Writing petitions to the court, penning an official complaint or any other formal document have been a burden for ordinary citizens and a thorn in the side of the uneducated unfamiliar with bureaucracy. In this environment, scriveners – people who write court and other official petitions – have thrived in Turkey for years and have stood the test of time. Though their numbers have dwindled thanks to more professional services offered by law firms, members of the profession, armed with an old-fashioned typewriter, have not gone extinct outside the courthouses.

Fahrettin Özden is one of them. Sitting on a small table on a narrow sidewalk next to a towering courthouse in the northwestern province of Bursa, Özden is among the go-to guys for anyone with "official business" in the courthouse. Couples seeking a divorce, people seeking to file a complaint for fraud and those applying to the court for inheritance cases are among his customers. An old but reliable typewriter is the only thing Özden needs for the job he has been doing for the past two decades. Özden took up the job after he retired from a civil service job and did not like sitting idly at home.

Every morning, Özden perches atop his chair, awaiting customers as the courthouse opens. "It is good to work. It feels good to help people and learn new things from them," he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday. The elderly man has no shortage of customers and has honed his skills over the years. Now, it only takes him five minutes to write an official petition, but if it is more complicated case it can sometimes take ten or more minutes. Well versed in legalese, Özden’s work takes away the burden of having to learn countless legal terms that need to be properly written in official complaints from plaintiffs.

A few hundred meters from Özden, Taylan Kızılkaya represents the next generation of scriveners. The 28-year-old man uses a computer to write petitions in a small shop near the courthouse. Son of a scrivener, Kızılkaya says typewriters are "out of date."

"We have laser printers here and it takes us only seconds to print documents. Still, it is not an easy job," he told AA, pointing out that scriveners have to have a good command of Turkish and know which sentences and which legal terms should be used rather than simply copying and pasting the same words in every petition or complaint.