How to Make Your Paralegal the Star

Make Your Paralegal a Star

If you’re wondering how to make your paralegal the star, we recommend expressing gratitude for their dedication in this ever-changing world. Shifting from working in an office to working from home in an instant is stressful. Marty Herder, President of Herder & Associates can attest to that. He has spent the past six months providing 24/7 tech support and guidance to attorneys, paralegals. various courthouses and court reporters, as everyone was forced to make the complicated migration from working at the office to working at home. We understand and we are here to help!

How to Make Your Paralegal the Star

What are resources that can be used while running a remote law firm? Take stock of what and who you have available. While you may not be together at the office, you can still work as a team.

  • Client Communication: Is your CRM being used to its fullest extent? Find out if you can send multiple emails to a group. Inform witnesses of their upcoming deposition. Let them know the court reporter may be contacting them directly. Then call us to schedule the deposition. We will take it from there.
  • Shifting Roles: Can technology or marketing be outsourced? If you are the one normally in charge of social media and are overloaded, find out if someone else on the team has capacity or outsource to a contractor, same with tech issues like the internet and computers.
  • Thank Your Paralegal: We’re all in a similar strange boat and can use a gesture of gratitude. Tell your paralegal thank you for their dedication, even while working from home under COVID-19 restrictions. It can go a long way in making them feel appreciated.

As a court reporting agency, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all our clients. We understand what paralegals are going through and are dedicated to assisting in any way we can. From having to look for alternate ways to conduct depositions now that in-person is not available, or quite limited, to talking to witnesses, running technology on deposition day, and communicating transcript due dates, Herder and Associates is available.

Know that we appreciate you and will work with you to make sure your firm is not having to file continuances. We are dedicated to making our paralegals shine by taking care of witnesses, and handling everything from scheduling and preparing witnesses for deposition day to on-time transcript delivery.

We are in this beautiful chaos together.

Call Herder and Associates at 480-481-0649 to schedule remote video depositions.

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Ready….Set… Remote Video Depositions!

remote video depositions

As a court reporting agency, we understand the value of time, organization, and partnership with paralegals in serving clients. During this time of COVID-19, we’ve had to make adjustments to our Phoenix court reporting but rest assured, Herder and Associates is serving clients with the same integrity and on-time delivery as always. We’re ready to take remote video depositions for you and your clients in Phoenix and across the Valley.

Let’s get ready…set…remote video depositions!

While the world seems to be changing by the minute, we understand your cases are still happening and we are here to help with video depositions in these ways:

  • Scheduling all parties for the remote video depositions.
  • Preparing witnesses, including testing their equipment.
  • Coordinate scheduling changes.

In other words, let Herder and Associates handle before, during, and after the deposition so you can focus on your case and clients.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have scheduled dozens of weekly depositions via Zoom and will continue to do so. That moves your practice, paralegals, and client cases forward, so you’re not stuck in a never ending loop of continuances because you were not able to have deposition transcripts ready on-time.

Why are many attorneys seeking continuances?

The primary reason the parties seek continuances is because they hope physical distancing and stay-at-home orders will be lifted to allow for in-person depositions. Reviewing the daily Arizona Department of Health COVID-19 Dashboard, it would seem this virus is here to stay. At this time, it is simply not feasible for the Court to extend deposition deadlines until a time when they can safely be conducted in-person because we don’t know when that will happen.

For the foreseeable future, remote video depositions are the best alternate to get cases through the court system. We are telling our clients and court reporters to not expect this to change any time soon.

Parties and their counsel should not expect to be able to conduct in-person depositions. The norm, at least for now, is that we are doing remote depositions.

What are the legalities of conducting a remote video deposition?

The judicial acceptance of remote depositions is substantially complete. The Federal Civil Rules Handbook[4] states that, “Generally, leave to take depositions by remote means will be granted liberally.”

In other words, when utilizing deposition best practices, a remote deposition holds the same weight in court as an in-person deposition. The court does not view them differently.

At Herder and Associates, we coordinate all aspects of the depositions on your behalf and to the best of our ability. This includes preparing witnesses and taking care of the technical aspects of a deposition. 

Contact us today to schedule your remote video deposition!

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