Find a Professional – Pen Shorthand Writer

MELANIE BALL
BA (Hons), FBIVR, ACR, CLR

I was educated at Victoria College, Belfast and went on to obtain a BA (Hons) degree in Classics at Queen's University. Thereafter I trained as a stenographer at the College of Business Studies. Upon leaving college in 1987 I moved to London, where I was based for the next twenty-seven years. In my first year of work I passed the Associateship and Membership exams of the British Institute of Verbatim Reporters and have been a Member now for well over thirty years. Eight years ago I returned home to N. Ireland, but still travel extensively for work.

For the past thirty-three years I have been working as a freelance stenographer in civil and criminal hearings all over the world, specialising for the last twenty-four years in real-time reporting, having obtained LiveNote Real-time Accreditation in 1996. I also have extensive experience in US depositions. Other types of work I am familiar with are arbitrations, medical inquiries, ecclesiastical inquiries, board and shareholder meetings, courts martial, interviews, industrial tribunals, audio transcription, and I have limited experience of speech-to-text writing for those with a hearing impairment.

In recent years I have specialised in working on several public inquiries of note in the UK, namely, the Guildford Four/Maguire Seven Inquiry, Billy Wright Inquiry, Robert Hamill Inquiry, the Iraq Inquiry, the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry in N. Ireland and I am presently involved in the Infected Blood Inquiry.

Since September 2020 I have been a Member of the BIVR Council.