On September 18, Governor Newsom signed AB 2783. It carries an urgency clause, so it took effect immediately, and it does two things that matter to anyone running a reporting agency in California.
What changed
First, the Registered Professional Reporter certification from NCRA is now accepted in place of the dictation and transcription portion of the California CSR exam. That is the skills test. It has been, by a wide margin, the thing keeping licensed reporters in other states from getting a California license.
Applicants still have to pass the English examination and the Professional Practice examination, and the bill requires those within three consecutive years. But the path for an experienced RPR holder is now an application, some study on California law and English, and two written tests that can be taken remotely.
Second, and this part gets far less attention, the same bill extends the remote court reporting pilot program. It was set to expire July 1, 2026. It now runs to July 1, 2028, with the provision repealing January 1, 2029.
What the remote pilot actually is, and what it is not
The pilot is about court work. It allows a reporter to cover a court proceeding without being physically present in the courtroom, in a limited set of courts, as an experiment the state is collecting data on. Los Angeles, Mendocino, San Bernardino, San Mateo, and Tulare are the superior courts required to report their pilot data to the Judicial Council by January 1, 2027.
It has nothing to do with depositions. Remote depositions have been ordinary practice for years and operate under their own rules. Nothing in AB 2783 changed that, in either direction. If you run deposition work, this provision does not touch your business.
It is also still a pilot. It expires July 1, 2028 and the provision repeals January 1, 2029. The state extended it to keep gathering data, not because it has been made permanent. Whether remote court reporting continues past 2028 is an open question that the pilot data will inform.
Why these two together are bigger than either one
There are thousands of RPR holders nationally who have never considered California because of the skills exam. The barrier was real and everyone in this industry knew it. It is now substantially lower.
At the same time, the pathway for remote appearance in those pilot courts stays open another two years. So, the pool of people who can hold a California license is widening in the same period that court-side remote capability is being extended rather than wound down.
Nobody knows the magnitude yet. It could be a handful of applications, or it could be a wave. What is predictable is the direction.
What this could mean for your agency
- Coverage gets easier before it gets cheaper. If you have been turning away work in hard-to-cover regions, a wider licensee pool is good news first
- Recruiting looks different. Your candidate pool is no longer limited to people who sat the California skills exam and live in California, which changes who you should be talking to and where
- Rate pressure is a real possibility over time, not immediately. More licensed reporters competing for the same remote work tends to move rates eventually. That is worth planning for rather than reacting to
- Your current reporters will have questions. Some of them will be worried about this, and they will have heard a version of it from somebody else first. Getting ahead of that conversation is worth doing
- Onboarding and vetting matter more. A larger pool means more unfamiliar names. If your reporter records are thin, this is the year to fix that
What I would do in the next ninety days
- Pull your coverage gaps by region and job type so you know where a wider pool actually helps you
- Talk to your reporters directly rather than letting them hear it secondhand
- Make sure your resource records are good enough to onboard new reporters quickly, because the agencies that can move fast on a widened pool will get the good ones first
What we still do not know
A few things have not been answered yet, and they matter for planning.
- How many RPR holders actually apply. The barrier came down, but intent is a different question from eligibility
- How quickly the Board processes a larger volume of applications, and whether there is a backlog
- What the Judicial Council does with the pilot data due January 2027, and whether remote court reporting continues past July 2028
- Whether any of this shows up in rates, and on what timeline
We will update this post as those answers come in.
One honest caveat
It is easy to over-read a change like this in either direction. California licensure is still work. The two written exams are real, the application process takes time, and holding a license is not the same as wanting California work or being good at it.
And it is worth saying again that the two provisions in this bill do different things. The licensure change affects everyone. The remote pilot affects court proceedings in five counties and expires in 2028. If someone tells you AB 2783 changed anything about remote depositions, they have the bill confused with something else.
What is certain is that the barrier came down. The agencies that think about this in the next quarter will be better positioned than the ones that wait to see what happens.
Source: AB 2783 (2025-2026), signed September 18, 2026. Bill text: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2783/id/3445426
The DuRoss Group provides operational consulting to court reporting agencies and legal services companies. This is industry commentary, not legal advice. For licensure questions, go to the California Court Reporters Board.