Design mockup. Not a real company, and not a live service.

Weldon Reporting Company

Scheduling (816) 555-0147 Weekdays 7:30 to 5:30

Court reporting · Kansas City, Missouri

Who is available,
and what each one
has already reported.

Court reporting is short of court reporters. Missouri and Kansas each certify fewer every year than retire, and the practical effect on a litigator is plain: the date you noticed may have nobody free to take it.

Weldon keeps a roster of nine and publishes it. Certifications, the year each one first sat down at a machine, whether they write realtime, the subject matter they have built a dictionary for, and how far each one will drive.

Call and name three things: the date, the county, and the subject. We will tell you on the phone which of the nine is open. If none of them is, we say that, rather than taking the job and looking for somebody afterward.

A deposition room set up before anyone arrives: a long walnut table, chairs pushed in unevenly, water glasses, legal pads, and a video camera on a tripod at the head of the table.

One

The roster

Certifications are issued by the National Court Reporters Association and by each state's own certifying authority. Ask for any reporter's current standing and we will give you the number to call and check it yourself.

Nine court reporters, with certifications, first year reporting, whether they write realtime, usual subject matter and counties covered.
Reporter Certifications Reporting since Realtime Reports mostly Will drive to
Marguerite Okonjo RMRCRRCCR 1998 Yes Orthopedic and spine, workers compensation Jackson, Clay, Platte, Cass
Dale Ruesink RPRCCR 2006 No Construction defect, trucking and cargo Jackson, Ray, Lafayette, Carroll
Teresa Vandiver RMRCRRCSR 1991 Yes Patent and technical, software licensing Johnson KS, Wyandotte, Leavenworth
Anh Loi Pham RPRCRRCSRCCR 2011 Yes Medical malpractice, pharmacology Johnson KS, Jackson, Douglas
Bettina Marek RPRCCR 2015 No Family, guardianship and probate Clay, Platte, Clinton, Buchanan
Curtis Sowell RMRCCR 1987 Yes Insurance defense, premises liability Jackson, Cass, Johnson MO
Renata Filkins RPRCRCCSR 2013 Yes Employment and discrimination, plus live captioning for deaf and hard of hearing participants Wyandotte, Johnson KS, Miami
Joanna Brightwell RPRCCR 2019 No Real estate, mineral and lease disputes Platte, Buchanan, DeKalb, Andrew
Hollis Ngata RMRCRRCCR 2003 Yes Products liability, mechanical engineering Jackson, Clay, Ray

Five reporters are certified in both states, so a case that moves across the state line does not have to change reporters mid-deposition. The dictionary a reporter builds for a subject is personal to them, which is the whole reason the fifth column exists: a witness who says spondylolisthesis nine times in an afternoon should be in front of somebody who has stroked it before.

Two

Realtime, and what it changes in the room

Without it

The steno notes are translated after the fact. A rough draft, unedited and marked as such, can be in your inbox by about ten that night. You question from your outline and read the answers later.

With it

The translation lands on your screen about a second behind the words. You can flag a line while the witness is still talking, and search back through the whole morning before anyone breaks for lunch.

Realtime is a certification, not a setting. A reporter either holds it or does not, and five of the nine do. Booking a realtime reporter for a deposition that does not need one is a fee spent on nothing, so say what you actually want the transcript to do and we will match it.

A laptop on a conference table showing a running page of transcript text, next to a yellow legal pad with handwritten notes, a pen and reading glasses.
A small Missouri county courthouse of limestone and red brick seen across an empty town square on a damp spring morning.

Three

Coverage, and the notice each county needs

Eleven counties, and we would rather tell you the lead time than quietly send whoever was left.

Same day, if somebody is open

  • Jackson
  • Clay
  • Platte
  • Johnson, Kansas
  • Wyandotte

Forty-eight hours

  • Cass
  • Ray
  • Lafayette
  • Buchanan
  • Clinton
  • Leavenworth

Ask first

Anything past a ninety minute drive, and any county where none of the nine has worked before. We will tell you who genuinely covers it instead of sending somebody who has never found the parking.

Remote depositions come off the same roster. A reporter is on the call taking it live. Nothing here is a recording handed to a transcriptionist afterward.

Five comb bound transcript volumes stacked on a worn oak table in window light, coloured index tabs fanning from the top volume, an open notebook and pen beside them.

Four

Exhibits

Most of what goes wrong after a deposition goes wrong here, and none of it is interesting until it is your exhibit that cannot be found. So this part is written down.

  1. Exhibits are stamped in the room, in order, by the reporter, and read into the record by number as they are marked.
  2. Everything is scanned before it leaves the building. Three hundred dpi, and in colour if the original was in colour.
  3. Originals go back the same day to whoever handed them over, and the worksheet records who took them.
  4. Anything emailed in afterward is appended at the end and marked as late. It is not slipped into the middle of the set.
  5. If an exhibit reaches us illegible, you hear about it before the transcript goes out, not after.

Five

Holding a date

There is no booking form, because the answer depends on who is free and that is a two minute conversation rather than a field. Call with these six things in front of you.

(816) 555-0147 Weekdays 7:30 to 5:30

  1. 01 The date and start time, and whether it is likely to run past lunch.
  2. 02 The county, and the street address if it is not a courthouse or a law office.
  3. 03 The caption and case number, so the file is opened under the right one.
  4. 04 The subject, in the plainest words you have. Knee tells us more than personal injury does.
  5. 05 Whether you want realtime, video, or an interpreter, and in which language.
  6. 06 Who else is appearing, and who is ordering a copy.

If the reporter you asked for is already out that day, we will say which of the others has taken that subject before, and you can decide whether to move the date or the reporter.