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Court Reporter

David Siegel: I also notice in certain counties there's a court reporter at the final day who's dictating everything that's said, and that has to be transcribed in some counties, and the petitioner has to pay for that, but yet in other counties it's either recorded or not transcribed. Can you explain this?

Jesse Barrientes: It can be waived in the places you're talking about. I'm not going to mention specifically, but the problem though with some judges is they'll go along with that and there are form orders that say the transcript is waived. Some of them will waive it if there's no kids, some of them won't if there are kids involved, and some of them will do it either way because you can. It's just an added expense really. Other places where they have electronic recording, it still gets transcribed by a court reporter, but it's recorded, and there's no requirement that you have to—

David Siegel: Well do they actually transcribe it, or do they actually file the recording?

Jesse Barrientes: It's not. Unless you request that they transcribe something, they're not going to transcribe it, but it's there. It's stored.

David Siegel: I personally like the fact that in Chicago it's being transcribed. That way you're protected, you know what was said, you know what the judge said. Certain cases, you're going to want that for appellate purposes if you didn't agree with the judgment, which brings me to another point, as long as we're on judges, and courtrooms, and demeanor. What is your thought on cameras in the courtroom? Now that we're seeing everybody with cell phones that have cameras, there's some restrictions there. I'd like to know your opinion on this because pretty soon everybody is going to have a camera in their phone, and have the ability to tape things that happened in the courthouse.

Jesse Barrientes: I really don't care for that. I understand you'd have to stretch to find a phone that didn't have a camera on it, but the problem is, in some places – I think they allow that in California, and you get sometimes lawyers playing up to the audience, to the camera, as it were. You know what, things happen in court that people, the general public may not kind of understand, and don't have a grasp on, because they don't have the legal training. They don't have the experience because they haven't been there, and they don't understand it. They look at that as that being something that's wrong, or being a negative. I think that people are better off. It also protects the identity of folks that are in there. Do you want to be there if you're there for a criminal case, and hey, you did X, Y, and Z? Do you want people to be able to put that up there? Now sometimes they do in the blotter, the police blotter.

David Siegel: It is a public forum. Anybody can go and witness, and write about it. They can draw sketches about it. the cases you're talking about, the high-profile cases that came out of California, that was with court approval that they allowed it to be filmed because judges have egos, but in general I think this law in Illinois was put in place to protect the court from maybe a crazy ruling, or some kind of outlandish remark that if it was caught on tape might show the judge in a bad light.

I think it was to protect them, and I think now with the cameras, they're preventing people from getting in to the courthouse for minor traffic offenses if they have the camera on it. They have to run back out and put the camera way. I think it's a little bit over the top. If it's a public forum, these judges have to be prepared, I believe, to be videoed and taped just like you are when you cross every light in DuPage County. You're being photographed.

Jesse Barrientes: That's just because of my driving, right Dave? I don’t think I have any stop light photos out there.

David Siegel: Right, but I'd like to see some of these rules modified to keep up with the existing times now that everybody has a camera.

Jesse Barrientes: I'm a little old fashioned that way. Pictures certainly for a defense attorney sometimes are no good, but I like the old fashioned. I don't like to have to worry about all those extra kinds of things, and all the things people can do with Facebook, and ___. We were going to talk about the specific terms of the judgment, for specifically, not relating to custody, but just relating to the typical things that are in a divorce decree.

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