With the rise of depositions by video conferencing, a lot of attorneys may be wondering “What about the exhibits?” Just because you have exhibits doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of remote depositions. Here is some information on how you can conduct a remote deposition – with exhibits.
Remote depositions are hosted using video conference services. These services are great for sharing audio and video footage from participants in any location in a very easy and user-friendly way. In many ways it can feel like everyone is in the same room. However, the reality that each participant is many miles away become glaringly obvious the moment when you realize you want to share a document in front of you with the other participants. What can you do? You could try to email the document to the group for viewing. In our experience this creates a delay during the deposition while email addresses are confirmed, and while time is given to allow the participants to search their inboxes for the shared document. In desperate situations, we have heard of participants holding pages up to their cameras hoping that it will focus enough for the rest of the group to read. None of this makes for a smooth deposition, or a clean record. Our solution? Share documents digitally!
Most video conferencing services have native solutions for “screen sharing” during a video conference allowing participants to easily show their own screen to the rest of the group. This is how you can share exhibits during your deposition! To take advantage of these features, make sure that you have digital scans of all the exhibits you would like to use prior to your scheduled remote deposition. Once you’re ready to show your exhibit, use your video conference’s screen sharing feature to show all participants your document in a clear, readable form right there inside of your video conference software. When you are finished, simply disable the screen sharing feature to return to the normal video conferencing view. Using this method is easy and prevents interruptions to your proceedings.
Pro Tip: Open your document in full screen before connecting to your video conference so it will be the first thing everyone sees when you are ready to share.
All remote depositions conducted by Elizabeth Gallo Court Reporting have the above feature, and several others including: