Undocumented: California’s Court Reporter Crisis- An investigative series examining California’s court reporter crisis and the impact it had on taxpayers, children, and families involved in divorce, child custody disputes, and domestic violence cases over the past decade.
By Susan Bassi, Fred Johnson, and Faith Strader
When Donald Trump was first elected president, California taxpayers cut a check for $283 million. Not for a highway. Not for a hospital. For a courthouse with state-of-the-art technology and located in downtown San Jose.
A courthouse for families involved in divorces, custody battles, and domestic violence cases. Families that worked for and invested in companies that built technology to record, store and stream video. Companies that put cameras in people’s phones, homes and businesses as well as developed artificial intelligence that could create transcripts from video and audio recordings for business meetings, court hearings and videos posted on social media.
The courthouse was billed as a place where families could walk in, stand before a judge, and have someone write down what was said.
A decade later, the courthouse lights are on. Courtroom cameras are working. Zoom and Microsoft Teams apps are installed. Judges are being paid to sit on the bench and apply the law. But in the hearings that matter most — fights that decide how community property will be divided, where children sleep, and whether a protective order will be issued or tossed — nobody is keeping a public record of what happens inside Silicon Valley’s family law courtrooms.
Court reporters are gone.
They didn’t leave all at once, or with a public announcement. They left quietly, steadily, one courtroom at a time.
Court managers had a story ready. A shortage. A crisis. A budget problem. Court reporters were aging out of the profession.
It sounded reasonable, but it was not the whole truth and now the court is using public funds to defend a claim that it violated the rights of families by not providing a record of their legal proceedings.
The Family Violence Appellate Project and Bay Area Legal Aid took the court proclaimed crisis to the California Supreme Court, arguing that denying families a record of their own legal proceedings and upholding a state law that bans audio recordings in family court — is unconstitutional.
While that lawsuit was pending, millions of family court hearings across California have been conducted without a court reporter, without a recording, and without any official account of what was said in a public courtroom.
Three million hearings. Undocumented. Gone.
Public records tell a story not told in the lawsuit. Or by court managers and judges.
Santa Clara County Superior Court, one of four courts named in the recording ban lawsuit, did not run out of money to employ court reporters who worked to assure a written record of the hearings conducted in its shiny new courthouse. It made choices. Deliberate ones about how to allocate public funds and legal priorities.
Choices that included signing a $7.6 million private contract with a court reporting company to patch the gap it had engineered. A private company co-owned by a retired court employee who held a leadership role in an organization lobbying against recording in courtrooms her business had a contracted monopoly to record.
Additionally, as the recording ban was in place, and family court litigants had to hire private court reporters to document their public court proceedings, the court sent $3 million in less than three years, to a small group of private attorneys who represent children as minors counsel in courtrooms where no record was kept of the work they did “in the best interest of children”.
A courthouse chose winners. And it chose losers.
The losers walked into a $283 million courthouse and left with no record of what happened to them or their children.
The winners were private attorneys and private court reporters who billed the public for millions of dollars of work in a courthouse that kept no historic record of the work they claimed to perform.
The court did not run out of money for court reporters. It signed a $7.6 million contract with a private reporting company whose owner lobbied against audio recording. And the court paid nearly $3 million to attorneys representing children in court cases with undocumented hearings.
Just four years after the new courthouse opened, the Santa Clara County Superior Court announced it would provide court reporters only for mandated proceedings — a list that excluded most contested custody hearings, most domestic violence restraining order hearings and routine status conferences.
To fill the gap for the court’s poorest users, as required under Jameson v. Desta, the court turned to Superior Court Reporters, LLC — a private company owned by Kelly A. McCarthy and Michelle Caldwell.
Caldwell is a court reporter and former court employee. She holds a leadership position in the local court reporter union and lobbied against audio recording in the very courtrooms where the contract gives her company a recording monopoly.
Sources: Agreement C2202185, Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara; Court vendor payment ledger, July 1, 2023 – May 25, 2026.
The contract covers court reporting from January 2023 through June 2026, with options extending to June 2028. Maximum contract value: $7,600,000. For fiscal year 2023-24 alone, the court encumbered $1,550,000 under that contract.
For working and middle class court users — those who fall above a court fee waiver threshold— the courthouse that cost $283 million to build, that used to provide court reporters in every family law hearing, now requires them to pay $1,200 for a private court reporter to show up to document their public hearings.
In addition to paying court reporters to document their hearings, family court litigants might be ordered by a judge to pay an attorney, or minors counsel, to represent their children. Not an attorney parents select for their children. Not an attorney parents can afford. An attorney the judge selects and appoints to represent their children. The same attorney the judge orders them, or taxpayers, to pay when their bills come due.
As court reporters disappeared from family law courtrooms, and the court recording ban lawsuit naming Santa Clara County Superior Court as a defendant proceeded, the court paid $2,861,013.83 to forty-nine attorneys court appointed to represent children in family law cases, between July 1, 2023, and May 25, 2026. Private attorneys paid public funds at a rate of $100 per hour.
Public records show these attorneys billed 28,610 hours in less than three years. Not because of a constitutional mandate, but because a judge’s order said it was in the best interest of children whose parents were involved in a divorce, custody battle, or domestic violence dispute.
† Nicole M. Ford was not listed on the court’s Local Rule 9 qualified panel after 2022 but continued to receive appointments and public payments through 2026. Source: Court vendor payment ledger, July 1, 2023 – May 25, 2026.
Two firms dominated the court’s public payment ledger.
Allan & Martelle LLP, owned and operated by Heather Allan and Eva Martelle, collected $1,170,149.63 in public funds in less than three years for minors counsel appointments.
The firm was paid for approximately 11,701 hours of court-appointed work. The firm performed thousands of hours of additional work for court- appointments where judges ordered parents, not taxpayers, to pay the firm directly. Those hours are not included in the records produced by the court.
The firm also represents private clients, not just children, in family court.
Heather Allan and Eva Martelle are active members of the Santa Clara County Bar Association.
Photos courtesy of the Allan & Martelle website: Home | Allan & Martelle, LLP
According to the firm’s website, Heather Allan and Eva Martelle provide “effective legal representation” with “affordable rates” and flexible hours, so they are easily accessible to all their clients, combining “zealous advocacy with compassionate representation.”
The firm’s website says nothing about the court appointments that resulted in more than 40% of the court’s minors counsel public budget going to the firm. The firm’s website shows seven legal assistants and two attorneys make up the firm’s “team.”
Public pay for this firm was the equivalent of one attorney billing full-time — 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year — for nearly three years straight.
All based on court appointments, court approvals for payment and for work that included attending hearings that were not documented.
11,701 hours billed to taxpayers. For two attorneys. In three years. In courtrooms where no court reporter was required to document a single word.
YEAR-OVER
The next highest minors counsel biller in Santa Clara was the Huey & Gamble law firm, led by attorneys Jessica Huey and Audrey Gamble. A firm paid $175, 980 by taxpayers over the course of three years to represent children in the county as minors counsel.
NOTE: These same attorneys also accept privately-paid minors’ counsel appointments at rates of $400–$650/hr. as well as provide private client representation.
For the 11,701 hours Allan & Martelle billed on public appointments: in most hearings, there was no court reporter.
There is no transcript.
There is no independently verifiable record of what those attorneys argued, recommended, or accomplished.
The billing records exist.
The proceedings they document do not — at least not in any form a parent, a taxpayer, or a journalist can access.
Source: Santa Clara County Superior Court Court-Appointed Counsel financial records. Fiscal year totals are estimates based on invoice and posting dates.
Santa Clara County Superior Court funded minors’ counsel payments increased 141% from FY 2021-22 to FY 2024-25. During the same period, the court was eliminating court reporters from family law hearings and defending a lawsuit about those eliminations.
Nicole M. Ford was appointed to the Santa Clara County Domestic Violence Council, a local political advisory body, where two sitting family court judges, Cindy Hendirckson and Julie Emede, were also appointed as they appointed Ford as minors counsel and approved her applications for payment.
No formal record exists showing this cozy relationship was disclosed to the parents ordered to pay Ford’s fees.
Julie Emede was the supervising judge of family court and now acts as the court’s presiding judge as the recording ban lawsuit is being litigated.
After 2022, Ford was no longer listed on the court’s Local Rule 9 qualified panel — the list that California law requires judges to use for minors’ counsel appointments. Without a specific finding supporting a deviation, which should have ended Ford’s appointments.
It did not.
From July 2023 through May 2026 — three-plus years after her panel eligibility lapsed — Ford received $45,259.50 in public minors’ counsel payments, representing roughly 453 billed hours at the public rate.
Court minute order shows Santa Clara minors counsel Nicole Ford in a custody case where no court reporter documented the hearing.
A December 2023 minute order shows Ford listed as ‘Attorney for Minor.’ The court reporter field reads: ‘No Court Reporter.’
Whatever was decided that day about that child cannot be appealed. There is no record of what was said. The public paid Ford regardless.
California law requires attorneys to complete qualifying training — eight hours per year — to remain eligible to represent children as minors’ counsel.
A Vanguard review of a 2022 Sonoma County minors counsel training session led by attorney Julie Levy in 2022 found that a substantial portion of the training was devoted to billing mechanics: how to submit invoices, handle rejected billing, and obtain advance approval for investigator fees.
Sonoma County Bar Association 2022 Minors Counsel Training led by Julie Levy of Levy Carroll Law and Kathleen Mullins Henderson of Mullins Henderson Law (above) and page 15 of the training materials (below). Screenshot by Susan Bassi
Buried in the materials was an acknowledgment that minors’ counsel can file fee waivers on behalf of child clients to obtain transcripts under the California Supreme Court’s ruling in Jameson v. Desta — at little or no cost.
Across more than 150 cases reviewed by the Vanguard throughout California, that practice was nearly nonexistent.
The billing was not.
The result: children in family court hearings with attorneys but no records. A problem that extends well beyond the four county courts named in the no recording ban lawsuit.
Sonoma County Court Minute Order serves as the only formal record in a divorce case where Laura Dunst is appointed as minors counsel and her appointment is discussed in public court, without a court reporter present to document what was said.
The lawsuit before the California Supreme Court asks for audio recordings of family law hearings — the same baseline standard already used in criminal misdemeanor cases. The petitioners are asking for the minimum.
They don’t have to. The technology to record every family court hearing in Santa Clara County is already installed, already paid for, and already running. The cameras are there. The Zoom infrastructure is there. Since 2020, every hearing conducted via Zoom or Microsoft Teams could have been recorded with a single click.
Audio alone — which is all the recording ban lawsuit seeks — misses faces, injuries displayed as evidence, threatening gestures, the credibility difference between a victim who flinches and an abuser who smirks. The cameras are already in the courtroom. Someone just needs to tell the judges to flip the switch.
In domestic violence cases, video recording is not a luxury. Photographs of injuries are introduced as evidence. Text messages and surveillance footage are displayed on screen. The credibility of parties — who appears frightened, who appears threatening — can be the difference between a protective order or a dismissal. Audio alone misses most of that.
The Family Violence Appellate Project and Bay Area Legal Aid brought this case because they see what happens when survivors lose in unrecorded courtrooms and cannot appeal. They are asking for the minimum. The county spent $283 million on a family courthouse. It is spending $7.6 million patching the reporter gap it created. It is paying nearly $3 million to attorneys whose work in those courtrooms is not documented, and arguably not needed. And it is fighting in the California Supreme Court to preserve its right to keep those courtrooms silent.
Six months after the recording ban lawsuit was filed, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero — the state’s highest-ranking judge, and first Latina to hold that office — came to Santa Clara County.
She didn’t come for the families who had lost their records. She came at the invitation of the American Inns of Court, an organization whose Santa Clara chapter counts family court judges and minors’ counsel attorneys among its members, including Nicole Ford and B.J. Fadem.
The visit was billed as a conversation about the court reporter crisis.
Chief Justice Guerrero listened. She spoke. She left.
Last week, she presided over oral arguments in the very lawsuit challenging the recording ban. She has heard the evidence. She has read the briefs. She knows that an estimated three million family court hearings across California have been held without a court reporter, on her watch.
The technology is installed. The cameras are paid for. The Zoom infrastructure has been running since 2020. It would cost nothing.
The families are still waiting. The attorneys are still billing. The hearings are still going unrecorded. And the court that eliminated the reporters, signed the $7.6 million private contract, and paid nearly $3 million to a favored circle of attorneys in reporterless courtrooms is still a defendant in the very case now sitting on Chief Justice Guerrero’s desk.
She has the power to end this today. She has not used it.
That is not a footnote. That is the story. The cameras are in the courtroom. The Zoom infrastructure is running. The switch is right there.
Nobody has ordered a judge to flip it.
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