[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=””]T[/fusion_dropcap]his is a story in a Canadian magazine, but it is coming out of the American Bar Association Technology show. In Oregon workers compensation cases we don’t do anything very tech oriented. In Social Security cases they do have the technology to have witnesses appear on television by an audio-video connection, but that is not my preferred way to try cases. Virtual reality will be very interesting.
Virtual reality is coming to a courtroom near you
ABA Techshow panel explores use of VR in law
March 9, 2018|Written By Tim Wilbur
Will lawyers soon be arguing their cases in a virtual courtroom, perhaps from their living room or a distant tropical island, untethered by a physical location? While that may seem like a distant sci-fi future, virtual reality is no longer fiction, as some technologically savvy legal educators outlined in a panel discussion at the ABA Techshow in Chicago yesterday.
Kenton Brice, a former trial lawyer and now director of technology innovation at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, spoke about several current practical ways VR is being used by lawyers. This includes presenting evidence in mediation and arbitration, such as a virtual reality simulation of a car accident.
“Really, VR opens up discovery or evidence presentation to a limitless degree. Before we had poster boards, then we had PowerPoint; now we will have this 3D content that we actually import into a courtroom,” he said.
Brice also outlined how VR can help create virtual models of crime scenes or relevant locations. With a $1,500 drone and some software, Brice said, a construction site was recreated for a case in a way that traditionally could only have been done by a developer for $60,000 to $70,000. The virtual model is also arguably more accurate than a rendering, since it based on video footage and more akin to a photograph than an illustration.
