How To Master Microsoft Excel

Excel is a data management tool used for organizing, calculating, graphing, and sharing tabular information. The importance of developing proficiency in the use of Excel cannot be overstated. Knowing how to manipulate spreadsheets is just as important as properly formatting a written document.

According to some, we spend 10% of our working lives manipulating spreadsheets, so becoming adept at using Excel can only improve your efficiency and productivity. Several resources are available to those interested in developing Excel proficiency.

For starters, we recommend that you visit our On-Demand Learning page from the Legal Tech Institute where you will find a recorded CLE called Excel Essentials for the Practice of Law, presented by none other than Ben Kusmin, the go-to expert on using Excel for legal work. Visit his website, Excel Esquire, for even more helpful tips and information.

Secondly, we recommend that you download The Definitive 100 Most Useful Excel Tips, an outstanding resource guide that includes, along with each tip, a utility score, a difficulty scale, an estimated learning time, and a suggestion for how to apply each skill practically.

If tackling 100 new skills seems a bit daunting, try a more gradual approach. Tackle just 10 Excel Functions Everyone Should Know, presented by Harvard Business Review.

Certainly, there is a wealth of additional resources you may consult, but the suggestions provided here are a great place to start. Look for our Legal Tech Institute to offer a Hands-on Legal Tech Training course, Excel for Legal Work, in the new year. Hope to see you there!

Need even more inspiration to become an Excel master? Check out this competition for expert Excel users, the Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship, where a new Excel spreadsheet champion is crowned every year. Alternatively, consider the work of this incredible artist, who “paints” Japanese landscapes using Excel. Spreadsheets aren’t just for number crunchers any more!

Public Interest Technology and the law

Photo via: https://www.goodfreephotos.com

Disruptive innovation, content curation  and design thinking are buzzworthy terms that, despite their possible overuse, describe substantive and meaningful concepts with broad application across many disciplines.  Design thinking, the application of design principles to solve problems, is being applied in a variety of fields, including business and industry, healthcare, education, and the law.

IDEO, a global design firm based on Palo Alto, is often credited as the architect of design thinking, and David Kelley, IDEO’s founder, is, not surprisingly, a strong advocate for this inventive problem-solving method. Along with his brother Tom (IDEO’s marketing manager), David Kelley has built a creativity engine that generates some of the most innovative ways of solving problems from the everyday to the exceptional. The brothers also write and speak about creativity and innovation in hopes of inspiring others to use design principles in their personal and professional endeavors.

One of their titles in particular, The Ten Faces of Innovation (written by Tom Kelley), resonates with many who work in law, tech, or at the intersections of these two fields as, increasingly, every lawyer must. Mr. Kelley discusses in some detail the different roles that each person on a team might play and the contributions that each member of a working group might bring to a problem-solving effort. One of those critical roles is that of the cross-pollinator, the person who “draws associations and connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts to break new ground,” precisely the kind of thinking that’s required in the burgeoning field of public interest technology, a new and rapidly evolving area of practice that allows trained technologists to leverage their knowledge and skills for the benefit of the social good.

By combining tech expertise with fields such as public service, healthcare, criminal justice, education, immigration, child welfare, and the law, cross-pollinators are the perfect kinds of people to work in public interest tech.

To learn more about public interest tech, visit these sites:

• Public interest Tech: A Growing Field You Should Know (Ford Foundation)

• Public Interest Technology: About (New America)

• Serving Up Technology in the Public’s Interest — Hard But Worth It (Mashable)

• Navigating Complexity in Pursuit of Public Interest Technology (Blue Ridge Labs)

• Building our Technology Policy Future (Alan Davidson for Medium.com)

• Why Universities Need ‘Public Interest Technology’ Courses (Wired)

• Navigating the Field of Civic Tech (Derek Poppert for Medium.com)

Also, because it’s voting season, we call your attention to these public interest/civic tech initiatives that are designed to increase turn-out at the polls and ensure a fair and accessible voting experience for all of the electorate:

• Ballot Ready

• Democracy Works

• E.thePeople

• Vote.org

• Voter’s Edge

• We Vote

Texas Attorneys Earn Free CLE Credit for HCAO Voter Registration Training

Today is National Voter Registration Day. What a perfect occasion to view the Harris County Attorney’s Office recorded program, Voter Registration CLE and Voter Registration Training, which was presented on August 31, 2018 at the HCAO Conference Center. Texas attorneys can earn 1.0 hour of CLE credit and .25 hour of ethics credit for viewing the video.

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

Facial Recognition, Biometrics, and the Law in Texas

Starting in December of last year, social media was full of more selfies than usual. That's when the Google Arts and Culture app launched its image-matching feature. Here's how it works. A user opens the app, finds the "Is My Portrait in a Museum?" prompt, and snaps a selfie with her camera. The image is uploaded into the Google cloud which then works its Google magic to find her doppelganger in a vast collection of digitized paintings culled from museums throughout the world. All of this sounds like a fun and harmless diversion, and, indeed, the app's sudden rise to the top of the charts attests to it widespread popularity. However, some worry that the app is inherently risky, and they question how Google will use the data it collects. In other words, the app is free, but at what cost to the user. In some jurisdictions, including Texas (and Illinois), biometric privacy protections are codified into the law in attempt to address exactly these concerns.

The use of facial recognition data for identification purposes is expressly prohibited in the Texas Business & Commerce Code, Section 503.001 unless certain requirements are met. Namely, the person or company who collects the biometric data must (1) inform the individual before capturing the biometric identifier and (2) receive the individual's consent. The Google Arts and Culture app does indeed prompt the user to accept the privacy agreement and states that Google "will only store your photo for the time it takes to search for matches." Nevertheless, Google has blocked the selfie-matching feature in Texas (and Illinois) fearing, presumably, the imposition of a $25,000 fine per violation of the Texas law.

It's been suggested that this denial of service may be Google's way of signaling to states who restrict the use of certain technologies that they won't be able share in all the benefits that tech companies have to offer. Perhaps it's a snub to those who won't cooperate with the tech giants by permitting the legal collection and use of biometric data. In any case, concerns about the collection of facial geometry data by Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others are very real, and although no federal laws yet exist to prohibit the use and retention of such data, this area of the law is sure to develop as the technology advances. Until then, there are ways to circumvent the Google restrictions in Texas and to find your look-alike in the art of the world. Have fun...if you dare!

Further reading:

• Could Your Face Be Used Against You? -- Texas Standard 
• Few Rules Govern Police Use of Facial Recognition Technology -- Wired
• Google's Art Selfie App Not Working in Texas and Illinois? Blame Tricky Biometric Laws -- FastCompany