Legal Videography

Ohio Reporting Has the Largest In-House Video Department in the United States

The Ohio Reporting Company maintains over 100 full-time, employee-based videographers across the United States. This vast network is critical to maintaining uniformly high-quality videos that are properly edited and trial ready. Many court reporting companies farm out their legal video work to a variety of videographers. This can cause many problems when you backorder videos and they are spread out among many different videographers who may not use the same formats or storage mechanisms. Even worse, they may no longer work in the industry and cannot be located. When you schedule with Ohio Reporting Company, you will know that your video deposition will be stored in perpetuity on redundant cloud-based servers so that you never have to worry about it being lost or damaged. Moreover, your video will be formatted the same regardless of whether your deposition is in any part of Ohio or the United States.

Rely on our videographers to save you time and money with trial-ready (edited at your direction) video depositions. And never make the mistake of trying to video a deposition yourself or hire a part-time “freelance” videographer who may not even be in the industry by the time your trial starts. After all, your focus during a deposition should be on the witness: you should be thinking about your line of questioning rather than the camera’s focus.

The Importance of Video During Depositions

The Ohio Reporting Company encourages attorneys to incorporate video into their depositions as frequently as possible. According to the American Bar Association, “video is a far richer tool than the stenographic transcript alone.” Numerous studies have concluded that video depositions are much more likely to keep a jury’s attention. Video creates context to an otherwise sterile transcript of the deponent’s testimony. Furthermore, most experts assert that nonverbal communication accounts for at least 60 percent of all communications. It allows the jury to contextualize gestures, long pauses and the deponent’s general demeanor. The jury would never know from reading a transcript that a deponent’s voice was quivering or raised during testimony or that they were sweating profusely during many questions. All of these things can transform a deponent’s testimony from average to compelling.

Most experienced litigators advocate the use of video depositions in two particular circumstances: by the plaintiff as an admission by a party opponent—as permitted by Rule 32(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)—and to depose important witnesses who will not be available for trial. Video depositions also have significant value outside of the courtroom. For example, an attorney can send snippets of a deponent’s video to a claims adjuster to demonstrate how a witness will appear at trial. Video is also crucial to preparing for arbitration and mediation.