During the fall of 2000 Communitek Video Systems, Inc.(Communitek) was contacted by the Director of the City of New York Law Department, Malachy Higgins, to engineer an electronic solution for capturing legal depositions. A legal deposition is also known as an Examination Before Trial (EBT). Confronted with shortages of stenographic talent and the associated inefficiencies of paper based record taking, the City of New York was looking for a way to reduce looses of cases and monies due to stenographic inaccuracies, no-shows and the unneeded production of unused transcriptions. To address these challenges Communitek created the EBT Recording System.

The first demonstration of the EBT System was held on February 26^th 2001. It was attended by a dozen members of the NYC Law Department, including many department heads. At the demonstration actual EBTs were successfully made by the participants. Afterwards a contract was drawn up to supply 35 EBT systems throughout all 5 boroughs of New York City connected to 1 central server system.

This was the first implementation of the EBT Recording System, and Communitek continued to enhance the features and capabilities of the system. For a number of years, there appeared to be nothing similar in operation, thus Communitek pursue a Patent for the product. During the 2002 to 2003 period, Communitek migrated it’s software to follow Microsoft’s operating system platform changes from NT to 2000 to XP.

In the ensuing years, Communitek observed that the legal field is very slow to change, even if change is an advantage to its efficiency. As we heard at many trade shows, ‘if it isn’t a system for producing more billing there is no interest’. Of course, anything that can reduce millions of dollars from the expense and liability side of a business needs serious consideration. Only relatively recently have companies become comfortable with a greater use of IT, video and other technologies to garner profits by paring overhead and liability. Thus, recently, the EBT System is getting a high degree of attention from major players in the legal and insurance industries.

In 2004 the product was demonstrated to Chubb insurance. After some preliminary demonstrations at Chubb’s Legal Department Headquarters in Uniondale, NY, a real-life EBT was scheduled for a Chubb automobile accident claims case. Chubb wasn’t taking any chances though and scheduled a stenographer to document the EBT along with Communitek's EBT Recording System. As is not all that uncommon in the deposition business, the stenographer did not show up for the EBT. It was suggested that the EBT be cancelled. This was the EBT System’s opportunity to shine. Communitek convinced Chubb to go on with the EBT using the System. The Chubb lawyer was in Hicksville, New York with the EBT System, while the insurance policy holder of the automobile being deposed was in Florida, connected via a broadband link. The EBT System perfectly captured the event, both in New York and Florida. From the captured EBT electronically transmitted to a Communitek provided third party vendor, a transcript was made of the EBT. The transcript was also synchronized to the digital audio/video of the EBT. All of this was done within a 24 hour turn around atan  extremely reasonable price, with no additional charges for duplicate transcript copies. The deposition was conformed in standard deposition transcription format (as found in legal text programs), and the file of the transcript provided to the customer at no additional cost for them with the ability to make unlimited copies as they require.

For many EBTs, transcripts may never be made. Our research shows that many law and insurance firms only use and need transcripts for about 20% of the depositions which they capture. Of course, it is a necessity to properly capture all depositions since the ones which will be required for use is unknown until after the fact.

As previously mentioned about the NYC Law Department, many cases are lost due to inaccurate and contested stenography. With Communitek’s Patented EBT System, locked-in, date and time coded digital audio/video and speech converted to text are captured, thus any discrepancies can be quickly and accurately verified.

Another recently added feature to the EBT System, is the ability to pick and assemble clips from Depositions, which can be easily loaded on to an attorney’s Laptop computer for courtroom use. Currently, Communitek has a suite of products that make up the EBT System, which can be configured into a turn-key systems for specific legal and non-legal applications.

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