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The Flegal Moot Courtroom
The Flegal Moot Courtroom in the Gewirz Student Center provides a prominent campus facility devoted to legal instruction and trial skills-training. Because traditional trial advocacy skills are now being wedded to modern technology, we have recently installed advanced audio-visual equipment to serve a variety of needs related to teaching of advocacy, conducting moot court arguments, and performing clinical work. Cameras and tables have been aligned so that negotiating sessions as well as trial sessions can be captured by this new technology.

The audio-visual technologies available in the Flegal Moot Courtroom now feature four digital video cameras and an array of microphones to capture law students and faculty in action—whether on audio or videotape—while permitting instant playback for trial classroom evaluation and critique. A podium-mounted DVD player provides an additional source for video imagery. Whether live or recorded, video content is displayed on a wall-mounted 50-inch plasma screen. Two smaller displays are installed at the podium and at the witness stand.

In addition to the audio-visual display of live or recorded action, evidence presenters will project on-screen content from laptop computers. A high-resolution document camera mounted at the podium also enables the projection of physical documents and objects in full color on the facility’s video panels. Through the use of touchscreen monitors at the podium and at the witness stand, presenters will also produce instantaneous on-screen electronic annotations to highlight their exposition of visual and audio-visual content.

The multiple components installed in Flegal are centrally managed from a single wireless control unit, the use of which can be mastered after a brief tutorial. They include:

• Wireless control unit for managing content sources, camera positioning and video-display modes,
• 50-inch wall-mounted plasma display,
• 15-inch flat-panel displays at Podium and Witness stand, each equipped with touchscreen electronic annotation capabilities,
• 4 ceiling-mounted video cameras,
• 4 desk-mounted microphones,
• Podium-mounted DVD, VCR and Audio Cassette playback units,
• Podium-mounted Document Camera,
• Video-input connection for laptop computer, and
• Rack-mounted units for Audio Cassette and VCR recording and playback.

Orientation sessions for the use of the Flegal Moot Courtroom may be arranged by contacting Christopher Ballantyne at ballantc@law.georgetown.edu or 202-662-9796.

November 26, 2007 DHFM)