Quick quiz: In what years did the following events take place at Los Angeles’ Troop Steuber Pasich Reddick & Tobey?

  • The rock band Cagnet performs “live” at a concert hall in Japan. One of its lead singers, who cannot leave Los Angeles because of her advanced pregnancy, rolls into the conference room at the law firm, which represents her record company. She plugs a microphone into a computer line that can transmit digital sound, flips on a video camera that uploads her image, and voila: The band members perform simultaneously before a live audience across the globe.
  • A studio lawyer, meeting with colleagues to close a film deal at the office of his outside counsel, needs to make a quick phone call to headquarters to ensure he’s not giving away a key deal point. Instead of tipping his hand by asking to borrow a phone at a lawyer’s desk, he slips out of the conference room and into a private phone booth. Inside, it’s plush: a custom-design cushioned chair, a desk-like writing surface for taking notes, and furniture-quality wooden decor. In a law firm that more closely resembles a hotel suite, he is just four feet away from the “guest closet” where his coat is hung. Having received the needed information, the lawyer walks across the hall into the conference room, and closes the complex deal. No one is the wiser about his phone call.
  • An entertainment lawyer has clinched a studio distribution deal for his client, an independent film producer. With just a script and two actors committed to the $10 million project, he is close to securing production financing. But to make it all happen, he has to close the bank financing agreement. And fast. In an intense negotiation that would normally take several days, the lawyer pulls it all together in six hours. How? The key is a 40-seat conference room table, with computer hookups at each station.

Discreetly built into the table, the technology is invisible unless you push a button and summon it. Eight lawyers set up camp around the table and do exactly that. They plug in their laptops, connect with their offices’ computer systems and zap drafts back and forth as the deal-making rolls. Instead of passing papers around the table for revisions, the lawyers e-mail the current version to their colleagues around the table. Once in final form, it is downloaded into the computer system of the law firm “hosting” the gig and is printed.