My Mom was a court stenographer. Did a lot of deposition work for a private rent-a-reporter agency before getting a full-time gig with the county court. From which she eventually retired.
The stories she could tell of uncooperative witnesses, nasty or incompetent attorneys, and just plain ornery selfish greedy humanity were amazing. Plus the abject boredom of whichever minutiae is dancing on the head of which pin today.
There was the very occasional tale of a good process well-executes yielding a good result. But that was not the way to bet.
According to what I have read, the official who initiated this practice ( the previous charge had been something like $50 per CD) did so because she was annoyed that for-profit companies were getting the information cheaply, reformatting it and selling it to banks - and although it was never actually stated , presumably her objection was that the county should be getting some of that “profit”.
I’ve only given depositions a few times in my career. Luckily all of them were relatively painless. The lawyers involved where professional and no one took it personal. I’ve only ever been a witness and never the plaintiff or defendant.
I saw an interview once with - I think it was Eric Idle - describing when Monty Python sued the American network that first showed their series way back when. The network agreed (contractually) not to censor it, then in the fine Hollywood Executives tradition, blithely went ahead and did so anyway. “Whaddya gonna do about that?” So Python sued. As part of the suit, they played some of the censored sketchs in court. One of them was the “gay judges” sketch, where two judges are talking about their cases and how they were being cheeky “…and then… I waggled my wig at him.” Apparently, the court reported at this point was laughing so hard she couldn’t do her recording. (just thinking about that sketch is making me laugh)