The future of virtual reality in law – does VR technology have a place in the courtroom?
Accident reconstruction models available immediately. Depositions gathered face-to-face with no travel time. Courtrooms rendered with — yes, with — the blink of an eye.
This isn’t our reality quite yet, but it might be soon — or, at least, it might soon become our virtual reality. In recent years, technology like the VIVE Pro Eye, a virtual reality (or VR) headset complete with eye tracking software that made its North American debut in early June, has become increasingly prevalent in our culture.
Tech like this has been a long time coming, longer than most of us realize. Stereoscopes imitated 3-D scenes as far back as the 1830s, and many consider the Sword of Damocles,a headset built in 1968 that was so heavy it had to be held up by a pole in the ceiling, the first recognizable piece of virtual/augmented reality technology.
Today, we have the Google Cardboard,a $15-or-less VR headset that can be attached to a mobile phone and used to view 360-degree YouTube videos, and widespread ownership of other VR sets. In March, Sony president Sohei Yoshida declared via Twitterthat the company had sold 4.2 million PlayStation VR systems.
How might this revolutionary technology lend itself to law? The University of North Texas Dallas College of Lawmight have one answer. With a 360-degree camera and everyday items in hand, students and faculty worked together to film a “crime scene” that could then be viewed and examined through VR. This innovation is not only useful for students within the classroom but may also provide remote or online students access to an embodied, quasi-physical law school experience.
Similar ideas have been put into action at the University of Oklahoma, where law students can experience off-campus sites such as water reclamation centers through 360-degree video. Students can also take advantage of these techniques to put their mock trial skills to the test. Recordings in 360-degree of practiced opening statements approach reality as closely as possible, making for accurate assessments of students’ abilities untethered to a specific location or time.
Beyond law school, VR may just find its place in the courtrooms of the not-too-distant future. With the right equipment, witnesses, lawyers and jurors could attend the same trialfrom dozens of locations. By filming accident scenes with 360-degree cameras, jurors could “become virtual eye-witnesses” to their cases, according to Law Technology Today— no guessing games or painstaking models required. Depositions could be gathered from witnesses during discovery without investing in travel time or leaning on shaky phone service and fickle transcription technologies.
Of course, practical barriers to widespread VR use in law still remain. There’s the cost factor, for instance — many law schools are reluctant to test out techthat might make a dent in the budgets. Another issue is “VR sickness,”the common name for a series of symptoms reminiscent of motion sickness experienced by some 25% to 40%of VR users. Researchers and game developers have begun to address this problem by grounding players’ VR experiences with virtual noses and new systems that help maintain equilibrium with our senses.
Additionally, to use VR as evidence, lawyers still must jump through typical evidentiary hoops, such as establishing relevance of the evidence and that its probative value outweighs any prejudicial effect. Rule changes might be needed in order to use VR in other manners, for instance, as a remote access tool.
There’s no way to tell whether VR will eventually become ubiquitous within the courtroom as a technological aid. One thing’s for sure, though: VR startups and users are present in our current world, and their cases are already working their way into the landscape of law as we know it.