The Courtroom of the Future at the University of Arizona has emerged
from a mid-life crisis with new energy, new technology and new partners. Early
in the fall, the technological infrastructure in the Courtroom Of The Future
began to crumble. Each effort to repair
the system was successful for a while but ultimately would fail as old
components gave up and died. This was a professional and personal crisis of
major proportion. My students were expecting to be trained in the basic tools
available to them in eCourtrooms now in place around the state, but without a
major upgrade in both equipment and infrastructure we would be unable to
provide that promised basic hands on training.
To make matters worse there was no money available to purchase and
install the necessary upgrades. I had
made various commitments to courts and organizations around the state regarding
the availability of the Courtroom of the Future in the emerging eCourtroom development initiative. My efforts to find money privately were
unsuccessful. Then, with the help of our new primary corporate partners, Lex
Solutio Corporation (www.lexsolutio.com),
Boeckeler Instruments (www.boeckeler.com) and
Mediatech (www.gomediatech.com) we were able to
rebuild the Courtroom and bring it once again into the mainstream of courtroom
technology. Here is the story.
Eight years ago when I began the construction of the first Courtroom Of
The Future I was able to turn to manufacturers of electronic equipment who saw
the same future for the utilization of imaging and display technology in the
courtroom context. Major national
companies such as an NEC, nView, Stewart Filmscreen and Extron all made
significant contributions to the development process. One of the major contributors of both equipment and knowledge was
Boeckeler Instruments of Tucson.
Boeckeler is the designer and manufacturer of the Pointmaker telestrator
you have seen on Monday Night Football and other sportscasts. Pat Brey of Boeckeler saw the future for the
use of the Pointmaker in court proceedings and jumped into the development of
the original Courtroom of the Future with enthusiasm and his tremendous
knowledge of audiovisual technology. In
the ensuing years, Pat’s vision turned out to be correct and the Boeckeler
Pointmaker is now a critical component of the hundreds of eCourtrooms that have
come online in the last few years. Pat
knows almost everybody in the business and I decided to seek his advice
regarding the necessary upgrades. Pat
told me that Boeckeler was in the process of developing a remarkable new tool
that integrated the Pointmaker with a distribution and switching system that
could replace the entire complicated infrastructure of the Courtroom of the
Future with a single box the size of a VCR.
Called the PVI-PVI-X100, The new Pointmaker appeared to be the key to
salvation of the courtroom infrastructure.
But the cost of the product and installation approached $10,000.00, an
unattainable sum of money for the project.
Pat came over to the law school and spent an afternoon poking around in
the maze of wires and electronic equipment that comprised the old courtroom
infrastructure. At the end of the day
he announced that he could redesign the courtroom infrastructure around the
PVI-X100 and utilize many of the existing components thus saving tens of
thousands of dollars. Most importantly,
Pat announced that Boeckeler was willing to provide the project with the
PVI-X100 and the necessary labor and expertise to replace the existing system.
The only major component that we would have to buy would be a projector and Pat
put me together with Sean Smiley at CCS Presentation Systems in Chicago
(ssmiley@ccsprojects.com) who had worked at Boeckeler some years ago. By donating his profit to our project, Sean
was able to get us the needed $10,000.00 projector essentially at manufacturers
cost. I had a small sum of money set aside from the sale of some equipment and
it was just enough to allow us to buy the projector. I later learned that Sean
and I had both grown up in Bloomington, Indiana but that is a story for another
night.
Over a period of a couple of days my assistants T.J. Ryan and Robert
Ashley worked with the people from Boeckeler to rebuild the courtroom. It was done just in time to support the
final student presentations using the new equipment. Everything went wonderfully and we are moving ahead with the
finishing touches. Mediatech, a Florida
designer and builder of electronic classrooms whom we have worked with at the
ABA TechShow is building and contributing a new integrated podium for us. Lex Solutio the Phoenix litigation support
firm where I serve as part-time General Counsel has provided financial support.
Sean Smiley is committed to providing other future needs at cost or less. Some
of our old components such as our 10 foot retractable Stewart Filmscreen are
still state of the art. Over the next
few months we expect to have the Courtroom of the Future II in place and ready
for training lawyers and judges as well as students in the process of
utilization of the electronic courtrooms.
Fortunately for us several new books have been released by the National
Institute For Trial Advocacy that deal directly with the use of eCourtrooms (www.nita.com). When combined with Mike Arkfeld=s famous
book on The Digital Practice of Law we
now have in place a complete training program in electronic courtrooms. We look forward to showing it to you.
All of this trouble has served to focus the mission of the Courtroom of
the Future Project and educate us about the possibilities for building
inexpensive but full featured courtrooms in courthouses and law firms.