Cobley’s LLP was established in 1983 by senior Partner Neil Cobley and has grown to be one of the largest specialist litigation practices on Merseyside.

Cobley’s have been involved in many high profile cases in all of their specialist fields. Cobley’s have a national reputation and expertise in Criminal Law, Personal Injury and Children Cases.

Cobley’s where looking to improve efficiencies within the business and had heard a great deal about how Video Conferencing could greatly reduce costs associated time and travel for solicitors. Neil Cobley approached Rapid Technologies as he had heard we had delivered Video Conferencing solutions for Solicitors and Barristers in the city. He explained that he felt fee earners time in the business was being wasted by travelling to and from prisons and law courts out the Merseyside area. He was looking for a system that would allow his staff to have quality meetings and was easy to use.

In our discussions we discovered there was a wider brief that needed to be met. The customer was not just looking for a Video Conferencing facility but a meeting room solution. Cobley’s held a lot of presentations, training sessions and internal meetings in the room so required technology that would also allow them to carry out these business critical applications. Rapid Technologies consultants surveyed their main meeting room that could cater for up to 20 people and realised very quickly that the client would require a large display that would be easily viewable for video meetings, presentations and internal meetings and a video conferencing system that would support a Pan Tilt Zoom camera allowing people holding video meetings to be able to participate from any chair in the room.

Rapid Technologies proposal consisted of a Video Conferencing system mounted onto a wall with large 50” Plasma TV. The system proposed allowed Cobley’s to make calls either via IP (Internet) or via ISDN lines. This gave the customer the benefit of being able to make calls to any video conferencing system.

The system consisted of a Pan Tilt Zoom camera that gave 180O view of the room and allowed whole groups or just single individuals to participate in the video meetings.

The system supported Multi-Point calls as it was necessary sometimes that Cobley’s may need to make a video call involving participants at multiple locations i.e. Cobley’s may have wanted a video meeting with Barristers in London and Newcastle at the same time.

The proposal also made allowance to share documentation in the video call either electronically or printed. This was achieved via the system allowing a PC to be connected directly to it for the sharing of electronic documents. This was also complemented by a Document camera also known as a visualiser, this is a camera that is connected directly to the video conferencing system and allows an image of a printed or handwritten document to be shared in the video call.

We completed our proposal with an option for connecting a DVD player to the video conferencing system allowing Cobley’s to replay video evidence into a video call so participants near and far could view it.

Cobley’s accepted our proposal and the installation was scheduled in and completed by our qualified installation team. Rapid also provided Cobley’s with training for the staff and on-going support and maintenance.

Neil Cobley, senior partner said “We looked at a number of solution providers, but Rapid Technologies consultative approach and attention to detail around our requirements won it.

Their solution more than met our expectations and we realised a very quick return on investment through Rapids training and advice on best practice usage. This solution has more than paid for itself and is used pretty much every day for meetings and is popular with our top fee earners, for them it’s just like using a telephone. We have found this has freed them up to attend to other office based tasks and has improved their work / life balance. “