Wednesday, October 26, is Vote Early Day! We at the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library are official partners in this annual non-partisan effort. Our goal in joining up with this worthy cause is to encourage early voting and to ensure that busy schedules, Election Day lines, or last minute problems won’t stop you from sharing your voice. Included in this post are links to the information and resources you need to be informed about where, when, and how to cast your ballot and be counted in Harris County.
Read moreFrom Legal Tech to Tech Law: Technology as a Legal Practice
At the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library, we promote the benefits of legal tech. We offer a rotating series of educational opportunities to help library users engaged in legal work improve their legal tech skills. Our Legal Tech Institute, which celebrates 7 years of legal tech training this October, is offering several classes in the upcoming months. Check our Course Calendar here to register for events taking place as soon as this week (August 31) when we will offer three CLE sessions on legal drafting, law practice essentials, and our LexisNexis ebook collection. The sessions, which are designed to offer useful tools for both practicing attorneys and self-represented litigants, will each carry one free hour of CLE credit. We are happy to support the legal community by providing regular CLE opportunities for active members of the Texas Bar.
We also feel strongly about supporting the community of law students right in our backyard. With three of Texas’s ten ABA-accredited law schools within a stone’s throw of our physical location on the first floor of Congress Plaza in downtown Houston, we are mindful of aspiring lawyers -- those pursuing juris doctorate degrees, as well as recent graduates, particularly newly minted solo practitioners. This population is the focus of today’s Tech Tuesday blog post as we explore not Legal Tech but Tech Law, a field of legal practice dealing with developments and innovations in data gathering and analysis, machine learning, generative AI, and so much more, especially with respect to the impact of these advances on our economy, society, and civil institutions.
Attorneys who practice in this area of law inform policy decisions, shape legislation, and support the development of legal frameworks for understanding, navigating, regulating, and managing the many facets of technology we encounter every day. Borrowing content from this blog post, the following are listed as specific areas in which lawyers play important roles in the technology landscape:
The legal field offers a wide array of roles within the technology sector beyond traditional legal practice. Here are some additional roles where lawyers with tech expertise can make a significant impact:
Legal Counsel/Advisor for Tech Companies: Specialize in providing legal guidance to technology companies on issues ranging from intellectual property protection to data privacy and protection.
Contracts and Agreements: This includes negotiating, drafting, and reviewing technology-related contracts such as software licensing agreements, technology transfer agreements, and service-level agreements.
Regulatory Compliance: Oversee and ensure that tech products and services meet industry-specific regulations and standards, such as incorporation, cybersecurity regulations and telecommunications laws amongst others.
Funding and Private Equity Advisory: Lawyers offer strategic counsel on securing investment and private equity funding to fuel tech companies’ growth.
Data Protection and Privacy Compliance: With the rise of data privacy concerns, lawyers can take on roles to ensure that tech companies comply with data protection regulations and handle user data responsibly.
Ethics and AI Specialist: Focus on the legal and ethical implications of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, ensuring that tech developments align with legal and ethical standards.
If you are a current law student or a recent law school graduate wishing to build your tech proficiency, we have the tools for you! Join us at an upcoming Legal Tech Institute session, or take advantage of the access we provide to legal research databases and ebook collections. If you find that your interest and aptitude for all things tech leads you to the path of practicing Tech Law, keep in mind the options mentioned above as well as the areas of intellectual property, cybercrime, software licensing, and electronic commerce, for which specialized knowledge and tech expertise are both desired and in demand.
2023 AALL Annual Conference / Map Our Future Experience
I had a great experience at the American Association of Law Librarians 2023 Conference and this post will outline my experience from beginning to end.
Read moreLaw Library of Congress May Webinars & Events
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
If you are interested in learning free U.S. legal research strategies, mark your calendar for May because the Law Library of Congress Legal Research Institute is offering classes on these topics. You can find more information on the Legal Research Institute website.
Read moreHolocaust Remembrance Week - January 23-January 27, 2023
In a resolution issued on November 1, 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and urged its member nations to “develop educational programmes that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.” The date chosen for this remembrance marked the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camps by the Soviets. Here in Texas, as the result of Senate Bill 1828, Texas established Holocaust Remembrance Week in 2020, a time dedicated to educating students in public schools about the atrocities of the Holocaust and the value of human life. (See Tex. Educ. Code § 29.9072.) This year, Holocaust Remembrance Week is from January 23-January 27.
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