The shortage reflects a genuine market mismatch. While OpenAI chief Sam Altman and others have warned that some jobs will "totally go away," current labor data and research suggest generative AI has not broadly eliminated white-collar positions. A 2025 Upwork report found rising demand for AI-related work in data annotation and labeling, indicating that automation can create new labor needs alongside displacement. In court reporting, no such displacement has materialized. The operational crisis is recruitment and retention, not obsolescence.
For attorneys and legal employers, the takeaway is straightforward: court reporting shortages will likely persist in the near term, affecting case scheduling and deposition logistics. The profession's resilience against automation—driven by AI's continued inability to reliably capture complex legal proceedings—suggests that human expertise in specialized transcription remains a structural constraint on legal operations. Firms should anticipate ongoing delays and plan accordingly rather than assume technological solutions will ease the bottleneck.