Court Reporting By Way Of Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing has been one of the most popular technologies to come out of the last ten years. It works so well for so many businesses for lots of different reasons. One of the primary reasons businesses love video conferencing is that it can save a ton of money while providing an invaluable resource to employees. The days of employees having to take time away from their jobs and pay some serious travel expenses just to consult with a client or talk to someone in a similar business are pretty far in the past. Now if a consultation is needed, a five-minute videoconference can usually solve the problem. The video conferencing solutions of today, though, are not the same as the video conferencing solutions of tomorrow. As with any new technology, video conferencing is changing rapidly. Videoconferencing is no longer just limited to business applications.

There are a number of different creative uses for video conferencing that you should consider when you are thinking about this great new technology. One of the best new applications of video conferencing is court reporting.

Court reporting is one of the most important facets of our legal system. It offers us a way to record the complaints, outbursts, and testimony of each party within a legal case. As a result, there is a great demand for court reporters. They are needed at every trial, every pretrial hearing, every deposition, and every interview within the legal system. This means that a court district within a larger city could use literally thousands of court reporters within a single week. This makes it well near impossible to get the court reporters most judicial districts need. Videoconferencing, though, can solve the problem of lacking court reporters.

Videoconferencing, as a technology, isn't necessarily a new invention. Videoconferencing, on some level, was available when the first televisions sets were created. Two closed circuit television sets could be connected via a cable, and one participant could see and talk to another. The technology did begin to grow and change, but for many years, it was far too expensive to be useful to very many people. Moreover, the quality of the original video conferencing systems was so poor, that few people wanted to invest in such horrible technology, as it didn't really have any serious practical applications at the time. In the nineteen eighties, telephone companies attempted a revolution in the video conferencing industry, but it, again, failed, because the phone lines were far too poor to transmit high quality video images that people wanted to see using video conferencing equipment. However, as networks and technologies like ISDN became more and more popular, the video conferencing industry revolutionized itself again.

Over the course of the last ten years, video conferencing equipment has become a standard installation in many areas. There are many reasons for this change. First, the video conferencing equipment has gotten much, much better since the early days. Most networks that are designed to handle video conferencing can transmit up to three frames of video every second, making it actually feel like you are in the same room with the party you are attempting to speak with. This can mean that some employees, like court reporters, no longer have to be in the same room with the parties, which can save time and money. For example, if you have one court reporter and three different court related events to cover in three different parts of the county, at one time, it simply wouldn't have been possible to get the court reporter to cover all three of the events. Now, with new video conferencing technologies, it is not only possible, it is quite probable that the court reporter can cover all three events. This saves extensive time and solves part of the serious court reporter shortage in this country. It even means that you can have a pool of freelance or work from home court reporters, which might encourage more people to enter the profession as a whole.

Videoconferencing within the world of court reporting also helps to save money on an already strained judicial system. Court reporters, to put it simply, are not cheap. They get paid based on travel and based on each page of information they record. As a result, cutting out the travel expenses can save some serious funds within the judicial system. Because of the popularity of this new technology, many different court-reporting schools are training new graduates in the use of video conferencing systems. This means that most of them will know how to operate the equipment before they graduate. Videoconferencing and court reporters make a great team.