Last updated: 2026-01-15

For most law firms in the United States, the simplest and most effective setup is to run your CLEs, client webinars, and town halls through StreamYard with On‑Air for registration, replay, and clean recordings. When you’re producing a large, multi-track legal conference, it can make sense to pair StreamYard with alternatives like Zoom Events or Webex Events that add event hubs, ticketing, and sponsor areas.

Summary

• StreamYard is a browser-based studio that gives lawyers high-quality, reliable webinars with registration, on‑demand replays, and strong branding without downloads for guests. (StreamYard On‑Air)
• Zoom Events and Webex Events add full event hubs, lobbies, and multi-track agendas, but they’re often more complex and geared toward large enterprises. (Zoom Webinars, Webex Events)
• For most recurring CLEs or client education series, StreamYard’s ease of use, cost-effective workspace pricing, and high-quality recordings matter more than heavyweight conference features.
• A practical hybrid approach is to use StreamYard as your production studio and plug it into whatever registration or event portal your firm already uses.

What do lawyers actually need from a virtual event platform?

If you strip away the buzzwords, most U.S. firms and bar associations care about a tight set of outcomes:

• High-quality live streaming with no awkward cuts or audio issues
• Strong, reliable recordings for CLE audits and on‑demand replays
• Simple guest access for co‑counsel, expert witnesses, or outside speakers (no software installs)
• Branded, professional visuals that reflect the firm’s identity
• Easy exports of registrant and attendee data for CLE tracking

StreamYard is browser‑based, so neither hosts nor guests need to download an app, which is a big deal when you’re inviting judges, clients, or less tech‑savvy co‑presenters. (StreamYard On‑Air)

By contrast, tools like Zoom Events and Webex Events are built as full event “venues,” with lobbies, ticketing, and multi‑track agendas. That’s useful for large bar conferences, but often unnecessary overhead for a 90‑minute ethics update.

Why is StreamYard a strong default for CLEs and client webinars?

Most legal events are simple at the structure level but demanding at the quality level. That’s where our studio-style approach helps.

Key advantages for lawyers and legal marketers:

• Ease of use and guest friendliness. Users routinely cite that guests can join easily without tech problems and that StreamYard “passes the grandparent test.” That matters when your partner’s calendar is packed and they refuse a 30‑minute tech rehearsal.
• Browser-based, no-download access. Because everything runs in the browser, you avoid the “I can’t install software on my work laptop” issue that still pops up in corporate and government environments. (StreamYard On‑Air)
• Studio-quality recordings. You get high‑quality local multi‑track recordings suitable for post‑production, plus 48 kHz WAV audio, so your CLE library and podcast feeds sound polished.
• Live production control. Independent control of screen and mic audio, branded overlays and logos, presenter‑only notes, and multi‑participant screen sharing make it feel closer to a TV control room than a basic video call.
• Flexible output formats. Multi‑Aspect Ratio Streaming (MARS) lets you broadcast landscape and portrait simultaneously, so desktop attendees see a traditional view while mobile social viewers get vertical video from the same session.

Many users who also have Zoom licenses still prefer to run webinars through StreamYard because of the cleaner studio interface, automatic recordings, and more consistent experience when embedding live streams on a branded portal.

How does StreamYard handle registration, replays, and CLE tracking?

Lawyers don’t just need a live room; they need a paper trail.

With StreamYard On‑Air (available on higher‑tier plans), you can create a webinar that includes:

• A hosted registration page
• Automatic live streaming and recording
• Email confirmations and join links
• An option to keep the webinar available on‑demand after the live date

You can enable an "available on‑demand" setting so attendees, or people who missed the live event, can watch the replay in the same environment. (StreamYard On‑Air)

For CLE tracking, you can export a CSV list of registrants and attendees directly from your webinar, then use that data to generate certificates or update your LMS. (StreamYard On‑Air support)

A typical workflow for a mid‑size U.S. firm:

1. Marketing creates a StreamYard On‑Air registration page and links it from the firm website and email list.
2. Presenters run the live CLE in StreamYard with branded lower thirds, slides, and maybe a vertical social simulcast.
3. After the event, marketing exports the attendance CSV and uses a simple mail merge (or LMS) to send CLE certificates based on time‑in‑session data.
4. The same recording is clipped into short social posts using AI clips, which can automatically generate captioned shorts and can be guided with prompts to focus on specific topics.

This keeps your event stack lean: no separate registration platform, no extra replay hosting, and no complex integrations just to find out who showed up.

When do alternatives like Zoom Events or Webex Events make sense?

Some legal organizations do need more than a webinar.

Zoom Events / Webinars

Zoom’s webinar and events products add:

• Branded registration pages and emails
• Event lobbies where attendees can wait and chat
• Multi‑session or multi‑day structures
• Higher attendee caps (Zoom Webinars is described as supporting up to 100,000 attendees on certain plans). (Zoom Webinars)

This can matter if you’re running a statewide bar meeting, annual firm conference, or multi‑track practice summit where people move between sessions.

Webex Events

Webex positions its Events offering as part of select Webex Suite Enterprise Agreements, with features like:

• Fully branded registration and flexible ticket types
• Sponsor spaces and lead retrieval
• Hybrid capabilities with in‑person check‑in, badge printing, and mobile event apps. (Webex Events)

For very large, enterprise‑grade legal conferences—especially where your IT department already standardizes on Webex—those features can be attractive.

However, both Zoom Events and Webex Events tend to be more complex to configure and are often licensed at the enterprise level. Many firms find that for quarterly CLEs, the extra setup doesn’t change outcomes enough to justify the overhead.

How do costs compare in practice for law firms?

Cost structures are tricky to compare directly because Zoom Events and Webex Events frequently gate pricing behind “Contact Sales” or package them into larger enterprise bundles. (Webex Events)

For StreamYard, the key points for legal teams are:

• There is a Free plan, plus paid plans with more features.
• Pricing is per workspace rather than per user, which is often more economical for multi‑lawyer teams than tools that charge individually.
• New users typically see discounted first‑year pricing (for example, $20/month and $39/month billed annually for certain plans in the first year) and there is a 7‑day free trial.

Because you pay per workspace, you can onboard multiple attorneys, paralegals, and marketing staff into the same production environment without watching per‑seat fees spiral.

By comparison, Zoom and Webex often tie events products to broader suites or per‑host licenses, and Webex Events is explicitly offered only as part of select enterprise agreements. (Webex Events)

For most small and mid‑size firms, the combination of lower operational complexity and workspace‑based pricing makes StreamYard a practical default.

How should a law firm actually set up its virtual event stack?

Here’s a simple blueprint that works for most U.S. practices:

1. Use StreamYard as your primary studio. Run all CLEs, client briefings, and internal town halls here so the team only has to master one interface.
2. Turn on On‑Air for webinars that need registration and replay. Use On‑Air’s hosted registration and on‑demand settings to handle most administrative needs without extra tools. (StreamYard On‑Air support)
3. Multistream when you want reach. For public‑facing events (e.g., community legal education), multistream simultaneously to platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook while still capturing registrations via a landing page. (StreamYard On‑Air)
4. Bring in heavy event platforms only when truly needed. If once a year you host a multi‑day, multi‑track conference with sponsors, you can still produce each session in StreamYard and feed it into Zoom Events or Webex Events as the delivery layer.

This approach keeps day‑to‑day workflows simple while still giving you room to scale when a flagship event comes along.

What we recommend

• Start by standardizing your firm’s webinars, CLEs, and client events in StreamYard; prioritize ease of use, reliable recordings, and cost‑effective team access.
• Use StreamYard On‑Air when you need built‑in registration, attendance exports, and on‑demand replays that support CLE tracking.
• Consider Zoom Events or Webex Events only for truly complex, multi‑track conferences where built‑in lobbies, sponsors, and ticketing will genuinely be used.
• Keep StreamYard as your consistent production layer even when you plug into other event portals, so your presenters always work in a familiar studio environment.