By means of shorthand taught at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Burns employs from one to 10 keys at a time to keep pace. And there are plenty of shortcuts. For example, in jury cases, the phrase, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," is denoted by a single character.

Punctuation, capital letters, spaces and tabs are also done by using certain combinations of keys. The flowing stenograph paper is dotted with characters in what seems to be an arbitrary manner -- it looks completely unintelligible to the untrained eye.

When Burns started out 12 years ago, she typed the notes in court, recorded them on a dictaphone and then had a secretary type them up in full text. Now, a computer program translates the shorthand from a diskette -- on a good day, upwards of 95 per cent of the characters convert instantly. Proper names and street addresses, which she types phonetically, may pose a roadblock initially, but Burns can add them to her computer's vocabulary and they won't pose a problem twice.

In spite of the technological advances, her fingers are still quite tired by the end of a full day, she admitted.

Acute hearing and a discerning ear make the job much easier. However, there are, inevitably, times when a court reporter must interject and request that emotional or heavily-accented witnesses repeat themselves. Therefore, intense concentration is imperative for each of the five Yellowknife court-house reporters.

"It's a mental thing. You can't let up," Burns said.

There's a correction key to take care of mis-strokes but "you have to really move," Burns said. Practice is essential to build speed, but accuracy is just as important, she said.

Sometimes she finds court cases intriguing, like the Roger Warren trial involving the bombing of Giant mine. But she said reporters generally don't retain most of what they hear.

"If you asked me what I wrote yesterday, I probably couldn't tell you," she said.