Increase Security and Convenience with Password Managers

Remembering the login credentials for all the websites we use every day can be burdensome and frustrating, but maintaining secured access to the information we rely upon is important and necessary. Websites for financial institutions, retail outlets, and other identity-based portals must be secure in order for us to feel confident in transacting business or when storing personal information on the cloud.

To relieve some frustration and make your online interactions more seamless, consider using a password manager. Password managers vary in their functionality, but in general, these tools will help you generate unique, high-security passwords and then store them for easy access. They will even populate the username and password fields for each site you visit, eliminating your need to remember another password ever again. There are several password managers to choose from at varying price points ranging from free, or just a few dollars a month, up to about $40 for a one-time purchase. The free tools have their limitations, but even without the sophisticated features of their premium counterparts, each product has its merits. To compare the best free password managers, take a look at PC Magazine's comparison chart. Another more recent article, also from PC Magazine, rates the more costly password managers and highlights the features that make each a good choice. Some of the apps recommended by PC Magazine are also endorsed by the folks at WIRED. It's worthwhile to check out their favorite picks.

Once you use a password manager, you may wonder how you ever got by without one. Now, if only these helpful programs would allow you to bypass the CAPTCHA requirement to prove once and for all that you are nor a robot...Is there an app for that?

Free PDF Tools

In the online environment, PDF documents are everywhere. Brochures, newsletters, instruction manuals, and digital magazines are just a few of the publication types that are commonly presented as PDFs. These documents can display text, images, graphics, and non-standard font types, typically in a fixed format that cannot be altered. This is an advantage when sending a document that needs to be protected from modifications by another user. It's also a design that works well for self-help legal forms, including those that we in the Law Library access on a daily basis from TexasLawHelp.org and the Harris County District Clerk's website.

Presenting DIY legal forms in PDF makes sense, as it preserves the document format and the arrangement of the content on the page. However, the forms published on the two websites mentioned above are not fillable. That is, the content on the page is static and the fields it contains cannot be populated with data. The space designated for Petitioner, for example, does not allow the user to type in his or her name. Instead, the forms are meant to be printed on paper and filled out by hand. This design works well for self-help legal forms, and, as long as the handwritten information is legible, the courts are happy to accept the documents as is. In some instances and for other types of documents, including legal drafts, you may find a need to add modifications such as markups, highlighting, white-out, or type-written text. Purchasing expensive PDF editing software is one way to add this functionality to otherwise fixed-format documents, but free alternatives do exists, a few of which are mentioned below. 

PDFescape, FormSwift, PDF Buddy, and DocHub are four cloud-based document editors that allow you to upload PDF files and alter them with signatures and other markups. A brief description of each is available here. Another useful PDF tool is SandwichPDF.com. It applies Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to uploaded files and effectively converts any non-searchable PDF to a fully searchable document with cut and paste capabilities.

The beauty of the tools mentioned here is their price (FREE!) and their low barrier to entry --  they require no software installation, no registration, and no password protection, and they can easily be used on demand, at the time of need. In addition, you can almost always drag and drop your PDF documents into whichever editing tool you are using, or you can paste in the URL of your chosen PDF, saving you the trouble of first downloading a document to your own computer before uploading it to the website. With all the functionality offered by these tools -- for editing, splicing, combining, and securing documents, and for converting them to searchable text -- fixed-format PDFs become more adaptable and dynamic, two useful features for anyone in need of greater versatility at an affordable price.

Legal Tech Institute CLE: The Robot Lawyer

Join us on Thursday, September 28, 12pm - 1pm, for The Robot Lawyer: Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law. Saskia Mehlhorn, Director of Knowledge Management & Library Services, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP will give specific examples of tools that incorporate AI technology and discuss opportunities for lawyers and other legal professionals. To register, click here. 

PLEASE NOTE: The location of this CLE has changed. It will not be held at the Harris County Law Library. The HBA is generously providing space for this event at the Heritage Plaza Conference Room, 1111 Bagby Street. Please see the announcement for further details. 

Legal Tech Institute CLE: The Robot Lawyer

Join us on Thursday, September 28, 12pm - 1pm, for The Robot Lawyer: Artificial Intelligence in the Practice of Law. Saskia Mehlhorn, Director of Knowledge Management & Library Services, Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP will give specific examples of tools that incorporate AI technology and discuss opportunities for lawyers and other legal professionals. To register, click here. 

Nolo Press in Print and Online + Other Self-Help Resources for Pro Se Litigants

Navigating the law, especially for the non-lawyer, can be daunting, confusing, and frustrating. We at the Harris County Law Library provide resources and information that, we hope, make the law less intimidating and more accessible to the general public. One of the best, most indispensable tools for those who need to get acquainted with a new area of the law is a collection of books from Nolo Press, a publisher of legal materials, written in plain English, on a wide variety of legal topics. Designed to assist self-represented parties in learning about the law, Nolo Press is a company that seeks to “make the law accessible to everyone."

In addition to the Nolo Press publications, the Harris County Law Library's self-help collection contains a number of accessible, user-friendly resources including the Nutshell series from West publishing and the Texas Young Lawyers Association Research Guides for the general public. Nutshells are concise, one-volume treatises that address a particular area of the law, and the TYLA guides provide very practical information for handling specific legal matters in Texas, including probate, CPS cases, guardianship, and divorce.

The Nolo collection is a bit more expansive, as it covers all of the following topics and more: bankruptcy, criminal law, immigration, family law, labor and employment, landlord-tenant, estate planning, and social security. Other titles address how to start a small business, file a suit in small claims court, repair your credit, dispute a traffic ticket, survive foreclosure, and win a personal injury claim. 

If you are unable to visit the Law Library in person, there are several options for accessing self-help legal resources online. The Nolo books, in particular, are available through several channels, including the Harris County Public Library, the Houston Public Library, and the Texas State Law Library online. As members of the TexShare Libraries Consortium, these institutions offer access to the Ebsco Legal Information Reference Center, which provides full-text digital versions of all titles published by Nolo Press, including some titles not included in the Harris County Law Library print collection. (The Texas State Law Library also provides access to the West Nutshell series.) To gain access to this online database, you must have a valid library card for one of the institutions named above. All residents of Texas are eligible to receive a library card, simply by filling out an application in person or by requesting a library card from the Texas State Law Library via the library's web portal.