Court reporter in the context of Deposition (law)

Horatio William Bottomley (23 March 1860 – 26 May 1933) was an English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament. He is best known for his editorship of the popular magazine John Bull, and for his nationalistic oratory during the First World War. His career came to a sudden end when, in 1922, he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.

Bottomley spent five years in an orphanage before beginning his career, aged 14, as an errand boy. Subsequent experience as a solicitor's clerk gave him a useful knowledge of English law, which he later put to effective use in his court appearances. After working as a shorthand writer and court reporter, at 24 he founded his own publishing company, which launched numerous magazines and papers, including, in 1888, the Financial Times. He overreached with an ambitious public flotation of his company, which led to his first arraignment on fraud charges in 1893. Despite evidence of malpractice, Bottomley, who defended himself, was acquitted. He subsequently amassed a fortune as a promoter of shares in gold-mining companies.

A court of record is a trial court or appellate court in which a record of the proceedings is captured and preserved, for the possibility of appeal. A court clerk or a court reporter takes down a record of oral proceedings. That written record (and all other evidence) is preserved at least long enough for all appeals to be exhausted, or for some further period of time provided by law (for example, in some U.S. states, death penalty statutes provide that all evidence must be preserved for an extended period of time).

Most courts of record have rules of procedure (see rules of evidence, rules of civil procedure, and rules of criminal procedure) and therefore they require that most parties be represented by counsel (specifically, attorneys holding a license to practice law before the specific tribunal).

A scrivener (or scribe) was a person who, before the advent of compulsory education could read and write or who wrote letters as well as court and legal documents. Scriveners were people who made their living by writing or copying written material. This usually indicated secretarial and administrative duties such as dictation and keeping business, judicial, and historical records for kings, nobles, temples, and cities. Scriveners later developed into notaries, court reporters, and in England and Wales, scrivener notaries.

They were and are generally distinguished from scribes, who in the European Middle Ages mostly copied books; with the spread of printing, this role largely disappeared, but scriveners were still required. Styles of handwriting used by scriveners included secretary hand, book hand and court hand.