Mediate Electronically Sign Order with airSlate SignNow

Mediate electronically sign order

and I want to welcome everybody thank you for taking time out of your schedules to join us for this presentation and the MSBA is very proud and grateful to the ADR section for pulling this presentation together I know that there's been a lot of interest in how to conduct your mediations online and I'm going to ask folks who are participating to mute your mics close your mics and your cameras if you're not presenting Jolie Weinberg is going to be facilitating your presentation today you've got very experienced mediators running the discussion in addition to Jolie you've got CC pace and John Greer and I want to thank the faculty for putting this presentation together again and suggest that anybody that wants to submit questions use the chat icon up in the right-hand corner of your screen looks like a talk bubble and if you type in your questions faculty will be answering questions at the end of the presentation and at this point again thank you for your time thank you for joining us we've got almost 200 people on the line so we appreciate the Faculty's time and effort and the ADR sections time and effort and putting this together and I'll turn this over to to Joe Lee thank you everyone thanks Andrea and think on to everyone okay hi my microphone on I did thanks gentleman MSBA for helping us coordinate this I want to welcome everybody I know it's not David a lot of people don't have to necessarily get up but I think it's going to be an informative session on mediation and how you can integrate it into your practice with all that's going on in the world today I'm a partner at Weinberg and Schwartz in Howard County but more importantly I'm the chair of the MSBA ADR section Council and this concept of doing mediations and collaborative work and other forms of dispute resolution actually is not that new to our group we started working on the concept back last year when we did our seminar for the chief judge Bell the spring seminar and we actually have an entire segment scheduled for June for the Ocean City presentation I don't know if that's gonna happen or not but our segment is on odr and I will use odr interspersing Lee through this seminar through this presentation it's online dispute resolution just so everybody knows it's the idea of being online and doing mediations and collaborative and alternative dispute resolution type concepts my topic is going to be preliminary considerations up to ADR remotely CC will follow up CC pays will follow up with the ethical and practical considerations and go ahead you can you can flip the slide bell we're on to the next one I'm sorry I think it used to this whole slide concept there we go so CC will then ethical consideration I actually think we're on to the next slide there we go epical and practical considerations and then John's going to talk about features to look for when you're doing video conferencing platforms and as Andrea said there is a chat box up in the corner the right corner there's already six different chats I might be people saying good morning but we will filter through those and pick out questions to address during the seminar during the presentation so we're gonna we're going to go on to the next slide which is preliminary considerations oh there we go yep of why conducting ADR remotely why even bother doing that well it's kind of a duh question right now because we don't have many other choices with the Cova 19 we really can't leave our houses and there's a huge safety factor to being able to conduct business and be productive out of our houses and doing it remotely what people haven't even thought about is that in certain circumstances people don't want to be in the same room with other people what domestic violence or just comfort levels sometimes odr is the way to go but in today's climate we don't really have a choice so this is this is what we have and this is a way to keep your business afloat and keep things rolling but also do it in a way that makes a lot of sense so we're going to try to give you the nuts and bolts today on how to make it work in your practice whether you're a mediator or whether you're a litigator this can be integrated in to keep your business going the obvious advantage is convenience I'm sure a lot of you in your pajamas right now good for you I actually put on clothes today first time in two weeks I can't promise you that I don't have yoga pants on underneath or leggings or maybe even pajama bottoms but it is way more convenient to be able to sit at your desktop or your couch and conduct business it's comfortable it's convenient and even though we can't really think about it today it's cost-saving people don't have to fly in for a mediation they don't have to take a train in they don't have to take a bus they don't have to go through toll booths it's it's a it's a really economical way to do business and it's extremely accessible because most everybody these days has their ability to use a computer or get on their cell phone laptop what have you it's it's a great way to practice law and I have a feeling when this is all done that this will definitely change the way we practice law because people will have use this platform they'll have figured out that this does work and there are other alternatives other than a face-to-face meeting and I think even people that are doing depositions and other forms of law practice or finding this works moving to the next slide bill thank you and I didn't say accessibility also for handicapped people so people that have limited mobility this is also a great way to be able to work through the issues so the advantages of ADR are well the duh-duh advantage is that if you don't do ADR your practice is probably stagnant right now that this is the best way to get people to the table to talk about working things out to try to resolve cases and this is not just family law this is personal injury cases it's workers comp it's estates and trusts it's tax cases anything that has you know your business going can be discussed and talked about through this process video conferencing online it is the next best thing to being there and we were just saying John CeeCee and I the other day when we were prepping that I don't know if this won't be something that's just really really common now that people will use this as a means to work out issues rather than having to facilitate a get-together which takes a lot of time and a lot of energy you can see facial expressions you can see body language there's so much that can be accomplished through online dispute resolution one of the things I you need to think about it's not everybody that you deal with and work with has a techno technological ability to figure things out there is some older clients that just have no concept there is a way and I've done it before where you can have people available by phone that can't maybe do the technological aspect of it but other people available by remote and you can just kind of facilitate both different processes and be flexible I think flexibility is really important today because we're we're in unchartered navigating these crazy waters that we never thought we'd be in the disadvantages next slide Belle's thanks the disadvantages of ADR remote ADR is in the environment you cannot control any more so you have no idea what's going on outside of your realm of your of your office of your area where you're conducting the ADR so for all you know this is for practitioners to your client could be on the ADR call and they could have their whole family in the background giving them advice you could have the children in the background listening to what's going on there is no way to really know what's happening and you know we can ask people to not have other people involved in the listening in and CC we'll talk about in the ethical part of her of her segments so that's something that you won't know about um there's also issues of confidentiality and privacy again CC will discuss this but that's a disadvantage there's there's some issues even that John will talk about with doom and the confidentiality of being on on some of these mic platforms and that's something we don't know about and it's again it's word we're diving into areas that are now even gonna be big issue this for in the future and the other disadvantage is not being able maybe to have the time and ability to educate clients about what the expectations are when I do a mediation I bring everyone into the room and I go through the agreement to mediate and I talk through all the pieces of it and I make sure everybody understands it before they sign it well now that I'm doing online I make them sign it before they eat and get on to the phone call because they have to the get-go agree that they're going to keep it private and confidential and it's not going to be going behind the conversation in the room so that's something that's signed and dealt with early on so those are the disadvantages you have to weigh them out but right now I think the images outweigh the disadvantages initial questions for attorneys and for the clients and this goes on to the next slide thank you so I always tell people we're on this this platform this online platform whether it's zoom or whether you're on Google Hangouts and I just say from the get-go look this is a new process and there might be some things that don't work and you have to kind of work through those I had a mediation last week where for some strange reason my camera not my camera my speaker didn't work and my cigar always works I've never had it networked and all of a sudden oops I had to figure out another way to deal with it and that consisted of me calling both participants and putting them on speaker and we figured it out there were some glitches in it but you have to acknowledge that technology is not the same thing it's being in the same room with people and not having to worry about speakers and lights and echoes and you know clarity the wonderful thing about some of these platforms which I use zoom and John's going to talk to you a lot about zoom is the ability to do breakout rooms and that gives the mediator or whoever's conducting the ADR a chance to talk to the parties outside of the main room and by doing that you can have an opportunity to talk to each party separate and apart not in the same room and that's a really really good advantage of having the breakouts doing that you can also screen share we were discussing the issues and the issue of child support came up and I was able to hop on to my child support guidelines worksheet I was able to do the numbers I was able to flip it over and let everyone look at it I was able to play around with it when people talked about different um different things that could or could not happen maybe there's not as much overnights maybe they're less overnights maybe somebody did get their bonus this year or they didn't get their bonus so we could play around and do it in in in constant time of exactly when we were discussing it we didn't have to wait we'd have to do it at a later date mmm you can also do a whiteboard which is nice to put down issues and and write things up while people are talking the agreement to mediate again I explained you should do it before the process starts mm-hmm it'd be great if the attorneys who are working with the clients could spend some time going through it with their clients before the odr starts lawyers can do a lot of things to get their clients ready for the odr process and if clients if attorneys think they're losing business they're really not because there's my attorneys available and around and able to help them so the attorneys are going to do more than ever because they're gonna prepare the clients for the sessions they're gonna get them ready they're gonna go through agreements to mediate they're gonna talk about the issues so and they're gonna be in the room hopefully during the mediation so it's not gonna take away business if anything it's going to get more business because it's gonna allow everybody to be involved um and I tell people really really think long and hard about what you need to be prepared for before the session starts the more prepared you are the more confidence the clients have that this is a good process and they can buy into that this is going to work so think through things think through like what we did before we even had our session today is we did a trial run we did a remote control a remote session we made sure that we knew exactly what was going to go on we nature our speakers work we make sure the clarity work we should made sure the backgrounds work and we tweak things before we came on today to make sure that everybody was fully prepared and had the best presentation possible well mediation is the same thing the more you can get done ahead of time the easier it's going to be to have the process go smoothly even setting up break room the breakout rooms I do that before the mediation starts I set them up so that it's not an issue and I don't have to waste time trying to figure out whose email goes with which room mmm so if you can think things through even before the the ODR starts you'll have a client who knows that this is now your new norm and it's working and it's happening and it's great so those are things to think about going on to the next slide some initial questions that attorneys and the clients need to think about which is called tech savvy is your client and can they do this online and maybe they need a trial run before it starts do attorneys and clients have the right equipment make sure everything works one of the things I've learned is I probably need a better camera because mine's a little hazy make sure you have the right internet connections laptops phones etc next slide and make sure that you can sign documents remotely there are a bunch of different programs and platforms to use and you can learn about those I've never done so much youtubing as I've done in the last week even with zoom i YouTubed about five different youtube videos just to make sure I was understanding every single tool that was available in the toolbox so be aware of these be aware of the changing laws I know that governor Hogan just allowed us to have notaries without the notary being in the same room so we can now do virtual notaries that's good to know that's gonna change some of your practice make sure you keep a calendar for your scheduling there's a lot of great calendars I know Jon will allow people to schedule online I won't do that but I talked to people by email and I schedule my email just so I can clear my calendar out next slide Oh an important piece to remember how are we going to get paid that's really important again there's different places you can get online with I we use law pay some people use PayPal there's a whole bunch of different options I also didn't do this before but I have people pay before the mediation so two hours payment is due before the mediation commences I think we're down the last slide if I'm not mistake helpful websites and this is gonna be on the a B the MSB a website so you couldn't listen to or hear the today's presentation again and you can also get the resources so these are just some websites that that might be of interest to people I think of it might be my last slide is there any more after that that's me okay that's my last slide it was nice talking to you all I'm gonna turn it over to Jack now that I think I'm next you some questions so one thing I wanted to note is we have about 244 people on this seminar the platform we're using is Google hangout which is what the MSBA uses and I think some of what we some of what Jolie talked about already was raised in this process a lot of people couldn't hear Jolie a lot of people couldn't see the the the slide shows the slide show sorry the slides the the PowerPoint presentation and this is an example of learning the technology as we go in some ways this platform has Bill Hall who was with the MSBA do advancing all of the slides and one question that did come up that I wanted to make sure I was the one monitoring the chat room was about separate mediations and we'll talk about that and I think john grier will deal with that in his portion mine my section is about the ethical considerations of online mediations and while they're the same if you would advance the slide please they are the same they do create a new emphasis on No your platforms that you're using and if everyone understands when we talk about platforms we're talking about either zoom Google hangout you know web rx or I don't think it's web rx but whatever the WebEx and some of the other ones that are out there go to meeting you need to know where the points are that are stick information could accidentally be shared and I'll talk about that a little bit more it also means you have to have competency and I there's an N in my competency for some reason yeah so I misspelled it I apologize the because we need to be competent as mediators and then self-determination takes a new a new twist to it sometimes when you come to this online process so the one thing I do want to say preliminary is technology is wonderful until it doesn't work and I think that's been experienced by a lot of the people trying to get on to this seminar it also is something you need to be very aware of this morning I almost had a meltdown because I could not get on to my email and so if I can't get on to my email I couldn't get on to my link to get to the seminar the end-around was me calling Jolie in a panic and saying can you send me the link on another email on my gmail account and that resolved it but you need to be prepared for those kinds of glitches I'm gonna have to figure out why I can't get to my own email later and I just wanted to bring that up as a I consider myself older and that's as far as I will go and some of this is hard for me to understand and so I spend a lot of time as Jolie did on learning how to do the platform that I am using and I do use zoom next slide please so one of the things that well probably all three of us will say so that you can so it is repeated numerous times when I took my mediation training with Melanie Vaughan she said you had to repeat things about seven times to have people remember them will only do it three times the biggest thing I think you need to do preliminary is make sure that you have sat down and you've written out for yourself how you would explain the online platform you've chosen to use how it preserves confidentiality how the caucus process will work and explain that there's no platform that is 100% secure there are all sorts of ways my my theory has always been people will will use their great intelligence online for people rather than for good there's nothing we can do about that but also most of the breaches of confidentiality end up being created by the user themselves the one question I've gotten already from people is whether or not a non invitee can use a link to get into the sessions on the Zune platform it's controlled by the host so the answer is now no one can get in unless you would knit them to the session but that doesn't mean that you know as Joe Lee indicated the knife might not be people off camera next slide please the biggest thing we can do is really emphasize the responsibility of the parties when they are participating in this platform make sure that people understand there shouldn't be anybody off camera there shouldn't be anybody able to overhear this session cannot record this session I actually had someone a few years back recording the session with his phone under the table and of course you know as cell phones develop over developed over time that was a new problem in person and their screenshots of the session can be taken the key thing is you're not going to know whether or not people are doing that that's something again as Jolie indicated we can't control on the online platform next slide the ground rules that are established and I think there are any number of willing to provide to Andrea Terry the my set of ground rules if she wants to send them out to people but there are two ways that you can do this you can send the ground rules to parties as an attachment to the agreement to mediate or you can include them in the agreement to mediate itself I send mine as an attachment because I don't want to over overwhelm my agreement to mediate I do primarily family law matters I do do all sorts of other cases as well but in family law the biggest thing I like to make sure is that people have read the agreement before they come and I also explain it to them again when they come online so I conduct my mediations much the same as I did prior to this stay and stay at home kind of situation and doing it lying although I do put more emphasis on you know between the parties not between the properties and some hidden person off-camera next slide please as has already been said with competency you have to know your platform the biggest thing that you can create is a sense of distrust or discomfort in a party if you're suddenly fumbling online if something goes wrong and it could I had a case where the the one party could not get out of the breakout room and I had to figure out how to get her out of the breakout room or what it was that wasn't being done at her end to allow her to get out of the breakout room and I just had to take some time go back into breakout explain to her what she needed to look for much like what Bill Hall is doing with people today about turning off your cameras and turning off your your microphones for this process and then get them back in it's about how you move them beyond the glitch that can be very helpful and it then be a positive again you have to know the disadvantages of your platform for example on zoom you have to be very careful with the chat function because you can accidentally take a chat that you were using in breakout room and suddenly it's available to everyone and that of course is a disclosure that probably the person in that you were chatting with would not want divulged and again controlling through the side comment features or the chat is a really important one and you need to know what that how that process works in your platform because that's where the pitfalls can come in next slide please I don't know I just need to ask this question competency is misspelled isn't it no one needs to really answer that you could send in it okay Susan thank you you said it is I have an X in there and I'm not sure why it continues my fault that's my fault I'll take ownership fix okay thanks educating the the parties on the technology before the session I think is important because they need to know what they're going to start doing I think you also need to know what technology works for them are they going to be in a smart phone are they going to be on a laptop are they going to be on a desktop computer what do they have a camera do they not have a camera ask those questions or have them inform you before the session begins if there's a problem with any of that and again know what to do if the technology doesn't work you know have have a way to get to someone you know like I did with Jolie to get the information thank goodness and but and often people will say well why don't we use this platform I would strongly suggest that you pick one or two platforms and you stick with them and if the person that is it may be participating in mediation suggest another one and that's the only one they're willing to use don't do the mediation because that could get you into a setting where things are being revealed that should have been revealed you need to be able to have used it and practice it before you use it in a session next slide please and again ultimately with self-determination the participants are the ones that make the final decisions and in the ODR world this is both on whether or not to use the technology at all if they're not comfortable and which platform to use and if they choose a platform that you are not comfortable with then you simply have to refer them to someone else or I don't even know what platforms some people are using so I wouldn't I would just simply say you're going to have to research that and if I can be of help in the future let me know again do not use a platform you are not familiar with I think it's very important that everyone really get to know the platform you're looking at someone who was drugged into this kick screaming I've been playing with it for years but I never really felt like I wanted to jump into it until I had no option and I think that's where most of us are today self-determination is something that's important all across the the mediation spectrum next slide please I will tell you one thing try to have as few distractions as possible for you because one of the things that I'm finding as an older mediator is that I'm easily distracted by the the email messages that seem to pop up in the corner of my screen when I'm on a new mediation try and see if you can figure out a way to minimize those my sister and I say we have the squirrel syndrome where if there's a squirrel over there we look and that's something that I think is not going to be endearing to the people that you're working with if you can before so you have a mediation encourage the parties to try out the platform to be used before the session if possible you know confirm again that the participants are going to have an access to a closed internet connection one of my ground rules is do not use an open internet connection such as what you can get at Starbucks confirm if someone is using a smartphone because sometimes that technology can present a different look and a different sound just so that you know when people are getting on if there's an issue about clarifying the images that that people have or that art they're being presented to you through their camera next slide please this next one check your background for anyone on unwanted items but it's important because that can be distracting to the people online the funny thing is I was just I can't remember which station it was but they had someone presenting on if you do online meetings you need to be clear about you know you need to have no distractions and she was presenting it in front of a bulletin board with all sorts of pictures and notes and everything all over it be aware of that try to not have something in the background I've purposely set up my camera so that you can't see my bookcase behind me because it's I tend to like putting out photos and things of that sort just be aware of that and have the people that are are working with you aware of that as well make sure that you have the camera at eye level you can put it on a box or a stack of books if you need to but it's better to be straightforward and I level I have found that on occasion I have had the the camera back too much and people are looking up my nostrils so not the best way to to to proceed the lighting is very important I have a actually a desk lamp to my right so that you so I am frontlet versus being backed with if the participants are backlit let them you know ask them to move so that you can see their faces the whole point of this is to get as close to being one-on-one online as possible and if you can't see them you're not going to be able to see the visual cues the microphone on most laptops or smartphones should be sufficient if there's a problem initially address it if you cannot hear the people or they cannot hear you address it at the beginning of your session and the one thing I will tell you is that in the right lower corner of my laptop screen is a little speaker and I can't tell you the number of times I forgot to unmute that when I was preparing for a mediation session and they do like to hear what you have to say usually the next slide please the last two slides research on doing online mediation a co Hawaii did the project in 2013 related and what they came up with with some lessons and I thought they would be just think they to end my portion of this first online we need to master the software platform use clearly that's a theme throughout this presentation mediation skills and experiences are much more important than online mediation technology it's important to know that you are still the key factor in this and how you apply your skills online is more important than the actual underlying technology that's why we can do telephone mediations with success online is the same way again we're always learning more and more about our platform and soft and process in this case are the mediators learning process apparently can be considerably on accelerated because of the online access to information about the different technology next slide please and again mediation by video telephone email or face-to-face mutually exclusive if we start online and we need to follow up with telephone or but online and now it opens up when we go to face-to-face lookey this project showed there are really different tools in our toolbox and finally online can open up all sorts of new markets for opportunities for us mediator see before you oh I'm sorry I'll let you finish tonight I'm gonna jump in with two things that people said oh no problem um just the last slide it's about me go ahead Julie okay so there were two really good comments Victoria said you can turn off notifications which she's right and that's how the settings that you can do and we all forget to do that and that's a brilliant idea the other thing that maybe you should dress real quickly is somebody talked about virtual backgrounds do you have any input on the virtual backgrounds well I think that the the answer to that is each platform provides for virtual backgrounds that I each that I've looked and it's just a matter of whether you're comfortable putting up a virtual background or not and then whether your platform permits it I try and make sure I set up my room John do you have something on that yeah let me jump in on Zhu I played around with the zoom virtual background it you can get it as a feature if your equipment is relatively new you can just enable it if you have a little older model like I do the system requires in Green stories you have to have a screen or a light colored background and then the virtual background will work otherwise you it just gets pixelated there's a couple more questions and maybe we hit those before we jump onto John's and I think it's it's probably worth discussing do you um have any input on using OTR or pro se or self represented litigants any thoughts about that when they are involved the pro se I think it's no different than it is if you're a face-to-face or I've done a lot of pro se litigants where one person's in California and the other person here the the answer is I think it's they're different than in-person communication and how about if somebody breaches the confidentiality such as you know I read over your agreement to mediate and they got your rules and yet they still breached what they were supposed to do somebody asks are the lawyers liable for their clients misbehavior how do you handle that so now that's a question about whether or not the mediator but the lawyers are liable I mean I would not have an answer on whether or not the lawyers are liable but I would I would anticipate that there are going to be people who are doing that or that disclose something at the beginning that they know would upset the other participant at that point I think it's the same as an in person if there is a breach of the confidentiality you have to decide whether or not the mediation can proceed and feel that it can't then go with it from that perspective and then another another good question was how do you deal with people that maybe don't want to do and I talked about this a little bit they don't want to do in person one do online they maybe want to be on the phone how do you deal with people that some want to be on the phone some don't someone to be on line some don't want to be on line how do you deal with that I just simply try to be quite us with you talk to them about having a consistent technology if it's telephones email mediations I wouldn't speak to that but I try to encourage everyone to do the same which means that maybe someone comes in person and someone's arm on camera to me that's the same having one person on telephone and one person on zoom' would be a last resort for me I do try to work with people and get them to use the same technology but what he feels disadvantaged because there's a definite imbalance of power in different ways between the telephone and a visual there's a lot of questions about will they will people be able to get these slides DMS okay we'll make them available and they'll make this they're making a video of to chat and the so will be available for viewing on at a later time one more you can see that is a good one is domestic violence how do you handle people with those issues I think the easy one is if you're online it's really not an evil I guess somebody saying you know how do you deal with that issue I mean I would deal with it in the same way I would with in-person and that is look for the imbalance of power I've not had that situation in a in a video mediation as yet but my sense would be that the distance would would hopefully balance that aspect out a little bit more since they're each in their own locations one quick question that I did see pop up that I wanted to kind of speak to there were two things one is separate caucuses that's part of knowing your your your platform and how many breakout rooms they're called breakout rooms know you can create and whether or not those are basically controlled by the host so that people cannot move from one breakout room to the other without the host that's very important a lot of people do mediations totally in caucus and that's why knowing your platform is so important because for example when I do my caucuses I have people in breakout rooms and I can move between the breakout rooms and and they are mutually exclusive exclusive as far as audio or visual and neither party can come into the other room without me moving them there so so it's important to know that platforms do permit four separate mediations you know in all sorts of settings you need to know what your limits are in the number of people that can participate the number of rooms you can have the other one that came back that John I may you may be dealing with this as well but I wanted to make sure something was said what do you use as a fallback do you use a telephone as a fallback if if the technology fair the first answer I would say is know how to reboot it and see if you can reboot okay thank you so the again the key thing is to think these things through and I think John you might be able to add to that because you usually do have a fallback if you're if your primary technology fails correct I do I do a number of things I get well I think we'll move on to John let John go ahead and start his presentation I think that makes sense right now so we don't run out of time sure let me just answer the question so I have I do a number of things I give out obviously my email my phone number ahead of time if there's and so if there's a problem people can call me or email me now what that means as mediators I have to kind of look sideways and monitor several different devices to see what's going on and that's a little distracting I also give people the option to phone in if the video fails you know I'll say something about that later about that's a little less secure from a confidential a confidentiality point of view I also run a separate computer in the background and I use doom as well and I assign that as a co-host I can create that as a co-host and so if my primary computer which is my laptop goes down the other computer remains running as the host a co-host so that should hopefully prevent a you know total loss of the session just before I start there were a couple other questions that came in like how do you check in with parties if you're limited only to a telephone if you don't have any video conferencing capability I would say probably either by probably by email right if and that's what I said if you have separate devices going you would you could email somebody just to check in if you're on the phone with them you could have a have an email open on the side there was also a question about online signing I think Jolie covered that in her slides will be available online but there's things like DocuSign ever signed I use a program that I learned about from the MSB a young lawyer section called 17 hats it's a fully integrated case management system and I create documents online that permit the parties to sign them electronically forward them to clients they sign it electronically and it all comes back to me so that's how I do it okay so what I'm gonna do is focus on features and this is going to be a little more technology I'll try to keep it simple because I'm not a technology guru but I am going to go into some of the features that we think are helpful so if you can do the next slide please so these are things you want to be thinking about you want to make scheduling your online sessions very easily very easy a number of the platforms that I'll discuss in in a minute integrate with your your email like Outlook or or your Google Calendar and they're they quite a number of them have button so you can just click to schedule a session an online session and it's it's really really simple make sure that you know whatever platform you use has an ability to provide the login information to the parties and there are some security issues that I'll cover in just a minute about that we've talked about breakout rooms in the nice feature is nice features are when you can set it up in advance as we talked about but what I really like in zoom is a feature that allows the participants in the breakout room to send me a message if I'm not in the breakout room with them and they can say and this is very helpful in mediations if you're in caucus sometimes the parties want to discuss things privately attorney/client and then they contact me when they're ready for me to come in and give me the offer they want me to take to the other party so so look for that kind of a feature when you're thinking about which platform to use security okay so there's this thing going on right now because zoom is extremely popular of course that's where the bad guys go and there's this phenomenon now called zoom bombing where someone is able to hack the city session and post some really nasty stuff and it's possible if other you know it's but this is also possible on another platform so I'm going to give you some security tips that will minimize the chance that this can happen one is that you want a feature that will allow the hosts ie the mediator to prevent the participants from joining the session before the set before the mediator joints in other words you know they're they can't get in until you have logged in another nice tool that you might want to think about to prevent security issues is the ability to place participants in a waiting room or some platforms call it a lobby and then they go in this verse jool space they can't get into the meeting until the mediator lets them in now this is good not only for security but also for confidence yeah the competency in appearance of impartiality you don't really want participants in the main session alone with the mediator before all the participants are in there so if you put them in a virtual waiting room you can explain to them either in advance and your ground rules or I even have text on my waiting room that says you're gonna be in here until I admit you while you're in the waiting room you're not able to converse with each other or with me and I tell them why I'm doing that and I tell them you won't be in there very long another tool that you should look for to enhance security is the ability to lock the meeting the host should be able to lock the meeting so that no unauthorized people can get in there's some tips about scheduling when you're scheduling the online session be careful with your emails don't widely broadcast your email invitation try to target it to only the individuals that are authorized to come in and now it's it's difficult to control an email once you've sent it other people can forward it but hopefully you know if you if you impress on people in advance like we've discussed the need for security they won't do that finally the the last clue that I'll mention last hint that I'll mention is providing parties with a password what you really want to do is is have a password but don't include it in your email invitations what I do is I call the parties ahead of time and I give them the password over the phone so hopefully with these kinds of security features you won't run into hacking problems okay a really good feature that you would want to look for in a in an online platform is the ability to share documents and applications online or excuse me on screen so this is really helpful when you're drafting an agreement for example or whether the parties need to share important information like in a family law context if you want to you could put up an Excel spreadsheet showing finances or that's the way I use it is I open a word document on my computer I share the screen with all participants and then as we hammer out an agreement I type it in the screen share application ie in my word and and then everybody can see it all the participants can see it and if I make some errors or if they want to change things we we just do it right there on the screen another another nice feature to look for is a whiteboard this is in the screen sharing area some some platforms have a whiteboard that that the mediator can draw and or all participants can draw on you can type into it it's really handy if you want to construct a diagram let's say you're doing a personal injury auto accident case you need to reconstruct the scene of the accident just so everybody's on the same same sheet of music with the facts so you can draw on the whiteboard and that can be saved and be saved in the cloud or it can be saved on the mediators computer for added security okay next slide so gonna run over some of the technology options there are several things that are out there these are some of the more popular ones I'm going to cover cover these things so Google Hangouts this is what we're using now it's part of it's part of what Google calls the G suite the G suite has a set of basic Google tools the cost for the basic version is six dollars a month the business version is twelve dollars a month both of those services have hangouts that will take up to 150 participants per call it is integrated with the Google Calendar so you can schedule meetings very easily you can use it on an Android or an iPhone you can screen share you can group edit documents you can store documents in a shared Drive like Google Docs one of the main drawbacks though it does not have a breakout room feature I could find one and also when I've used it I only get four thumbnail pictures of the participants at one time I stay in the upper right corner and so for me only being able to see you know four thumbnails at a time is it's not going to be great when I have more than four people for a mediation encryption again I'm not so sure it's but let me just say this for encryption the most secure encryption that you can use is called end-to-end encryption and and and this involves a generation of a private key and a public key such that the sender and the recipient are the only ones who can read the communication okay so that's the most secure encryption capability the other type that's more prevalent probably is the transport layer type of security which means it's encrypted but the provider can access it if they choose and they may be legally required to access access it and provide it to government authorities so what I found on Google Hangouts is that they encrypt in transit which means they're using transport layer security so that your messages are available to Google and if Google gets a request from from a lawful law enforcement authority they have to turn it over so just be aware of that as a as an issue for security okay next I'm going to go to meeting so go to meeting has HD video conferencing the number of participants depends on the pricing plan the cost for a professional plan is $12 a month and that gets you 150 participants you can get a business plan for sixteen dollars a month and that gets you up to 250 participants again you can use it on both types of smart phones it does have screen sharing it does integrate with calendars for your scheduling and it does have end-to-end encryption so this is really good for confidentiality but I didn't find any breakout room feature on GoToMeeting now because of the Indian encryption it's you know and if you're not going to do caucusing perhaps this would be a good choice for you I know a lot of mediators don't do caucusing so you know that is something to consider the next one I want to talk about is WebEx and now WebEx has upgraded its free plan in the in this era of the coronavirus they they now have a free account that allows a hundred participants it was fifty there there now is no time limit on the door they used to have a 40 minute limit but during the crisis they they've taken that off you get HD video you get screen sharing whiteboard sharing starter account is 1350 a month it will integrate with your calendar and you can get a mid-sized team plan for 1795 a month you get a large team plan for twenty six ninety five a month and that gets you up to two hundred participants it does work on the phone it has breakout rooms you can select you can select end-to-end encryption for this and you can put people in a what they call a lobby to wait until the host admits them and you can lock meetings so this appears to be a pretty secure platform I understand the Department of Justice uses it and probably other government agencies so that is something to to consider there's a program out there called slack I'll just mention it because it's good for teams instead of organizing communications by individual inbox what slack does is organize communications by channel meaning that it's based on a team concept so that everybody on a team can see the communication and it's important to note here it does integrate with lots of apps and services including zoom so think about that okay let me let me talk about zoom you've heard a lot about the best for last well you've heard a lot about zoom it is very popular it's the one that the three of us use we could we could recommend it for within certain limitations and I'm going to go over those you can get what's called a pro account which is a pretty reasonable 15 dollars a month covers hundred participants there is a free account but that is limited to 40 minutes of use whereas the pro account gives you sessions of unlimited during duration it does have a virtual background as I mentioned but if you don't have the the most recent equipment you have to use a green screen which I can I understand there from from looking at the zoom tutorials is available on Amazon I haven't done that but ok it has a waiting room you can as I mentioned before you can put people in this virtual waiting room before you admit them you can lock the session you can prevent participants from joining until the host joins and that's another layer of security has breakout rooms as we mentioned screen sharing whiteboard and boarding you thought you integrate with your calendars so it's very easy to schedule so I need to say a few words about encryption on Zoom it does have end-to-end encryption for chat ok so that's that is a feature the zoo website says that you can enable int and encryption for meetings but there have been articles out there by technical experts saying that this may not be true that they really for meetings only use transport layer encryption which again to recap means that they can access it as well as any lawful government request now soom has put out a statement that they have strict policies that prevent employees from accessing user data unless they're lawfully required to do so and they say that they don't mine or sell the user data data so I think pardon me I think the bottom line to take away is that you as we've said before you have to know your platform you have to know what the security protocols are you have to really discuss it with the parties for most cases my feeling is that the Xoom security would be sufficient but if you have a very sensitive case you know perhaps trade secrets perhaps highly sensitive personal or health information you you know the parties might want the highest security which would be the end-to-end encryption and in that case you you might want to consider a platform other than zoom but I think for the purposes that I use it for I think my most of my parties would feel that it would provide sufficient security okay next slide please so a couple of things a few things we don't recommend we don't recommend what's app or FaceTime they do have good end-to-end encryption okay so that's a good thing but they don't have the features that are really useful for mediation like screen sharing and breakout rooms the also the what's apt is limited to four participants in a group video conference and as far as I can tell you cannot also you can't make a video call on a desktop FaceTime can only be used on a Mac or an iPhone whereas a lot of users have windows so that's a limitation we've talked about Google Hangouts meet again doesn't have a breakout room doesn't have full attendees thumbnails doesn't have and an encryption so I would not recommend it for mediation at on that basis on skype it does have group videos with up to 50 people it does have screen sharing I think I would have concerns about the security you do have to opt in for end-to-end encryption if if you don't and somebody calls in from a landline or a mobile phone that communication trend transits over the like switch Network and that's not going to be encrypted also if you listen to a voice call with Skype on the call goes from skypes server to your local machine and it's not going to be encrypted there so I think we would probably not recommend using Skype okay next one next slide please a back-up plan we've talked about this already but I'm just gonna hit it again based on CeCe's admonition that we need to say it and say it again tele Vaart party's in advance what your plan is first try to log in again using the initial instructions if that doesn't work call or email the mediator and then you can always call in phone but again if you call in by phone you're on the public switch network and it's not gonna be encrypted last slide please so practice practice practice you know use use the platform try it out with coworkers try it out with family members I can't emphasize enough the importance of demonstrating your competency spelled correctly and because that just generates trust both in you as the mediator and in the process okay so party should do that ahead of time they need to be comfortable now what I do is I offer to run a zoom practice session with the attorneys and the parties ahead of time I've had people take me up on this and it's been extremely useful we've uncovered all kinds of technical problems which are you want to get those out of the way before the session you don't want to take 20 30 minutes of your Cori ordered mediation time for example to iron out technical problems that does not indicate that you're competent well it doesn't engender trust and as people have said there's lots of YouTube platforms there's lots of tutorials on each platform Hey last slide is just me there we go okay all right so I was not watching the questions as they came in our yep I have a bunch of questions for you um people are asking about the free versus the pain for zoom and the limits that you have you know the force versus unlimited can you talk about that for a second sure the free zoo pardon me is limited to 40 minutes and I think I think you can get a hundred participants I mean I don't think I don't think the participant limit is going to be a problem on the free account the main difference is the duration of the session you get unlimited duration with the pro account for $15 a month I would ask both Cici and John this question how would you change agreement to mediate knowing that you now have security issues how would you address that with your clients what I say in mind is that the first I stress that there are always risks in whatever platform you use and that I indicate I will discuss those risks with the parties ahead of time and then they will be responsible for accepting the choice of the platform I also have boilerplate language in all of my emails that say I will undertake reasonable efforts to provide security for those communications but by communicating with me by email the parties except for risk of disclosure so you see any thoughts I know there were a couple people popping up saying that if you're the host you don't have to worry the a participants don't have to pay we've got to say that your producer the subscription it's the host that needs the subscription that's true correct Suzy what are your thoughts on this how you would advise clients on the security issues well I basically have some langree Minh sand then I also some you know conversations with them so I have it in the name we have it in by online they have it doctoring remarks so again it's it's an evolving place it's like any other contract that we seem to develop it is that we we find something that needs to be covered and we add to it my concern in is in my family law agreements to mediate I don't want to overdo the language in the agreement itself so I try and almost bullet point those concepts and go over them more when I'm talking to them about what that means in the agreement with my commercial agreements are not as concerned about the length of them because most commercial folks are used to us lawyers creating 20-page contracts over one-page concept just kidding we're worth every word so there's been some comments and this is more towards Andrea and Angela people there Spain if we all want to get zoom licenses can MSBA look into coming up whether we can get a group discount I think that's a brilliant idea because I wish I would have invested in zoom you know a month ago because everybody and their brother is using zoom but maybe that's something we can ask MSBA to look into to see if we can get a discount now that there's so many of us probably wanting to get licenses they answer it now we're just throwing it out there everyone's asking about agreements to mediate and your addendum CC would you be willing to share that information with the crowd and with John would you be willing to share it I know I will I'm fine with that I'm fine with sharing change it though because like with John how John the security piece about accepting risk so this is why it's always welding we can learn from each other we like to share but we don't like to share the koban 19 so that's one thing we're not gonna share somebody asks how do they get back in the room John once they once you put them in the room how do you get them back in the host can control that they if let's say the client wants to talk with his or her attorney privately so I leave the I have the ability to go in and out of the breakout room so I leave that room and so they can when they're ready they can send me an inquiry and then as the host I have a screen where I can take them out of the breakout room there was also a question about saving the whiteboard and saving the shared screen is that an issue that you're concerned about that people might take it in and keep copies of it not you could both answer that I have not used a whiteboard yet in my zoom mediations my policy is that if I have something on a whiteboard and people want to take a photo of it that I don't I will allow them to do that so that they can recall what's on the whiteboard so I don't have a problem with people keeping their notes or keeping that material if there's something that people do not want to be shared that is something when you're in a breakout room you have to be clear about and then make sure that you're not sharing a document by accident that you agreed you wouldn't share because you can collect documents in the background and go to share document and click on a particular document but they tend to be a little bit like thumbnails and so you just need to be careful to make sure you document your opening when you're either in main session or in a breakout room so those are important things I don't have a problem with it if with zoom if for example I can see freely right now she picks up a phone and puts it in front of to take a picture of the whiteboard I'm gonna know because I can see her but again I don't have a problem with that that's going to be particularly the participants and the actual material on the whiteboard yeah I'm the same with CC you know before I was zooming a lot I would use sticky easel pad paper you know to write on and if I needed more I'd stick them up around the room right and then that was that was in joint session and so anything in joint session seems to me capturable by the participants with and so when I would stick the sticky easel board paper on the wall people would take cell phone pictures of it so they'd have it for their future reference and the whiteboard is exactly the same thing it's just that now it's just online and I think it's going to be whenever your policy is we'd let them know at the beginning I do not know Trane's oome were a participant essentially do a screenshot of the of a whiteboard and I guess that's something that maybe John you and I can take a look at I've never had that question come up but it would be it would be something that you need to set up as a policy beforehand you can't do the screen shot you can't you know the same as recording it you know you cannot keep a copy unless everyone agrees and I in you know yeah I I think I make that clear at the beginning I'm not going to collect notes and tell people they can't keep what they want to keep right there's a feature in zoom so that the host can turn off participant recordings right they don't have the ability to record the host can turn that off I think what's amazing about just us having this conversation and this presentation today is I'm writing down notes of things I didn't even know we're capable of doing so I think that it's great to keep having these conversations to keep talking because we learn more every time we have these discussions somebody made a great point I think it was LuAnn saying wouldn't it be great if MSBA could get zoomed to do a webinar for our whole entire you know group and they could deal with some of these issues like John and Cece said zoom is now people are doing book clubs buy zoom they're doing happy hours by zoom they're doing um coffee check boom and you're going to learn the basics but I think what we're all looking to do is try to get beyond the basics so we can help our clients use all the tools in the toolbox other questions it's I'm hearing a lot of questions about security issues and I think that we're gonna end up shaking things are gonna get shaken out as we use it more and more to try to figure out and how do you zoom we're gonna also have people figuring out what works and what doesn't work and there's always gonna be a few bad eggs any thoughts guys about this she's gonna be an issue yeah let me let me just jump in so I was a senior counsel at the National Security Agency and before that I was the cyber counsel for many years and so look no platform is a hundred percent secure everything has bugs and it's it's it's a cycle platforms will find bugs or or the bugs will be found by others and the platforms will issue upgrades and patches this is this is normal this is the way the industry works you know you so what I'm saying is you may see articles that will pop up about bugs and weaknesses that are found you know it's going to happen probably more with zoom because zoom is much more in the public eye and you know like a bank robber where's the bank robber go the bank robber goes where the money is okay so the bad guys are now going to go to zoom and try to take a really hard look at all the all the programming all the protocols and so forth so they'll probably find some weaknesses what we can hope is that zoom will become aware of those and we'll issue patches and upgrades so my so my comment is this is part of the world we live in and you know it will it will happen and and unfortunately you know there are people find more bugs than people are comfortable with but they'll get patched like there's there's about nine minutes left does anybody have some burning questions they want to throw up on the chat before the our time is up just Google Hangouts have a whiteboard it's the sample agreements don't worry about those I'm not there was a question whether Google Hangouts has a whiteboard no MSD hey I don't believe it does you can share your screen and you could use an online whiteboard that way but you can I don't think it has a built into the Google hangout platform Terry there's one there for you about campus Kelly credits for this seminar I think I this CC if you were asking me to chime in on that we're not offering CLE credits for this this is informational only okay thank you here's a good question - the platform's require users to download and install programs I can I would say generally yes certainly zoom does it's a right so though so the way it would work is that the let's say you get a zoom account and you've opted for the pro account and you download software onto your phone and your computer and it's called client a client app that gives you ability to schedule meetings set security and so forth then if you schedule meeting and invite people there they would have to download an app to use it I have not run into any problems with anybody downloading that app at all I just I send it to them and it it seems to work fairly seamlessly just um the errand if you do the basic zoom its you only allow cool people so they they do limit how many people you can have it's 40 minutes and three people according to Erin and I trust Erin because she seems to be pretty awesome I think most people are saying I so I think it's a good time to wrap up we really appreciate everybody participating gonna be a coffee chat follow put on the MS MSP ADR and that's actually run by Jeff Truman who's a civil practitioner and he's gonna have gym mats a and Ellen Biggs who do a lot of different areas of family and otherwise that will follow and that will pipe in the next two weeks it's a hot topic and I think it'll get more advanced as we do more of these chats and it'll be more questions with more detail but I thank you all for coming and sharing your morning with us