Pros
They are transparent about what they expect for the most part, they just understate how much this will effect your day-to-day life and make it sound less frequent than it is. When they say "you may" need to do something, it means that you will, and often. They promote internally, if you can last long enough to want a meager pay bump.
Cons
You are paid like a receptionist, but expected to keep the same hours, time, and legal risk of an attorney. Your clients are attorneys, so you need to be working when your clients are working and working where they are working. Deposition starts at 8:00am 2 hours away? You're fired if you're 5 min late, so you need to get their an hour early in case there's an accident, you're leaving at 5:00am that day. You are not told what your schedule will be until the evening beforehand, and it may change as late as 10:00pm. You might be scheduled for a hearing at 9:00am the next morning and then get a text at 9:30pm that it's now a job you need to leave the house at 6:00am for. You are ALWAYS on call, but you are not always on the clock. Have kids, pets, a social life? Not the job for you. You cannot do this job if you have ANY responsibilities outside of work. If you need to make even an annual doctor's appointment, you must block off half your day or they will put you in a deposition that goes until 6:00pm. There are no office hours; you are done when the attorneys say you're done, and then you have to drive home if you're out of town. You are NOT allowed to get a part-time job. There is no room for mistakes, you must learn a ton of legal jargon and processes very quickly, much more than your 2 week training provides, and you cannot make a mistake or there could be real legal consequences and this company will not protect you if you get into trouble. They fully expect you to be willing to take all this risk and responsibility in a legal/court setting for $20-$22/hr in this economy after 2 weeks of training. The president hires young pretty women fresh out of college (almost exclusively, look at the staff pages on their company websites) and pays them as if they're interns. It's not career money, they are pocketing the difference in pay that you would make if you worked independently, so you are doing the workload of a full-time court reporter, but only taking half the pay. The reporters would make a LOT more money if they did their own transcripts, that's how the company profits. Other court reporters do not respect you, they will harass you and say that you're not a real court reporter. This is expected and there is nothing to be done about it. Imagine going to your job and being bullied by another contractor and it's just par for the course. Very strange career culture. Very cutthroat and competitive. Their turnover has to be like 50% annually or more, they cannot keep employees, people burn out within 6 months to a year because the stress gets to them. Most of their long-term staff are in-office only and not actually reporters, very few last long in the field.