Courtroom Connect expands its communication services for the legal community with Mediasite.

Courtroom Connect was founded in July 2001 to address the growing need for communications infrastructure within courthouses. The company began by providing the first wireless, public internet in a courthouse to the San Francisco Civil Court Facility in January, 2002. After expanding their network reach to include more than 25 permanent connections in many states across the U.S., Courtroom Connect began offering additional communications services to the entire legal industry. At present, the company maintains permanent Internet connections in more than 40 courthouses and can set up temporary internet service anywhere it is requested. In addition, product offerings now include valuable services for other members of the legal industry: attorneys, court reporters, bar associations, law schools and litigation support vendors.

Challenge

Courtroom Connect was looking for a way to stream the contents of a trial to trials teams who needed to watch remotely. Because Courtroom Connect already had over 40 permanent internet networks in courthouses, the application needed to work over those IP networks. Bryan Danilovich, Courtroom Connect’s Vice President of Product Development, is responsible for the implementation of various technologies to capture and sell courtroom proceedings to a variety of audiences nationwide.

Prior to Danilovich joining Courtroom Connect; his future department sought a web communications solution that could stream courtroom content live or on-demand. They also needed a solution that would not require a great deal of employee training. The team first assessed the marketplace and then selected Mediasite by Sonic Foundry. Mediasite incorporates audio, video and graphic elements into an online presentation that can be viewed live or on-demand via any web browser.

“The team was impressed with Mediasite’s combination of ease-of-use coupled with its flexibility,” said Danilovich. “Courtroom Connect sought a capture system that fulfilled the customer’s need to customize. For example, Courtroom Connect saw great utility in Mediasite’s ability to hook up document cameras as an input to display evidence and its flexibility from an encoding perspective to accept an RGB input.”

Solution

Because Courtroom Connect captures such an extraordinary amount of content, it became necessary for the company to purchase its own EX Server Software. Once the decision was made, the implementation took no more than three weeks. Although Danilovich did not initially approach Mediasite from a revenue standpoint, the ROI on the EX Server Software was overwhelming. “The pay back period was extremely obvious given our volume of streamed content,” said Danilovich “We saw results immediately. We already used the technology to stream content live and on-demand. By bringing the server in-house, we are able to control the process from end-to-end.”

Courtroom Connect uses Mediasite to webcast proceedings of a trial in which parties of a case request video be captured and Courtroom Connect provides the streaming. “Mediasite has definitely exceeded our needs,” said Danilovich. ”It is exciting to know that we have not yet even begun to push the technology to its limits.”

Result

Courtroom Connect recently selected Mediasite as one of its technology platform to deliver web communications for the legal community. Courtroom Connect already used Mediasite to webcast integrated audio, video and graphic content of litigation proceedings, mediations, mock trials and courtroom training sessions. However, through this partnership with Sonic Foundry, Courtroom Connect will now offer installation of Mediasite into law firms and courtrooms, as well as hosting and support.

“Because of the success we’ve had working with Sonic Foundry on courtroom trials and other events, we’ve decided to extend the use of the technology to support law firms, bar associations, courts and law schools to stream events or presentations for our growing customer base,” said Louis Goldberg, COO of Courtroom Connect. “Our partnership with Sonic Foundry establishes us as the premier provider of Mediasite to the legal industry.”

The partnership will also enable the development of customized solutions for specific legal applications, such as recent webcasting applications for Courtroom 21 and Court TV Professionalsm. Courtroom 21 is a joint initiative of the William and Mary Law School and the National Center for State Courts to determine how technology can best improve all components of the legal system. Courtroom Connect provides streaming services to Courtroom 21 using the Mediasite system for mock trial and legal presentations. Similarly, Court TV Professional, a joint Court TV® and Courtroom Connect service, uses Mediasite technology to provide webcasting for large trials, such as the recent Vioxx cases. In this program, Courtroom Connect responds to media requests to get a camera into a courtroom.

Courtroom Connect uses Mediasite to provide live webcasting technology for such trials as Walt Disney Derivative Litigation and Sempra Energy. Trial teams are now able to watch the audio/video, text and evidence of the proceedings over the internet in real-time.

Benefits

• Webcasts large trials for jury research or remote trial teams
• Streams presentations for counsel who are unable to attend events
• Educates law students by letting them view cases