Streaming video has made it simple to find and watch whatever you want, wherever you want – whether it’s the latest PSY video or a classic late night moment from your youth. But for some reason, video depositions – a core component of many cases—remain difficult to access on most devices.
Forget about Perry Mason-style gotcha moments with live witnesses on the stand. Today, video depositions are the heart of many types of litigation. The recent Apple v. Samsung case turned on a lot of technical testimony, much of it presented via video depositions collected from deponents from all over the globe.
Many of these depositions had to be synchronized with translations. It surely took thousands of hours for lawyers, deponents, video technicians, paralegals, multimedia designers, and court clerks to coordinate, organize, and present all of this information.
It Shouldn’t Be This Hard
When a trial happens, you have to get your depositions, designations, and testimony lined up fast. Unfortunately, when using most trial management solutions, users work with locally downloaded copies of a video deposition on laptops or PCs.
Too often, that means a paralegal calls a litigation support staff member for a cut of a video so they can deliver it to an attorney for review. Once the appropriate notations and edits are suggested, the video goes back for editing and review by other attorneys.
Video technology has advanced in the world to the point where anyone can find and watch any clip online at any time, download, edit, and re-publish in minutes.
Yet, litigation technology is such that it might take several people and hours of manual labor just to share a video for review. And even then, if someone wants to make edits or designations, they had better be sure no one else is doing the same thing at the same time, or there will be redundant and possibly conflicting copies of the same deposition in circulation.
One-Click Streaming in the Courtroom
Nextpoint has been optimized to stream video on iPads and other devices for years. Other trial solutions are beginning to offer limited streaming video and sharing capabilities, but their solutions are often designed around outdated, locally-installed software that is difficult to manage and operate.
Lawyers should expect more from commercial trial software solutions than you get for free via YouTube. With the proper security solutions in place, video depositions should be easy to share and work with on any mobile device. If you can watch the Gangnam Style video but you can’t watch your deposition video on your iPad, then something is wrong.
