Appearance by telephone

(a) Recommended criteria for telephone equipment

Each court should have adequate telephone equipment for use in hearings at which counsel may appear by telephone. This equipment should:

(1) Permit each person participating in the hearing, whether in person or by telephone, to hear all other persons;

(2) Handle at least three incoming calls at one time and place those calls into a conference call in a simple and quick manner;

(3) Have a silent (visible) ringer;

(4) Be simple to learn and use;

(5) Be reasonable in cost; and

(6) Have full-duplex, simultaneous bidirectional speaker capability.

(b) Optional features for telephone equipment

It is desirable if the telephone equipment can:

(1) Dial previously stored telephone numbers;

(2) Record conversations;

(3) Be moved easily from location to location; and

(4) Automatically queue incoming calls.

(c) Types of matters desired to be heard by telephone

Each court should specify, by local court rule or uniform local written policy, the types of motions and hearings it considers particularly suitable for hearing by telephone appearance. The rule or policy should encourage appearance by telephone in nonevidentiary civil matters if appearance of counsel in person would not materially assist in a determination of the proceeding or in settlement of the case.

(d) Award of attorney's fees

A court should consider, in awarding attorney's fees under any applicable provision of law, whether an attorney is claiming fees for appearing in person in a proceeding in which that attorney could have appeared by telephone.

(e) Local procedures for telephone appearance

Each court should adopt a local rule or uniform local written policy specifying the following:

(1) Whether the court or the attorney initiates the telephone call for a telephone appearance;

(2) Whether the court sets a specified time for a telephone appearance or a time range; and

(3) How the parties are notified, in advance of the hearing, of the time or time range of the telephone appearance. In those courts using a tentative ruling recording system, that notice should be part of the tentative ruling recording.