What counsel can show the carrier, and how soon, is what separates a partner from a vendor.
By Brandon Greenblatt, CEO,Remote Legal
A client of ours took the video deposition of a corporate representative. The witness sat in the company’s own warehouse. Behind him hung a sign with a blank underlined space: Number of days since the last slip and fall in our warehouse. Filled in on the underline: One.
Nothing of substance was said out loud that day. You could read the transcript cover to cover and find nothing that moved the case an inch. But there was a video, the sign was in the frame, and counsel put it in front of a mediator. It changed the outcome.
That was a plaintiff’s side case, and the lesson does not depend on which side benefited. What mattered was that somebody could show a decision maker a needle moving visual, while the case was still open. The plaintiff’s bar has figured out the power of deposition videos before the defense bar. In January 2021, fewer than 20% of the depositions our company handled were video recorded. Today it is roughly 75%.
Rate Is the Only Variable Most Panel Firms Give a Carrier
Seeing a case clearly is not only a litigation advantage. It is also something the carrier is paying for and rarely gets. Ask a claims executive to describe the difference between two firms on the same panel and you will often get an answer about billing rates. That is a reporting problem more than a reflection on the firms. When the only artifacts a carrier receives are an invoice, a status letter, and a transcript weeks after a deposition, rate is the most legible thing about the relationship. So counsel gets managed as a line item rather than consulted on strategy.
Transparency Means No Surprises, Rather Than Surveillance
Transparency can sound like a polite word for looking over counsel’s shoulder. The useful part is simpler than that. It is the absence of surprise.
A carrier that hears about damaging testimony the same day can act on it. Reserves get set correctly. The settlement posture gets revisited. Strategy is still strategy, because there is time left to change it. A carrier that hears about it in week three is managing a fact that has already hardened. Shorter cycle time means lower legal spend, which is the premise every early case assessment program is built on
The Certified Transcript Should Take Its Time
Here, I want to correct an argument my own industry sometimes makes badly. The turnaround on a certified transcript is not the problem, and compressing it would be the wrong goal. Certification means a reporter has reviewed, corrected, and attested to the record. That review is what makes the transcript reliable at trial, and it deserves its window.
Neither of those is the failure. The failure is that nothing exists in between. Keep the certified transcript and its review, then add a layer underneath it: a rough draft within hours, video, marked exhibits, and a clip a carrier can get their eyes on before the day ends. A hybrid proceeding delivers all of that with counsel sitting in the room face to face with the witness.
Three Things You Can Change at Your Next Deposition
Counsel can do all three. Claims professionals can ask for all three.
- Default to video on every one. Nobody notices the detail in the background while testimony is happening, and you cannot know which proceeding will hand you one. Under FRCP 30(b)(3), planning for a video deposition costs one line in a deposition notice.
- Flag the moment while it is happening. Digitally flagging testimony in real time turns a memory into a timestamp. That is what lets someone find the moment in hours instead of reconstructing it from notes.
- Report from the rough draft. The summary still matters and should keep coming, but it should not wait on certification. A rough draft that lands within hours means counsel can brief the adjuster that afternoon, while reserves and settlement posture can still change.
Almost none of these matters will be decided by a jury. They get decided in reserve reviews, at round tables, and in mediations, by people weighing a file against what they can actually see of it. The sign on that warehouse wall mattered only because somebody could show it.
Remote Legal spent 40 years capturing the record before it built any software, and CaseLion is what we built for this gap. One platform runs the proceeding, and one flat hourly rate covers all of it: the AAERT-certified reporter, the video, the exhibits, and a rough draft that lands within hours. No appearance fees. No per page charges. No videographer invoice. Same principle as everything above, applied to the bill. Nothing arrives as a surprise. The certified transcript still takes 7 to 10 days, because it should.
Speed on its own was never the point. The point is getting testimony into usable form while the decisions are still open, and doing it without putting the record at risk. So tell us what you need out of your depositions. We can get you there faster, and we will not gamble your record to do it.
