translation of that is that you didn't have any kind of audio sync or audio backup.

No.

In that particular court on the third day, my writer stopped writing and nothing was happening.

There was no more way for me to write.

My judge just said, well, you have it record.

You have it recorded.

And I said, no, sir, I don't, because I don't have a quarter.

So we took a break because I just ran during the break to get another writer because I needed to, because the jury was waiting for me.

By the time I came back, they decided.

Decided to settle the case.

So I thought, okay, that's it.

My judge is going to say, you know, you messed up.

We're moving on to the next reporter.

But in fact, he offered the job to me because he told the jury, I wish your machine would have broken on day one.

Would have saved a lot of us a lot of trouble.

Brian, I would love to tell you that I jumped at the chance.

And I said, great.

A wonderful.

I said, well, I'm homeschooling my kids, so I have a very busy schedule.

They have basketball games and I need to get to 100 games, so I can't be here all the time nine to five.

And I had a side business.

I basically gave them three reasons maybe not to hire me because I did not want to be in that position of working as hard as I did.

And I asked him if I could have two weeks to think about it.

And he said yes to all the above.

And that was November 2001.

So I will be in my 25th year for that court.

And that judge ended up leaving, and another judge came in and kept me, and that judge left, and then another judge kept me.

So I'm on my fourth judge.

Wow.

So I went from doing all criminal, which predominantly was all, you know, anything that happens criminal, you know, that civil, which could be a contract case, could be a mad mouth case.

So I'm specifically just doing civil cases at this point.

And that's been 20, 25 years for this particular court.

Oh, my gosh.

That's amazing.

Wow.

Yeah.

I also ended up teaching at a court reporting school, which is a very famous one called Shirley Baker.

And so in addition to getting hired at the time, I decided to teach at night at the school.

And two of the students that were doing the night class, which we know takes longer, they were able to graduate as well.

And one of them, like, off and on, 10 years or 20 years, it didn't matter, it's whatever.

Like you did it in 13 months.

You're an anomaly.

How often does that happen?

I mean, you too.

It sounds like you.

I'm talking to a legend here.

Well, I've just been around longer, that's all.

I mean, you'll have many more stories to tell.

You're only 10 years into it.

Even though you were doing, you were.

Working two jobs and going to school, so you weren't full time.

You were juggling, you know, many different things, but you still finished within, I think you said 18 months.

And you also had to pass at 250 words per minute, not 225.

Do you compete in like those competitions, Speed?

Let me tell you, Bryn, I. I have a.

Everybody knows Mark Kislenberry, right?

Yes.

Legend of the world.

So when I took Mark's class, you know, he's the champion, what, 350 words a minute.

And we had to read back.

And so when I was reading back, I realized that most of these reporters were briefing like crazy.

Yeah, I was just typing faster.

And Mark said that, he said, I see you're going much faster than the other students I discovered.

And he gave me a book, all his briefs, which I maybe picked up 20.

So along the way I try to incorporate briefs because we know that helps, but I've just learned just to write as fast as I can.

Is that what you still do?

Sometimes.

But Eclipse, I don't know if that's what your program does with case catalysts, but Eclipse gives you choices.

So if I write contemporaneous.

Contemporaneous.

My computer will say, hey, how about can't?

Oh, like it'll suggest briefs.

It'll suggest.

And that's wonderful.

But guess what?

You have to remember it when you're already in a case that's going fast.

Well, I mean, I'm sure you have brief forms for some phrases that come up all the time.

Like ladies and gentlemen of the jury,.

Everybody does beyond a reasonable doubt yard, right?

I do.

Yrd, so.

So.

And it's your comfort level, you know, it's whatever you need to do.

But the other thing that I don't do, and I don't know if you do this, is don't break the thought pattern of the lawyer.

I just hang on.

And I know they're going to take a bratz funeral later.

So I.

In my 42 year career, I may have stopped somebody 10 times ever.

I just, you know, obviously if you can't hear or they're crying.

Yes, of course.

But if it's speed.

I just hang on and I just let them go.

You seem to have like the highest level of stamina that I've ever met.

I mean, even tonight.

Okay, let's talk about the fact that it's, it's Friday night And it's like 11:14 here in New York.

10:14 For you, right?

Yes.

So.

And here's.

Here we are court reporters talking about court reporting on a Friday night.

And.

And you said that you were all, I mean, if you, if you weren't doing this, you were working on a transcript, right?

So.

Oh yeah, I'm doing that right now.

But earlier I went to dinner with my husband and.

And the other thing I love about you brand is you bring class and style because I see that you have your machine and you pose and I'm like your boots and, and I think.

And let me tell you, that's one of the reasons when I clicked on your name, I thought, finally there's somebody who can relate to me.

And this is off topic.

This isn't a recording.

This is just personal.

I choose to do that every day in court.

And when I say every day, every day I change.

So, okay, I'm in orange today, right?

So I do my orange fingernail or I do orange earrings or I do shoes.

So every day I'll match my high heels, four or five inch shoes.

And I'm in all day long.

Oh my.

For 42 years.

So if I'm wearing yellow tomorrow, have yellow fingernail polish.

If I have green, the next day I put green.

And that's in addition to being in court because the, the other thing, Bren, that I love to do aside again is work out for three or four hours.

So if I need to get up at four or five to do that before I go to court or I think the stamina is just self motivating or it's just there.

My husband says I have too much energy.

That is really, like really incredible.

I mean, you look, you look amazing.

Gorgeous so far this year.

So, you know.

Yeah.

And it doesn't seem like.

Well, I would never guess that by the way, by the way you look and the way you are working and everything.

Like you just look and seem so energetic and so young and like it's refreshing actually.

It's really, really nice.

So did you ever feel like, I mean, it doesn't sound like you ever felt, you know, stressed or burned out.

I mean, I'm sure you have.

Of course, you.

You know, I think I'm very one of those few people that Stress to me is just fuel for the engine.

Like the adversity actually drives me more.

Oh, okay, okay.

So I turn that into.

That's almost to the impossible.

Like, let me just figure it out.

Yeah, okay.

If you give me a transcript or if I'm at the end of the case and they say I need this tomorrow and they didn't give me a heads up and there is no scopist, well then that means I come home five, six or seven.

And then that means I just work through the night and I don't sleep.

I'm back, I'm seven, take a shower, go back to court and I.

And I work again without the sleep and just crash during lunch.

I just do whatever it takes to get the job done.

So I will never be laid on my records.

I won't ask for an extension for court of appeals.

Something near death would have to happen.

And that's just what I've kept up my whole career.

Do you ever, like, I'm sure people, I mean, because I hear this all the time, like, you know, people are always trying to like tell you to stop working so hard or tell you to like take care of yourself and set boundaries and all these things.

Like how.

What do you say to those people?

When people are like, why do you work so much?

Like, why don't you just say no?

Or why don't you just, you know,.

Like, what do you insist that my judge will say?

Like, normally they're asking for a transcript.

And I said, I know, but you know what, it's.

It's my name.

It's also my work product.

I'm proud of it and I'm not going to cheapen it.

So I just will do whatever it takes.

I think that's just kind of the end of the story is I love to work.

I have no problem working.

I love my days off.

My judge is great about that.

So I just realized when I was working 100 hours a week and driving 70 miles, that was tough.

So now it's not only by choice, but my judge is a great judge.

And that's ideally what hope that you find somebody that you can work consistently with because then you can get in tandem with them.

And that helps for the whole environment that you're in because when you're subbing and you're constantly going somewhere different makes it difficult.

I understand that.

Yeah.

Sorry, can you say again what part.

Of Texas you're in?

Houston, Texas.

So we are actually.

My judge always likes to say this during word.

I are third largest.

I think Compared to Cook county in Chicago, and then la Houston is the next big large conglomerate with all the courts of the millions of people, because our particular courts, there's only 26 civil.

So we're handling a bigger caseload than you would anywhere else.

And we had to finally get pay raises to go with that because we were like one of the lowest paid court reporters for all the civil and the criminals.

But they finally came on board and they upped it, which I'm very happy for that.

But we carry a very heavy case.

So my Judge probably has 7,000 cases or, you know, that she's working on.

So we're.

She's constantly having to, you know, either make judgments on cases and either we're going to go to trial or not.

And it's good days in the sense of not too much work.

And I say bad days, that's all the stressful days.

But I don't consider them stressed because I actually enjoy the challenge.

What would you say about the people who are worried about the career being obsolete and AI and technology replacing?

Which is ironic because I feel like our skill is very technologically advanced.

But I mean, what would you have to say?

Well, let me tell you what I was told in 82 when I started.

They said the same thing.

I said, you will be replaced.

They're going to have the Dragonfly and all those other names for the ones that do the AI, which is now real.

But let me tell you what AI can't do.

AI can't take down the person that when you're in court and you ask the guy, hey, did you kill the guy?

And he goes, and he shakes his head or he says, yes, and let's say there was 10 objections.

You are there.

You're verbatim.

I see the eye rule, I see the shakes, I see the no's.

And a lot of the cases have been overturned because even though they record, even though it's video, you weren't there.

It was garbled, it's been messed up and it's happened too many times.

And recently in my court just down the hall, about three months ago, the whole case had to get thrown out because there was a glitch in the recording system.

And they just implemented about three months ago in our court the highest technology for the audio, the visual.

I happened to look up on the screen and I was taking the case and I don't know who was doing this, but it was coming up probably AI on the screen.

I looked over.

I don't think they meant for me to see that, but I'm writing it to my real time and I'm checking against what they're writing and the cases that they're citing are not what's on the screen.

And I looked at that and I think they caught wind of it and then it went away.

But there's an ample amount of opportunities anywhere in the states for you to go for your skill.

Yes, absolutely.

And where can they reach out to you or find you if they want to get in contact and ask for some help?

Sure.

I'm in the 234th Civil District Court in Houston, Texas, in Harris County.

And so Judge Lauren Reader is my judge.

And if you ever want to see a case or you want to see me working, they just type that in and they can just see it, you know, see it real time.

And I always tell them it's better than a soap opera.

They can't even think of the stuff that we see that's from.

And how juicy is that?

And you get front row seat, everything in the bench conferences that nobody else is hearing.

I have to have this wealth of like, oh my gosh, I can't.

And of course, you just keep a straight face.

But it's.

I always regale my husband with lots of stories.

Such a unique career.

It's like we all could have our own reality shows with the things that we deal with and the things that we witness from our unique perspective as the non, you know, party person in the front and center of the courtroom.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, you are, you are a rare and a legendary case here.

I'm really honored that I got the chance to talk to you and that, you know, I look forward to talking again and doing more episodes.

And thank you so much for being so willing to come on at such short notice.

Not a problem.

So patient and so just.

I just, I love the, the, the fresh, refreshing vibe that you have.

So thank you so much and it's.

Been a joy and you just keep at it.

I appreciate you being so young in your career, going into these directions that we had never had before.

And I think we could write incredible books on cult reporting.

What an amazing woman.

A huge thank you to Norma for joining me on the podcast and sharing so many incredible stories from her 42 year career.

Next week, I'm back with a solo episode called People vs Processed Food.

I'll share the story behind the only time I've ever had to recuse myself from a case and how one conversation completely changed the way I think about one of the biggest public health issues of our time.

Thanks for listening and see you next time on the Court Reporter Podcast.