I just wrapped up a Zoom trial and have some thoughts (Thread is not about substance of the arbitration but rather on the experience of trying a case via Zoom). First, the pros:

1. It's really nice to have your office at your fingertips.

This was my first trial in 5 years. I don't go to trial that often. But I have very vivid memories of being a junior associate in the EDVa Courthouse trying desperately to find a place to print something last min.

Not having access to easy printing, your stuff, your computer, etc. is really stressful during trial. On a Zoom trial, all that stuff is readily available during any break or when someone else is talking.

2. It was nice to be able to take as many breaks as practicable.

We had a team (6 lawyers) and so we did not all need to be on camera at the same time. If someone else had a witness, I could go into the hall and talk to another lawyer on the team about the next witness.

This is not practicable during a regular trial where you are in the same room except for a few short breaks. Also being able to get up and walk around whenever you needed to was really nice.

3. It's much easier for witness attendance.

Instead of having someone sit around the courthouse or in an office for hours before they are called, you can give them the Zoom link and they can log-in from home.

4. I got to say goodnight to my kids!

This trial was originally scheduled to be out of town where the arbitrator is located. Since it was on Zoom, we were out of my office or the clients' office, both of which are 5 minutes from my house.

We ended most days at 6:00, I took 1.5 hours off to say goodnight to my kids, and then went back to work. It made the week a lot easier than completely disappearing.

Now the cons:

5. Zoom creates an added layer of technical stress

There were a lot of things that we were stressed about that had nothing to do with the actual legal uses, like setting up the hearing, how the witnesses would look, sound, exhibits on screen share, etc.

Maybe in a bigger firm there are whole departments working on these issues but not in my 20 person firm. That fell to us and our paralegal to figure out and it was stressful, sometimes very much so.

On one of the days of the trial, our speaker just stopped working. We had to scramble and I ended up taking a witness with EarPods in. Not ideal but it got the job done. These are issues that don't come up when everyone is in the same room.

6. Being in different spaces was sometimes hard

Luckily for us, our team was 100% vaccinated so we were all able to congregate in one place. But not being able to meet face to face for some witness prep was hard and I found it more difficult to read the Arbitrator on Zoom.

I think the arbitrator had a ton of experience being able to read witnesses, listen to audio, etc. over Zoom and it was incredible helpful. But as lawyers it could be tricky sometimes.

Verdict: I would not want to do a Zoom jury trial but I would absolutely do a Zoom trial/arbitration again.

I think that the jurors would lose a lot of interest staring at a screen for 8 hours a day.

But a seasoned jurist who has been using Zoom every day for the past year lead to a great experience where I think many of the pros outweighed the cons. /End