The coronavirus pandemic has forced a lot of lawyers to utilize video conferencing to “meet” with co-workers and clients. One of the most popular video conferencing platforms is Zoom. There are others, but we see Zoom as the choice of many lawyers, especially those in solo and small firms. Many courts are also using Zoom for various court proceedings. While we can’t cover all the options and settings for Zoom (there are a ton of them), we’ll try to give our advice on the best way to use and secure Zoom for your firm.
The growth in Zoom usage has exploded. As of the end of December 2019, there were approximately 10 million free and paid daily meeting participants. In contrast, that number has increased to over 300 million free and paid daily meeting participants in April of 2020. The boom in usage has squarely put the crosshairs on Zoom. Multiple security and privacy issues have been discovered and exposed by security researchers and journalists. Some of the publicity was justified and some of the media statements were wrong or overblown.
On April 1, 2020, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan announced that there would be a feature freeze for the next 90 days while resources are concentrated on fixing the “biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues.” As a result, we continue to update our previous Zoom article(s) as Zoom is currently in damage control mode fixing those issues. Make no mistake about it though – clients and lawyers both love Zoom and, as Zoom has fixed more and more security defects, we believe it is a darn good videoconferencing solution for lawyers as long as they learn how to use it properly.
Now that the 90 day “moratorium” feature freeze is over, the latest Zoom version includes features to enhance the user experience. We’ll address a few of the new features lawyers will want to know about later in this document.
