Many of today’s video conferencing suppliers offer open standards that can interface with the other solutions already deployed.
It’s really not that long since video conferencing was considered a hi-tech extravagance, and only an option for senior management. But even before the pandemic, many law firms and attorneys had started to see how video meetings could drive benefit and value at work.
Whether you want to increase business resilience, move to a more flexible and future-proof working model, or you’re simply looking for cost savings, video conferencing can help improve the way you and your firm work. Video meetings enable you to work seamlessly with everyone involved in your cases, whether they’re in a meeting room, on a computer or mobile device, and whether they’re in your building, or working for an external organization across the country.
Here are just some of the benefits legal firms are discovering with video collaboration.
Maximize your billable hours
High quality video meetings give you a realistic alternative to meeting in-person, with anyone in the legal system, anywhere. It significantly reduces the time and monetary cost to your firm of meetings, so you can spend more time on client work. Many platforms provide access to a range of features, including call records, to support onward billing.
Keep your people safe during the pandemic
During the pandemic, firms have been using video collaboration (together with messaging and video calling) to keep employees safe, by enabling them to continue collaborating face-to-face without actually meeting in person. It’s not just legal firms either – we’ve seen courts and regional organization successfully adopt and use video to keep the legal system working while reducing in-person contact.
Maintain valuable records
Video files can support your documentation and make your research process easier and more efficient. All you need is a video meetings provider that allows you to securely record, store, and download meetings as video files. The need for secure records applies to messaging too – make sure your chat with clients is kept private and not accessible by others.
Meet with anyone, at the touch of a button
With so many people working remotely, video collaboration is a great way to make it quick and easy for your teams to join video meetings from anywhere, and on any platform. For example, with StarLeaf you can seamlessly join meetings run on other services, including Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, at the touch of a button, without any complex dial-in codes.
Bring new life to your existing tools
Many of today’s video conferencing suppliers offer open standards that can interface with the other solutions already deployed. For example, you can quickly and easily schedule a conference call through the calendar application you’re already using, like Outlook or Google, and work seamlessly with room conferencing systems, so when you want to start a call, the meeting room panel has the right call, ready to launch. It not only removes a huge source of frustration for your users, it also significantly reduces the number of support tickets for your IT admins.
Simpler, cheaper communications for everyone
Video conferencing isn’t only for large meetings – with video calling, you also get a better way to collaborate one-to-one. You can simply dial anyone from the directory – or by their email address – and see them instantly. It’s simple to share content onscreen or send messages and files to each other. In practical terms, there’s no longer a need for separate phone lines, or complex extension numbers, and you won’t have to provide as many mobile phones, if you don’t want to. Plus, many organizations have seen significant savings in cost and management/maintenance by moving to video calling, removing the need for on-site PBX systems.
But beware – you must maintain your firm’s security and integrity
There’s been a few news mentions recently of companies and brands affected by insecure video conferencing systems, and fines for security breaches are on the up. So it’s more important than ever that you pick the right video solution. You should be thinking about a video collaboration solution that:
- Owns and operates its own platforms (and doesn’t just run software in other vendors datacenters) so you can guarantee your organization uninterrupted services. It means no worry about disconnections or unwanted interruptions to you meetings. Look for a published SLA where 99.999% uptime is guaranteed (five nines).
- Have industry leading security practices, like meeting the ISO/IEC 27001 global information security certification standard. Other things to consider include whether only parties that have been invited to the meeting (and therefore have the encryption key) can participate in communications, and whether your provider can ensure that your user and call data are encrypted and safe. Look for other industry specific security accreditations.
- Provide you data jurisdiction on where your user and call data is stored. This guarantees your data is stored where you want it to be and ensures you’ll always meet your legal requirements.
The Bottom Line
For one-on-one, small-group, or large group meetings, the right video conferencing platform can help law firms stay securely connected, maximize billable hours, and maintain keep secure records, conversations, and depositions. Further, it can help save exponentially on travel costs, while keeping folks connected, without need for cancellation, from wherever they are.
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