The Melissa virus shows how sophisticated the reproduction of macro viruses can be. If it finds Outlook, then it sends email to the first 50 addresses in each address book you have. Each of those emails has an attached Word document infected with Melissa. Instead, they reside in a computer's memory, and generally spread themselves over networks. The most famous was Robert Morris' Internet Worm, which took down over a tenth of the Internet in 1988.
Worms are of little concern to court reporters and their home computers.
Even agencies with networks connected to the Internet are likely to be safe, as worms are far more rare than viruses or Trojans. There are more hoaxes than viruses. In fact, given how fast and far emailed hoax warnings can spread, the hoaxes waste more total time than most of the viruses do. If you get an email warning of some particularly nasty virus, and it tells you to immediately pass the warning on to everyone you know, don't . Check it out first.