Are You Ready for Your Close-Up?

By Tom McNichol

In the annals of technology, few inventions have been as highly anticipated?or long delayed?as videoconferencing. As far back as the 1860s, Jules Verne described something that resembled two-way television, and H. G. Wells did the same a few decades later. In movies made during the Great Depression, Buck Rogers was sending and receiving video messages, and in George Orwell's 1984 (written in 1948), Big Brother controlled the masses with the help of telescreens.

But videoconferencing didn't become a practical reality until the late 20th century. And even then, 1990s-era videoconferencing systems hardly amounted to technology for the masses. The early ones were bulky, expensive, and required a dedicated ISDN (integrated services digital network) phone line. Also, the video quality was rarely worth the trouble: The video was usually jerky, and there was often an unnerving delay between the movement of lips and the sound that came from them. If Big Brother had had a telescreen like this, he wouldn't have stayed in power very long.

But the technology has improved dramatically in recent years. And as a result of this and a desire by both businesses and law firms to reduce travel costs (and carbon footprints), demand has grown. In fact, the worldwide videoconferencing market is expected to nearly double to $4.2 billion by 2012, according to Frost & Sullivan, a Palo Altobased consultancy.

The big advances in video technology have been in picture quality and transmission speed. Videoconferencing systems once transmitted pictures exclusively via ISDN, a telephone technology that's usually billed by the minute and is subject to outages. But these days many videoconferencing systems transmit pictures via IP, or Internet protocol, through the same data line that office computers use to access the Net. Internet bandwidth is relatively cheap compared to maintaining a dedicated ISDN line, and new data-compression techniques have made it possible to transmit even high-definition video with much less bandwidth than before.

With faster PC processor speeds and fatter broadband pipes, it's now easy enough to do rudimentary videoconferencing on a standard desktop or laptop computer. But for a professional-looking presentation, a dedicated videoconferencing system is generally the way to go. The standard system consists of a console with a high-quality video camera that can be controlled remotely, along with a video monitor, microphones, speakers, and software to manage the conference.

The current recession has turned out to have a silver lining for videoconferencing vendors, because businesses are looking to the technology to cut travel costs. Glowpoint, a provider of videoconferencing services, saw its video call volumes more than double during November and December of last year, just as it became clear that the recession was going to stick around awhile. Another videoconferencing vendor, Providea, has seen the technology become mandatory for some clients.

"We're beginning to see more and more corporations have videoconferencing as a requirement when they put out proposals for legal services," says J. R. Reidenbach, an executive vice president at Providea. "The days are long gone when attorneys could sit in the airport and bill for their travel time while they're working on other projects."

Law firms that sat on the sidelines during the early days of videoconferencing see this as a good time to jump in. Woolls & Peer, a Los Angelesbased firm with nine attorneys, currently has a modest webcam in place, but it is planning to upgrade to a dedicated videoconferencing system.

"We got into videoconferencing because we found that a growing number of our clients were requesting it," says Michael Masta, the firm's administrator. "If you're in a Fortune 500 company, you already have a big videoconferencing system in place. But if you're a small firm like us, and you want to play in a larger pond, getting a quality videoconferencing system is a way to make a good impression on clients."

Woolls & Peer is planning to purchase a high-definition videoconferencing system made by LifeSize Communications that will end up costing the firm around $15,000. A typical basic videoconferencing system runs about $5,000 to $15,000; medium-size systems cost $30,000 and up; and a full-blown "telepresence" unit fit for a top-100 law firm can cost as much as $600,000. (That includes high-definition everything.)

An alternative to investing in your own dedicated videoconferencing system is to pay a vendor to manage your videoconference needs on a subscription basis. That's the approach taken by Glowpoint (glowpoint.com), which claims more than 45 customers in the legal sector, including 20 of the largest 100 law firms in the country. It works like this: You subscribe to Glowpoint, and within about 30 days your locations will be up and running with broadcast-quality video feeds that enable you to have a conference with anyone in the world?without worrying whether your system is compatible with theirs. Glowpoint acts as a single point of contact to help you manage, schedule, coordinate, and conduct your video meetings. The cost of such a service varies according to how fast the data is transmitted. Glowpoint's subscription fee is $499 per month for a relatively slow but still adequate 512 Kbps line (plus a one-time $699 activation fee), or $999 per month for a speedy 1280 Kbps line (plus a $999 activation fee).

For firms that don't need videoconferencing on a regular basis, vendors such as MegaMeeting offer a "pay as you go" system. With this option, vendors charge for hosting by the month according to how many people participate in the videoconference. For example, MegaMeeting charges $45 a month for a 3-person account, $75 for 10 people, and $255 for 50 people. Most pay-as-you-go systems are browser-based; usually all you need to get started are an Internet browser, a broadband connection, and a Web camera or digital video camera.

So while videoconferencing isn't exactly cheap, it's beginning to look more like a bargain, compared to the cost of air travel and gasoline. As Masta of Woolls & Peer puts it, "The initial cost of acquiring a videoconferencing system is maybe more than we would like. But I think it can reasonably pay for itself in the first year."

If your firm shares a building with other law firms, one way to defray some of the cost of videoconferencing is to pool your resources and share a system. Security shouldn't be an issue: Unlike most digital technology, a standard videoconferencing system doesn't retain the data. That is, once your video meeting is over, both the picture and the audio are gone forever. And because most video meetings last only an hour or so, sharing the equipment shouldn't be difficult.

For lawyers, specifically, the systems have dozens of handy applications. Attorneys can conduct face-to-face meetings with clients, witnesses, experts, or opposing counsel; take video depositions; or plan strategy with colleagues in other locations?all without leaving the office. Or buying anyone lunch.

Large firms such as Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, with 615 lawyers, are taking videoconferencing to the next level by recording conferences and then synching the presentations with PowerPoint and written transcriptions. Staff members in any of Wilson Sonsini's seven remote offices can then access and view the stored videoconference, and the video is fully searchable.

In addition to the money saved on travel, videoconferencing offers some intangible savings. Putting someone on the red-eye to attend a meeting across the country extracts human costs?the attorney usually arrives frazzled and not in top form.

And because some videoconferencing systems are now portable, you can actually bring the meeting to the folks who need it. "What I'm planning to do is have the whole videoconferencing system installed on a cart," Masta says. "So if a partner says, 'I need it in the boardroom,' then you can roll it into the boardroom. Or maybe he wants to have a conference in private. Then roll it into his office. If someone from another floor wants it, you roll it into the elevator. It's more convenient for everyone, and you eliminate the cost of having a dedicated room for videoconferencing."

Videoconferencing is also decidedly green. That quick, 50-minute flight from L.A. to San Francisco to meet a client happens to consume 6,243 pounds of jet fuel on a round trip and spew 354 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. And that's not counting the carbon from ground transportation.

Mega-firm DLA Piper, with 1,420 lawyers in more than 20 offices, holds about 300 video meetings per month, and that number has been steadily rising. The growth is due in large part to the firm's Global Sustainability Initiative, which encourages staff to curb nonessential business travel and use videoconferencing or other alternatives.

Some attorneys have found that videoconferencing not only saves money but can make some, as well. "I think it's a good way to get new clients," says Masta. "When clients are looking for a new firm, they're willing to do some legwork, but basically they want the law firm to come to them. So at a certain point, a face-to-face meeting is what's called for. When you do a video meeting, they get a sense of your personality and whether you're someone they want to do business with."

Still, conducting a videoconference properly takes a bit of preparation and training. As a participant, you need to remind yourself to be attentive at all times, and to look into the camera the way you would look into someone's eyes. And you should be aware of your actions: Doodling on a legal pad is harmless during a phone conversation, but it can be ruinous during a videoconference. Because for all of its advantages, video is a particularly unforgiving medium; it doesn't simply transmit your flaws, it exaggerates them. With videoconferencing, Big Brother is watching?and these days, in high definition.

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