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Supporting Attorneys In The Courtroom

The challenge. To provide top-notch communications technology for courtroom trial support and adapt it to the varied and sometimes primitive conditions in district and state courtrooms.

The client. Midwest Trial Services, a division of Midwest Litigation Services, is the largest court reporting and trial support consulting firm in Missouri, with offices in St. Louis, Jefferson City, Springfield and Kansas City. Midwest Trial Services helps law firms organize and present evidence in court. To do so requires sophisticated audiovisual presentations.

The solution. Conference Technologies customizes multi-screen display and sound systems to the varied conditions found in courtrooms, then provides them to Midwest Trial Services on a rental basis.
 
Debbie Weaver, owner of the firm, says she wants to keep her focus on supporting her clients’ cases. Typically that means digitizing as much of the evidence as possible – scanning documents, medical charts and x-rays, storing them on a computer hard drive, and accessing them quickly and accurately via database software. Weaver will combine video depositions with the court reporter’s transcripts to produce a digital file that she can search by any word or phrase. She can play any pertinent segment with video overlaid by the transcript text.
“Now with the evidence digitized in this manner, you have a very rapid, very effective way to recall or refute testimony,” says Jimmy LoMonaco, Rental Director for CTI. “If a witness says something on the stand that contradicts written evidence or something they said in a deposition, you can literally turn to the courtroom consultant and in a matter of moments play back the witness’ recorded statement for the jury. Just as important, the jury sees the evidence presented in a succinct, compelling form. An attorney can put a document on a video screen, annotate it, highlight certain words or phrases, or put two documents side by side to compare them. He can show an animation reenacting an accident or a graphic illustrating a medical concept. “I had to play back a video of a cardiac catheter procedure in one trial,” says Weaver. “Having it digitized was really nice because I was able to pause it while our expert witness explained what was happening moment to moment.”

Choosing audiovisual equipment to support this type of system can be tricky. “It’s a very tough environment,” says LoMonaco. “You have courtrooms that are round, square, wide or skinny. The jury box is never in the same location and none of them have the lighting you want for projection. Very few have the acoustics you need for good sound. Yet law firms spend tens of thousands of dollars putting a case together and really have just one chance to get it right. They need the AV to be right as well.”

Weaver says she bought her own AV equipment when she moved into trial services seven years ago, but soon decided to outsource. “I’m not in the audiovisual business,” she says. “I’d rather focus my resources and energy on what my client needs and on what I can best provide.” She says she has been using CTI since day one and rents equipment from them for two to three trials a week. “It’s a good fit,” she says. “We use them for probably 95% of our cases. They’re responsive and handle our needs.”

Equipment list. Midwest Trial Services rents a wide variety of equipment, based on the needs of a particular case and a particular courtroom. Most trials require a projector and one or more plasma displays, plus smaller monitors for attorneys, judge and witness, and a sound system including mics, amplifier, speakers and DSP. Many systems include an interactive whiteboard, document camera, VCR or DVD player, videoconferencing system, matrix switching, and/or touchpanel controls.

Contact Conference Technologies with questions about litigation support .

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