by Gabrielle Hammond and Emily Tennant (NTAP)

“Collaboration often (nearly always) bears fruit in ways never anticipated at the outset.”

Unlike other technologies employed in legal services where individual programs pay for and benefit from new tools, video conferencing technologies catalyze partnerships uniquely. By offering the opportunity for increased delivery of client services to a wide variety of social services organizations that face similar problems caused by sparsely scattered constituencies, partnerships can be instrumental in managing the sustained costs of any video conferencing network. Both Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Maine (http://www.ptla.org) and Montana Legal Services Association (http://www.mtlsa.org) are currently working to build a base of partners who will contribute monthly to the recurring costs in order to share usage of the system.

In this article, we have gathered information about the partnerships and collaborative projects related to the video conferencing systems utilized by legal aid programs in Maine, Montana, and Hawaii. You will find both highlights of the video conferencing project in each state and links to descriptions of the specific partnerships.

Improving Internal Management
The single benefit of video conferencing most-cited by programs using it is the improvement of internal management within their program. This advantage has resulted in large cost savings and dramatically heightened communication among staff and attorneys across offices. However, the benefits will be felt most strongly in areas where a number of talented staff members are dispersed over a geographic region large enough to impede transportation and communication. Video conferencing has been applied as a strategy to deal with several other internal management hurdles:

by Hugh Calkins (PTLA), Bill Yarian (LASH), Alison Paul (MLSA)

While most new technologies offer programs the promise of improved service or efficiency of advocacy, an effective project director will see past the sales pitches of vendors to analyze - beyond the generic strengths of any technology - whether the investment is appropriate for your specific program, how it will improve your services to clients, and what will be needed to make it successful.

With that in mind, this article takes an in-depth look at both the costs and the benefits of video conferencing to help you make an informed decision about whether it is right for your program. It reviews primary factors that affect this decision, using several case studies to demonstrate how video conferencing technology can improve areas like litigation, client service delivery, and community partnerships. It also provides an overview of specific equipment needs and sample costs associated with implementing video conferencing.

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