How Federal Courts Use Meeting Collaboration Software

Federal and other courts generally adapted well to hosting remote proceedings with collaboration platforms during the pandemic, according to the Center for Legal & Court Technology at William & Mary Law School.

A survey the CLCT conducted for the Administrative Conference of the United States found that though federal adjudicatory agencies felt videoconferencing required a lot of staff time to ensure remote participants could connect successfully and understand applicable protocols, using the technology in pandemic era hearings “worked amazingly well,” says Fredric Lederer, chancellor professor of law and director of the CLCT.

“For years, remote depositions have been taped and shown; it’s a natural progression of that,” Lederer says. “Most courts were using mainstream products — Zoom, Teams, Webex. One or two invented their own.”

Practical Court Uses Fueled a Growing Acceptance of Video Tools

While the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has returned to hearing oral arguments face to face, it uses Zoom if, for instance, a lawyer who’s representing a party is based overseas. Inside courtrooms in its Denver courthouse, cameras and 55-inch flat-screen TV monitors wired to audiovisual equipment racks and the court’s network, help remote participants communicate with judges and attorneys.

Court employees also still use Microsoft Teams to videoconference each other throughout the workday, which replicates the benefits of in-person collaboration when they can’t be in close proximity, Wolpert says.

A working group used the functionality to identify back end programming tweaks for the user interface it’s designing to allow the organization to use Microsoft Power BI for data visualization of consolidated workflows.

“We want the folks working on development to be engaging with the folks who are going to be using that interface,” Wolpert says. “Teams is a perfect way, especially with people teleworking, to throw the current iteration up on the screen and get real-time feedback about the look and feel and functionality.”

Although federal employees working from home was a relatively limited occurrence prior to 2020, a recent Government Accountability Office report found most agencies have since said offering remote work opportunities has likely had a positive effect on their ability to recruit and retain staff.

Providing the flexibility and essential tech resources to work outside of the office lets employees handle personal obligations such as doctor’s appointments and avoid lengthy commute times — potentially increasing satisfaction with their overall working conditions and encouraging them to stay with the organization, Wolpert says.

“I've got a long-term employee who’s commuting 90 minutes each way by bus,” he says. “That person is also the sole caregiver for a member of their family who needs relatively regular care. Not having to get ready and commute to and from work, for a lot of people, saves hours a day. And we’re still getting the same quantity and quality of work because they’re fully equipped to do it.”

Videoconferencing Solutions May Save Courts Time and Money

Facilitating videoconferencing in and outside of the courthouse doesn’t have to require an extensive tech investment.

District Judge Brett Ludwig used an external camera, a speaker that also serves as a microphone, Zoom for Government and his court-supplied laptop to hear U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin cases during the pandemic.

Because defendants have traditionally been required to physically be in the courtroom in the district, judges had generally not been able to conduct change-of -plea or sentencing hearings by videoconference, Ludwig says.

However, pretrial detainees and defendants who’ve pled guilty and are awaiting sentencing can sometimes be held in state court facilities that are two hours away. Transporting them back and forth is an involved process.

“It’s not like you just put them in a car and drive away,” Ludwig says. “There’s a lot of security that has to take place.”

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In 2024, he submitted a request to the committee that oversees amendments to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to continue allowing certain types of hearings to be conducted via video if specific conditions were met. Although the committee rejected his request, he’s hopeful the rule will eventually change.

“It would make things more efficient,” Ludwig says. “I could put more hearings in a day if we didn’t have to deal with all of the logistics of getting people in and out.”

The Eastern District of Wisconsin court has some leniency to use Zoom for civil case testimonies; if a plaintiff, for example, is incarcerated, and transporting the person to the courthouse would involve numerous costs and complications because they're serving a sentence, Ludwig says.

He and his staff also touch base via Microsoft Teams’ instant messaging and videoconferencing features, sometimes multiple times a day.

“We use it during court hearings,” Ludwig says. “If I’m on the bench and something comes up, I can send a Teams message to one of my law clerks, and they can respond instantly. I don’t have to take a break and go back and talk to them, so that’s helpful.”

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Prepping Participants To Maximize Tech Performance

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit began livestreaming cases via YouTube more than a decade ago. Though the court had also used videoconferencing for oral arguments, it had been hesitant to let participants regularly join proceedings through video due in part to connectivity concerns, says Assistant Information Systems Manager Kwame Copeland.

“Todays, because you’re using an app-based video teleconference system, you’re relying on the fact that networks are cheaper and bandwidth is plentiful,” Copeland says. “When we suddenly needed to do videoconferencing for everybody during the pandemic, the answer was to switch to Zoom. We could do that just with licenses.”

To ensure remote proceedings went smoothly, the Ninth Circuit — which covers nine western states — distributed webcams to federal judges and developed equipment usage guidelines for judges and attorneys that outlined how the audio and other elements were expected to work.

The videoconferencing platform proved to be fairly intuitive, Copeland says.

“If somebody had a terrible connection, it was probably the fault of their home or business network,” he says. “You could say, ‘Can you get closer to your endpoint? Can you go into a different room?’ Because we insisted you were testing from wherever you were going to be presenting, we could solve those problems.”

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Some of the platform’s features have helped support seamless participation; the court has used a breakout room, for instance, as a virtual robing room where judges can greet each other, as they would onsite, and discuss cases in private.

“Sometimes, we’ve got one judge by video who is directed between the virtual robing room, which is connected to the actual robing room, and then moved back into the main courtroom,” Copeland says. “We use that as a delineation.”

Both sides of a videoconference call connection are encrypted. To further secure communication, Copeland advises, each meeting should have a host who can review and permit participants to join.

“We’ve had had instances where folks might have inadvertently called into a meeting they didn’t realize they weren’t invited to,” he says. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’ve been in the waiting room and not the meeting. That’s why you have a host.”