Teleconferencing has become an important part of a litigation practice.  Attorneys and their staff can save time and money by setting up national and international teleconferences.  When a teleconference is used for a deposition, there are best practices that are important so the court reporter can create a good record of the proceedings.

Having good equipment is most important.  Our court reporting firm, Kramm Court Reporting, has been asked to go to hotels, motels, and people’s homes for depositions or sworn testimony.  Some of the problems we have encountered upon getting to the location are,  (a) no speaker phone; (b) the hotel charges $350 per day to bring in and hook up a phone; (c) no phone connection to the room. 

Our court reporting firm has purchased a Polycom that travels with the court reporters whenever we have an off-site teleconference.  We have used the Polycom at people’s homes and motels.  Hotels typically will not allow us to bring in an outside phone so they can charge their fee to bring in a phone. 

Having the court reporter be at the location with the witness is another best practice.  The court reporter typically will be the one to swear in the witness.  Witnesses sometimes are difficult to understand or hear.  We like to have the reporter sitting right there with the witness to ensure every word is heard and understood by the court reporter.

If there is a situation in which the court reporter cannot be with the witness, all parties must take extra care to ensure no one speaks over one another.  As everyone has experienced, when speaking on the phone, if two people are speaking at a time, one of the voices is not going to be heard and is completely lost.  In a normal conversation, a court reporter can keep two voices talking at once in her/his head for a phrase or two, and stop the proceedings to get people to speak one at a time, but telephonically the talking over is impossible to report for any length of time. 

If there are multiple parties on a line for a deposition, the court reporter will give out our company’s email address so all of the parties can email their appearances and who they represent.  That is much more efficient than trying to spell names, give addresses and phone numbers over the phone.  Having everyone’s email address also helps the office get the orders for copies, rough drafts, video, et cetera, from the attorneys.

Discovery Conference Centre was built for teleconference depositions.  Our meeting rooms have state-of-the-art Polycom speaker phones, T1 lines to ensure adequate bandwidth, and rates that would fit anyone’s budget.  If you need a teleconference set up with participants anywhere in the world, we would be happy to put together your event.  Just give us a call.