Video Replacing Lawyers’ ‘Paper Chase’?

When the soft-voiced witness in the drunk-driving case meandered off the subject, the defense lawyer struck.

“What is the basis of your objection, counsel?” asked the stern-faced judge.

The defense attorney struck again. The judge responded benignly, “sustained,” and the trial continued.

What Los Angeles County Deputy Public Defender John J. Vacca actually struck was a key on a small computer, and the trial Friday proceeded on a television monitor fed by a videodisc.

Applying Textbook Knowledge

Vacca was trying out interactive video, a new marriage of computer software and videodiscs designed to teach professionals and other workers how to apply textbook knowledge to real-life situations.

Initially used by young doctors learning emergency room techniques and by assembly line workers, the system has been adapted for lawyers by Harvard University Law School.

Alan Cohen of VeraCorp, video subsidiary of Lawyer’s Cooperative Publishing Corp., brought the system to the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles on Friday to try it out on Vacca; David Meyer, chief of the public defender’s central trials division, and Roger L. Stanton, chief of the public defender’s branch and area offices. The three supervise the training of new deputies in the 460-lawyer office.

Cohen said the system has been welcomed in its beginning stages by law schools--although some professors express fears that it will make them obsolete--but he wanted feedback from practicing lawyers.

Available are videodiscs and companion computer floppy discs for 13 mock trials picturing objectionable testimony or exhibits about every 20 seconds.

The operator in the role of defense attorney strikes a computer key to object, and then selects the reason from a multiple choice list. If the operator errs, the videodisc shows the correct way the evidence should have been presented and the computer disc may list correct procedures that can be printed out and taken to a real court as a reminder. If he is correct, the video trial proceeds.

Prices--for a year’s subscription rather than a purchase because discs must be updated as laws change--start at $500 per lesson.

Developers hope interactive video will become indispensable to government law offices like the public defender’s and to private law firms for practical trial training as well as a “tutorial” for law schools. Cohen said each lesson requires about one hour for a trainee to work through, saving many hours of highly paid senior attorneys’ time spent in teaching newcomers the ropes of practical trial work.

“I like the concept,” Meyer said. “It’s fabulous for law school. It would be an invaluable tool in trial practice class.”

Cohen said studies at Harvard showed that students, most of whom grew up playing video games as well as watching television, learn one-third faster with interactive video than using traditional methods such as textbooks and lectures.

The veteran defense lawyers had some reservations, however, about using the technique in their own shop.

Each two-disc lesson teaches procedures according to federal law and general legal principles applicable in all states--which the lawyers pointed out may differ somewhat from specific California rules of evidence.

But their main objection was that the system failed to train a neophyte lawyer to take into account the personal reactions of a judge or jurors. Sometimes, the lawyers said, it is wise to ignore minor evidential errors rather than insist on technical perfection, which the lessons teach.

‘Bad Vibrations’

“When you see the judge glaring at you like that, and you continue to make objections to a lot of ticky-tacky stuff,” Stanton said, “all you end up doing is sending a lot of bad vibrations.”

“We don’t want our people going into court testing the technical objections book,” Meyer added. “This teaches like a video game--yes or no, digital answers. That is not the way it works in a courtroom.”

Vacca said the system has possibilities as a technique for teaching new government attorneys, but he would want to test it on a few new employees. Low budgets and lack of hardware, particularly videodisc players, also could limit the system’s use in government law offices, the men added.