Page 12 - Jan Feb 2022 PPIAC Newsletter_Neat

RDG: Are you seeing a trend for online tools like Zoom become a
normal part of what we do, or is it temporary until everyone
gets back together?

Matt: I think you’re going to see our business communities dictate
that. If you work with attorneys, you’re going to follow the lead
of what they’re doing. They’re going to be doing their
depositions, their trial conferences, their pre-trial conferences,
and things like that virtually, you’re going to see us continue to
do that.

As legislation comes into effect, like in New York, they recently
passed a law that you can now do statements via Zoom or
electronically. Where you don’t have to be in front of a person
to do a notarized sworn statement. That is going to affect our
industry, it already has affected our industry, and it’s not going
away because it was a law that was just passed.

Again, taking into consideration that the Courts are still
backlogged, for a year and a half now, their number one goal is
to get things moving along as fast as possible. If they can use
these new things to do that, then they will do that, and I think
you’re going to see that across the board. And as investigators
we have to be willing to adapt to that. We have to be willing to
adapt and change. If a client asks you to take a statement and do
it via Zoom, you’re billing accordingly for it…and understand that
you’ll going to probably have to be billing less for it…because of
the time that’s going to be needed for it. You’re going to have to
be sensitive to that. And hopefully you’ll be making it up in
volume. Just continue to be fair on how you’re doing your work.
Don’t do it for free, obviously, but don’t do it for an extreme
discount. Just understand that you may have to discount things
along the way to get the work. That’s definitely something to be
aware of.

RDG: Hopefully, things like this will open new opportunities…new
things for us. Do you see any other new markets that are going
to be affected by these new technologies?

Matt: We just have to be willing to adapt. Our days are going to look
differently. We have access to the most amount of information
that we’ve ever had access to, and it’s only going to get better.
We’re gaining more information than we’re losing.

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January / February 2022 The Informant Page 12