Home

LegalMeetings for Courts - Additional Information

Submitted by eva on Mon, 02/25/2008 - 7:53pm.

LegalMeetings facilitates cost-effective coordination and communication among and within courts, state bars, the IOLTA community and legal aid programs, while reducing expenses associated with travel and training. The National Technology Assistance Project (NTAP) charges its affiliates a minimal fee to use LegalMeetings, which covers the basic cost of licensing and support. The LegalMeetings project is not a vendor-service; LSNTAP strives to leverage the legal aid and court communities with web conferencing vendors to get an affordable rate for programs.

 

Examples in Legal Services

LegalMeetings can help your multi-office program get work done without having to drive:

  • Board, Staff, Task Force & Management Meetings,
  • Staff Training & Remote Tech Support,
  • One-On-One Document Review and Edit,
  • Advocacy Brainstorm Sessions,
  • Substantive Law Review Sessions, and
  • Remote Mentorship with New Attorneys or Volunteers.

 

 

Cost Savings to Your Program. In 2006, NTAP evaluated several programs' use of LegalMeetings to assess the cost benefit to their programs. One example is Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP). In 2006, they conducted 157 online meetings using LegalMeetings. According to GLSP, the average driving distance between offices is 3.5 hours by car and five offices require an overnight stay if visited. Based on their analysis, we estimated that GLSP had an estimated cost benefit of $23,424.00 in staff time alone by using LegalMeetings.

Costs: Single license program: $40 per month / Multi License program: $35 per month

Please see How do I Sign Up? for more information.

 

What about the Phone? There is NO additional cost to use the Citrix conference call service, but this service requires that all participants pay their own long distance cost. If you want to use toll-free phone services, we recommend using InterCall Phone Conferencing, which is 5.9 cents a minute for premiere, reliable, award-winning audio quality. This is not included with LegalMeetings, but can be set up for your program within a day. You can also use your program's current phone conferencing provider as an alternative. See: Phone Conferencing Options.

 

What is the Difference Between GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar?

LegalMeetings is powered by Citrix GoToWebinar Corporate web conferencing. All users have access to both the GoToMeeting platform and the GoToWebinar platform. Both products are excellent, but they serve different purposes. There are three considerations that would determine which one you should use for a given meeting:

  • How many people will attend your meeting? GoToMeeting only supports 26 people (including you) to attend. If you think you might have more than 26 folks, you'll need to use GoToWebinar.

  • How easy do you need the scheduling to be? GoToMeeting supports an instant meeting (Meet Now). GoToWebinar requires pre-planning and scheduling takes about three minutes online. Also, your attendees will need to register before they can attend. In GoToMeeting, they just click on a link or enter a meeting number to attend.
  • Do you need extensive reporting or polling features? GoToWebinar has excellent reporting functionality. You can see analyses of who registered, who attended, how interested they were, who took the polls, the results of polls and surveys, and other factors. GoToMeeting simply provides limited reports on meetings and numbers of attendees. If you need these additional features, you'll use GoToWebinar.

 

 

Highlights of Citrix GoToMeeting:

  • Very easy to download and use (and faster)
  • Very easy to use (easy to share a screen)
  • Can start a meeting from your desktop or Outlook quickly
  • Up to 26 attendees in your meeting at one time
  • Can chat, change presenters, and give keyboard control to others
  • Can draw, highlight, or annotate a document
  • No File Transfer capability
  • Record as wmv file or Citrix -software file

 

 

Highlights of Citrix GoToWebinar

  • Requires scheduling (can't do an instant webinar)
  • The webinar training registration system is superior
  • Excellent reporting on attendance, participation, and interest
  • Excellent polling features (must be done prior, however)
  • They have a QuickPoll feature (using three emoticons).
  • Attendees can ask questions to panelists, presenters or organizers, and the responder can share the answer with all attendees. (Panelists chat with eachother instead.)
  • Annotation tools allow for drawing, highlights, pointing, and a "laser pointer".
  • Great survey feature at end available to you to evaluate your webinar
  • Up to 1000 attendees
  • No additional phone costs if you use Citrix phone service (everyone pays their own long-distance)
  • Cannot mute with the computer. You can use the phone pad to mute all attendees or have them mute themselves.