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.
While we can’t cover all the options and settings for Zoom, 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 200 million free and paid daily meeting participants in March 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 just 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’ve updated our previous Zoom article 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.
Basics
The first question for rookies is…what the heck is this thing called Zoom? According to the website, “Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software–based conference room solution used around the world in board, conference, huddle, and training rooms, as well as executive offices and classrooms.”
Zoom is extremely easy to use (for lawyers and clients!) and is available across multiple platforms and operating systems. You can use your mobile device with apps available for Android and iOS. There are desktop clients available for macOS, Windows and a bunch of Linux/Unix versions (e.g. Ubuntu, Linux, CentOS, OpenSUSE, etc.).
