Maker, Breaker, Tinker, Try: The Right to Repair

Today is not just Tech Tuesday at the Harris County Law Library; it's Giving Tuesday all over the world. This global movement of sharing and collaboration is designed to kick off the charitable giving season.  It's also the perfect chaser to a full week of enthusiastic discount holiday shopping, often for the latest laptops, TVs, and smartphones. 

Little do we realize that, in buying the latest and greatest tech gizmos, we’re not only acquiring new gadgets -- in many cases, we're also subjecting ourselves to the proprietary grip of the designers and manufacturers who make the products so irresistible.  According to consumer advocates, we're being manipulated, while manufacturers would argue otherwise. This disagreement, at the heart of the “right to repair” movement, has been the motivation behind proposed legislation in a dozen states.

Lawmakers of all political stripes and consumer advocates who are driving much of the legislation claim that all individuals have a right to make, break, hack, fix, or mend their personal property -– everything from farm equipment and automobiles to smartphones and home appliances. The issue is this: even when you own the item in need of repair, you may not own the internal software that allows the equipment to function. Moreover, technical information about the design of the item may be withheld, service manuals might not exist, and replacement parts could be unobtainable. Proprietary repair tools may be equally hard to come by, further complicating the ability for do-it-yourselfers to fix and maintain their own property.

To learn more about the “right to repair” movement, including the manufacturers’ equally legitimate claims to maintaining proprietary integrity and ensuring security and safety, please visit the links below. Learn why environmentalists, farmers, copyright reformers, hobbyists, staunch private property rights advocates, and others all feel passionate about the right to repair. Also, explore the future of ownership in an age when manufacturers increasingly limit our ability to manipulate or adapt the things we buy.

• "A 'right to repair' movement tools up" in The Economist, September 20, 2017
• "You bought that gadget and dammit, you should be able to fix it" in Wired, March 22, 2017
• "No, you shouldn't be able to fix your own phone, 'right to repair' is a dumb idea" at Mashable, February 16, 2017
• "The Fight for the 'Right to Repair'" at Smithsonian.com, July 13, 2016
• The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz

 

Upcoming Courses from the Legal Tech Institute at Harris County Law Library

The Legal Tech Institute at Harris County Law Library has a complete lineup of events planned for the next few months. Please visit our LTI Course Catalog to view the upcoming programs and to register for each course. The following are currently scheduled.

• Vendor Visit - Lexis Advance: November 30, 2017
• Legal Practice Technology: December 18, 2017 (Please note the new date.)
• Vendor Visit - Westlaw: January 18, 2018

Through its course offerings, the Legal Tech Institute introduces you to trends in law practice technology. LTI helps you become more proficient legal researchers using the tools freely available in the Law Library, including Westlaw and Lexis Advance. Whenever possible, the LTI provides Texas CLE credit for the courses offered, and we bring this all to you free of charge.  In addition, we also record the courses and make them available via our website within a few weeks of the live presentation. Those who view the videos can claim CLE credit for up to one year after the courses are presented.

If you have an idea for a legal tech topic that you would like to see presented, please let us know. We welcome suggestions and feedback, and we appreciate your involvement in making the Legal Tech Institute the best that it can be.  

The Rise of the Legal Chatbots

Hello, I’m Lawson, your legal robot assistant. How can I help you?

This is the kind of prompt you might encounter on a website that offers customer service by chat. Friendly avatars greet you on retail websites, ready to sell you everything from appliances to vehicles. A virtual concierge, for example, might help you plan your next vacation. Even tech support is often provided via a chat or messaging feature. And now in law, chatbots or “robot lawyers” are facilitating access to the legal system and helping users handle simple legal matters.

Perhaps the most well-known legal chatbot is DoNotPay, a tool that guides users through a series of questions designed to dispute parking tickets. In recent months, the DoNotPay chatbot has expanded considerably to address a variety of legal concerns including consumer rights, employment law, and landlord-tenant disputes. Soon, the creator of the site, Josh Browder, hopes to offer a chatbot that will handle your divorce. 

Hate Crime Help is a newer addition to the army of chatbots ready to help people who have been victims of hate crimes, including violence, verbal attacks, property damage, and harassment. The app lets you specify that the crime was motivated by discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, gender, or sexual orientation. It then provides contact information for local resources linked to your zip code that will help you get the legal relief you need. Additional information about what the law says regarding hate crimes at the state and national levels is provided, along with a point-by-point comparison of hate crimes and bias incidents. 

ProTechMe uses a chatbot to quickly and efficiently collect information needed for securing a protective order in Harris County. Its design is based on the Texas Attorney General's Protective Order kit (which can be found here on TexasLawHelp.org). Information that is gathered via the chatbot auto-populates a pdf document that the user can then print out and submit to the district attorney or to a legal aid office. Victims of family violence are often closely monitored by their abusers, and using the Internet to search for help may not be a safe option. Although ProTechMe is still in development, it may, eventually, become a safer and more practical way for victims to get the help and information they need.  

Robots are unlikely to replace lawyers any time soon, if ever, despite media reports that sometimes sensationalize the impact of chatbots and related AI technologies. However, there is no doubt that technology will continue to shape the practice of law and change how clients interface with the legal system. Embracing technology as a tool for facilitating access to justice is advisable, for, as the robot overlords always say, resistance is futile. 

Legal Tech Institute CLE: Finding & Formatting Legal Forms

Please join us for the next Legal Tech Institute CLE, Finding & Formatting Legal Forms, on Thursday, October 26th at 12:00 noon. Presenters will guide attendees in using three of the most popular legal databases -- Westlaw, Lexis, and O’Connor’s -- to locate legal forms. In the second part of the program, presenters will edit one of the forms found in one of the three legal research databases to demonstrate the use of various formatting features in Microsoft Word.

PLEASE NOTE: The location of this CLE has changed. It will be held in the Conference Room on the 17th floor of Congress Plaza at 1019 Congress, Houston, TX 77002. Please see the announcement for further details and to register for this program. 

Legal Tech Institute Celebrates First Anniversary

The Legal Tech Institute at the Harris County Law Library launched in October, 2016, with the CLE Social Media for Lawyers. Building on the success of that program, we've expanded learning opportunities significantly with a dozen in-person courses and 5 On-Demand training sessions available on our website. As with all programs at the Harris County Law Library, LTI classes are always free and open to all.

Additionally, each LTI video CLE is accredited by the State Bar of Texas and Texas attorneys can receive credit for watching the videos up to a year after the live program. That means the LTI anniversary also marks the end point for receiving Texas CLE credit for our first program. Watch Social Media for Lawyers and report your credit at www.texasbar.com before time runs out!