Legal Tech Institute Vendor Visit - Lexis Advance - FREE CLE

Register today for a Legal Tech Institute Vendor Visit on Wednesday, September 26, 2018. Program will cover legal research techniques using Lexis Advance, a powerful legal research platform available for free at the Harris County Law Library. This Vendor Visit will carry 1.0 hour of CLE credit for Texas attorneys. The session is conveniently scheduled during the lunch hour, from noon to 1 p.m.

All of the databases covered during training sessions are accessible for free on the Law Library’s legal research computers, which are open to the public. Visit Our Services page for more information about the digital resources available for your legal research needs.

For additional details about other upcoming LTI programs and events, please visit us online at www.harriscountylawlibrary.org/tech

Flagship Legal Tech Institute CLE: MS Word for Legal Work

Due to popular demand, the Harris County Law Library Legal Tech Institute is proud to present its flagship hands-on training course tomorrow, August 30, at 2:00pm, in the dynamic setting of the County Attorney’s Office Conference Center. MS Word for Legal Work will be presented live by law librarians Elizabeth Bolles and Heather Holmes. Course participants will learn the ins and outs of America’s most popular word processing software. Key topics will include efile formatting, creating a tables of authorities, page and paragraph formatting, and protecting client data through simple metadata management. Each attendee will be provided a laptop for use during the class, and will receive personalized assistance. This session has been expanded so that law offices can send multiple attorneys and paralegals at once. Register through the Legal Tech Institute website.

Special Event: Expanded "MS Word for Legal Work" Hands-on Legal Tech Training

Join us as we offer our flagship hands-on training - MS Word for Legal Work - for an expanded audience on Thursday, Aug. 30, at 2pm. Learn the skills you need to draft documents more efficiently on the world's leading word processing software. Texas attorneys can earn 1.0 hour of CLE credit. Register today!

HCLawLibrary on Legal Tech Mastery Show!

Watch the Legal Tech Mastery Show on Friday, August 17, at 12:50 p.m. EST to see Harris County Law Library Deputy Director Joe Lawson talk about legal tech education and the Law Library's Legal Tech Institute! The show will be simulcast on YouTube and Facebook, and the recording will be available on the show website.

The Legal Tech Mastery Show is hosted by Litigation Support Guru Amy Bowser-Rollins and features content on a variety of legal tech topics. Now in Season 3, the show has covered lots of territory and you can find a great collection of practical training videos for free online. For example, some of our law librarians learned the-notoriously-difficult-to-use Word mail merge by watching Episode 11 of Season 2. Check it out today!

When competent practice means scanning in 300 dpi...

Technology has permeated the legal practice in a myriad of ways, but the need to find and understand tech standards takes on added importance in the legal community when those standards are incorporated into court rules. Once a tech skill becomes a rule, lawyers who ignore it may not simply be risking inefficiency or losing a client's business, they may be risking their ability to practice (see, e.g., Okla. Bar Ass'n v. Oliver, 369 P.3d 1074 (Okla. 2016)). For that reason, Texas attorneys may want to familiarize themselves with the Supreme Court of Texas Judicial Committee on Information Technology Standards (JCIT Tech Standards).

As a case in point, take a look at the reference to the JCIT Tech Standards incorporated into Texas Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 21(f)(8) by administrative order of the Supreme Court of Texas (Misc. Docket No. 13-9165 pdf). Subparagraph (D) provides that "[a] electronically filed document must:"

otherwise comply with the Technology Standards set by the Judicial Committee on Information Technology and approved by the Supreme Court.

Drilling down into the JCIT Tech Standards, one finds specific requirements from the type of software used to create PDFs to the applicable ISO compliance standard for efiled documents. Regarding requirements for scanned PDF documents, §3.1(C) provides:

Prior to being filed electronically, a scanned document must have a resolution of 300 DPI.

Incorporation of these standards into the Rules of Civil Procedure strongly suggests that legal tech competency has moved from recommended to required.

Where can attorneys turn to keep up with emerging tech competencies? Your local law library can help. Public and academic law libraries can assist with research into the rules governing required tech skills. Many also collect resources covering specific software used in the legal profession, like the resources in our Legal Tech Collection that include ABA publications on Adobe Acrobat, MS Word, and more. Some law libraries even offer legal tech classes. The Harris County Law Library's Legal Tech Institute offers free CLE on a variety of topics, including MS Word for Legal Work in which attorneys can learn how to create the type of PDF referenced in the JCIT Tech Standards. Visit our website and keep following our Tech Tuesday posts to learn more!