I manage a court’s Zoom, and one thing that would really be helpful is the ability to password protect certain breakout rooms, or even lock/unlock a breakout room.
While currently we can have court staff be co-hosts and move attorneys and their clients around, it would be easier for us to allow zoom participants to freely go to whichever breakout room they desired (this feature already exists).
However, if we allowed zoom participants to freely choose to go into any room, an issue would arise when an attorney is having a confidential communication with a client in a breakout room and someone else could join or interrupt that meeting.
Another issue that would arise is when court is actively in session, a zoom participant interrupting an active case would be a hassle.
If we had the option to password protect rooms, like the breakout room that the judge is in, then only a host/co-host could move people in there and staff that need to be able to enter the room could join freely. Additionally, if we had the ability to lock and unlock breakout rooms, we could prevent active court sessions and attorney-client interviews from being disrupted.
While having co-hosts and hosts manage moving zoom participants between breakout rooms is currently working well, allowing the free movement of zoom participants while password protecting some rooms and having the ability to lock/unlock breakout rooms would allow our court staff to focus less on zoom logistics like moving people around, and more on actual court duties.
Now that many jurisdictions are moving back to in-person hearings (while still allowing remote hearings via zoom), managing in-person attorneys and clients while also managing zoom is difficult. These two features would be wonderful because it would remove a lot of grunt work for our court staff and free up a lot of time. It would allow the free movement of people without interrupting court or interviews, and would allow our court staff co-hosts to focus more on court than on managing zoom logistics.
Our last request for co-hosts to be able to assign/move people between breakout rooms
was implemented and it was truly a blessing. We’re hoping that this feature can be implemented too, as it would be convenient for court staff, attorneys, and clients to retain the ability to appear remotely (even after the pandemic). And allowing the zoom to effectively run itself would solve the only obstacle that is currently hinders our ability to manage in-person and remote cases simultaneously.
Thanks again!