We can accommodate all your deposition needs, both live and remote. We have developed an expert remote zoom support program and can facilitate one to all participants via remote connection. All of our offices are fully open to support you live depositions as well.
CALL US TODAY TO ARRANGE YOUR NEXT DEPOSITION. 888-344-4472 OR SCHEDULE@FISHERCOURTREPORTING.COM.
CHECK OUT OUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO REMOTE DEPOSITIONS FOR ATTORNEYS
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LIVE DEPOSITIONS
We are also still hosting live, in-person depositions in our offices with essential support staff attending. We’ve been advised that, as a part of legal services, we fall under “essential services” category and some attorneys are wanting to proceed with live depositions.
We are open and certainly willing to accommodate this. Many of our court reporters are willing to support live depos, and all are set up and prepared to take them remotely too, and we’ll schedule accordingly.
In a live situation, we would just ask that no one experiencing any symptoms of sickness come to the facility. Also, that each participant practice sanitation and distancing efforts. We do have a waiver and health and safety checklist we would ask each in-person participant to sign prior to the start of the depo. This is just a simple and standard safety form to keep us all safe. You can see that document here.
We can also connect multiple rooms within our physical offices via video to promote social distancing while still supporting witnesses and clients in house. We are rigorously sanitizing, offering hand sanitizer, support wearing gloves and masks if desired, and we’re following other safety and health precautions.
Thank you for your cooperation in our all-important efforts to halt the spread of the virus. And please do schedule your live deposition with us if it is what you need and makes the most sense.
Alternatively, we hope you’ll consider moving ahead with your remote video depositions for the safest scenario, and that this guide we’ve pulled together will help get you started. We are here to support you through this difficult time and to keep legal support services available and progress happening. Don’t hesitate to call or email with questions and needs.
We all do need to keep working and pushing ahead, while vigilantly protecting our health and that of others. Please call to discuss your needs. And do give some consideration to the remote depositions. The more we do them, the more comfortable we’ll get with the process. Thanks.
FREE VIDEO CONFERENCING CONNECTIONS AND SUPPORT SERVICE IN APRIL & MAY WITHIN MONTANA*
During the months of April and May, we are offering our remote video conference connections for regular depositions and for in-state participants via Zoom, another video platform, or if connecting to one of our offices* as a complimentary service to encourage you to get your depositions scheduled and for work to move ahead for everyone. Please take advantage of this offer and call us today at 888-344-4472 or email schedule@fishercourtreporting.com to schedule.
*Some limitations may apply. Connections for more complex meetings and into hearings will still incur a fee. Connecting to parties out of state will still incur an hourly fee. Non-Fisher sites, both in-state and out, may charge their own video conferencing fees that you may be responsible for. We’ll discuss all of this with you upon scheduling.
Zoom: As a note worth addressing in terms of software platforms, we have used the Zoom platform for quite some time and have developed a solid program for conducting depositions using it. It is a software that offers a great amount of stability, control and functionality, it’s easy for people to log into and use, and makes doing remote depositions much easier. We’ve also seen the news lately warning about some security issues with Zoom. The company went from 10 million to 200 million users in a couple of weeks because of the pandemic, and the growing pains have emerged. One of the main concerns for the platform was the issue of people “Zoom-bombing” where unwanted guests were able to get into the meetings and cause problems. (See ZOOM’S latest security updates communication 4-8-20 at the bottom of this email.)
The measures we take as a rule in setting up all our meetings to prevent this are as follows:
- All of our meetings are password-protected. Participants are provided and must use a unique password for access.
- All of our meetings are set up with “waiting rooms.” Meaning, before a participant can join, we will manually admit each party into the room so we can control who has access and when. We can see everyone who is on the call.
- Once all parties have joined, we then “Lock” the meeting so no others can enter.
I also know the company has been proactively addressing and has been transparent about their security issues, fixing the bugs and updating constantly. I still feel it is the most usable, reliable and viable program out there. That said, if you have particular concerns and prefer we use a different program, we want to respect that. Please just call us to discuss and we will pull together an alternative arrangement that you feel comfortable with.
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4-8-20 ZOOM’S latest security update messaging:
As Eric shared last week, our commitment to strengthening and improving Zoom is our number one priority. I wanted to reach out with a quick overview of our latest release, and highlight the number of new enhancements created specifically for ensuring the security and privacy of our product. For more information on these changes, please reference our Release Notes.
Security Toolbar Icon for Hosts
- The meeting host will now have a Security option in their meeting controls, which exposes all of Zoom’s existing in-meeting security controls one place. This includes locking the meeting, enabling Waiting Room, and more. Users can also now enable Waiting Room in a meeting, even if the feature was not turned on before the start of the meeting. For more information, please visit this recently published Blog.
Invite Button on Meeting Client Toolbar
- The button to invite others to join your Zoom meeting is now available at the bottom of the Participants panel
Meeting ID No Longer Displayed
- The meeting ID will no longer be displayed in the title bar of the Zoom meeting window. The meeting ID can be found by clicking on Participants, then Invite or by clicking on the info icon at the top left of the client window.
Remove Attendee Attention Tracking Feature
- Zoom has removed the attendee attention tracker feature as part of our commitment to the security and privacy of our customers. For more background on this change and how we are pivoting during these unprecedented times, please see a note from our CEO, Eric S. Yuan
Removal of the Facebook SDK in our iOS client
- We have reconfigured the feature so that users will still be able to log in with Facebook via their browser
File Transfers
- The option to do third-party file transfers in Meeting and Chat was temporarily disabled. Local file transfer is available with our latest release. Third-party file transfers and clickable URLs in meeting chat will be added back in an upcoming release
New Join Flow for the Web client
- By default, users will now need to sign in to their Zoom account or create a Zoom account when joining a meeting with the Web client. This can be disabled by the Admin or the User from their settings page
Join Before Host Emails Disabled
- Notifications sent to the host via email when participants are waiting for the host to join the meeting have been disabled.
Setting to Allow Participants to Rename Themselves
- Account admins and hosts can now disable the ability for participants to rename themselves in any meeting. This setting is available at the account, group, and user level in the Web portal.
Language for Directory and Company Directory (please note, this does not impact your account)
- Domain contacts: For free Basic and single licensed Pro accounts with unmanaged domains, contacts in the same domain will no longer be visible. We’ve also removed the option to auto-populate your Contacts list with users from the same domain. If you would like to keep those contacts, you can add them as External Contacts.
Change in visibility of contacts with same domain (please note, this does not impact your account)
- For Basic and single licensed Pro accounts with unmanaged domains, contacts in the same domain will no longer be visible under ‘Company Directory’ in the ‘Contacts’ tab. Consequently, for the single Pro accounts with unmanaged domains, we’ve removed the option in the admin experience to populate Company Directory with users from the same domain. If these affected users would like to keep contacts with the same domain, they can add them as External contacts. This change will not impact paid accounts with multiple licenses and all accounts with managed domains.
Please be sure to update to our latest release to take advantage of these new features. We also highly encourage you to register for our webinar to get an overview of this latest release, and subscribe to our Blog for more information and resources in the days to come.
Best,
Customer Success Advisory Team