At trial time, have you ever had to cope with
videotaped depositions that suffer from poor audio
quality or bad looking video?
In your nightmares, do you see yourself at a
deposition site screaming, "Where is the !@&%
videographer?"
Or possibly your dreams take a more classic
form – you slide the tape into your VCR, ready to
present to the jury, and the tape is blank!
If you have encountered any of the above scenarios,
you are not alone according to a recent survey
conducted on a wide cross-section of the worldwide
legal community by Accurate Vision, Inc.
Completed in May 2003, a survey of over 125
randomly selected law firms revealed that a surprising
number of lawyers and legal secretaries are being
frustrated by the same unfortunate scenarios with
startling regularity.
For example, when asked if they had any consistent
complaint about video-taped depositions that were
recorded for their firm over the past year, 32% of all
survey respondents replied in the affirmative, with 68%
of the affirmative answers being specifically related
to complaints about the quality of the audio and/or
video.
And if that statistic about quality isn't bad enough,
when questioned further about the specific problems they
encountered with tape quality, 24% of the above
respondents all had the same exact complaint – the
video tapes they received were blank! No audio, and no
video. Just blank tapes!
With poor audio and/or video quality being the most
common complaint by far, unreliability was cited as the
second most common complaint in response to the
question, "Have you had a recurring complaint
about video-taped depositions that were recorded for
you over the past year?"
With 17% of all respondents surveyed stating that
they had experienced unreliable service on multiple
occasions, their individual answers tabulate as
follows:
| 39% |
– |
taped depositions were not delivered to the
law firm by the agreed-upon date
|
| 28% |
– |
videographer was late for one or more
sittings of the deposition
|
| 16% |
– |
video company/videographer would not cover
the depo on short notice
|
| 7% |
– |
videographer failed to show up at all
|
Lack of professionalism was third in the list of
recurring complaints about video taped depositions,
and cost was fourth.
So what exactly do these law firms need and want
from the people who service their video needs?
When asked what qualities they valued most in a
legal video service, 56% of the surveyed law firms
unanimously agreed that reliability was what they
wanted most, with their individual preferences being:
| 47% |
– |
can schedule and deliver quality
video depositions, regardless of location and/or short notice
|
| 29% |
– |
fast turnaround
time on delivery of master tapes and tape copies
|
| 11% |
– |
professional
appearance and conduct of videographer at depo
|
— — —
In addition to surveying law firms that we have never
provided service to such as those you have read about in
this article, Accurate Vision routinely surveys our
active customer base of more than 5,000 lawyers,
legal secretaries and court reporters throughout the
world. The results of such surveys assist us in ensuring
that we consistently deliver the highest levels of
customer care and audio-video quality in our trade.
We therefore welcome comments and suggestions from
customers and non-customers alike.
Director of Public Surveys
Accurate Vision, Inc.
