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Last year in Miami, a multi-day international arbitration involving two very large global law firms took place in a “pop-up” high-tech hearing room equipped with state-of-the-art evidence presentation and trial bundle software. Paperless trial technology was integrated with real-time interpretation services in Spanish, English and French to accommodate multinational participants and witnesses. Some case team members participated onsite, while others did so remotely from their respective branches in the U.S., the UK and continental Europe.

Parties and witnesses in this confidential matter were also able to follow and participate in the proceedings, as necessary, from a variety of locations worldwide. The parties agreed to share the costs associated with setting up the cloud-based infrastructure, which gave authorized participants secure access to all case-related materials in a variety of media from their preferred Internet-connected device. The same infrastructure also established private virtual workspaces (“war rooms”) for legal teams to share amongst themselves, providing them with round-the-clock online access to the same case materials — as well their own work product — to facilitate collaboration on the tactical and strategic details that would shape the legal arguments they would ultimately present in hearings.