Tech Tip: Limiting Desktop Notifications in Microsoft Outlook

One of the keys to working more efficiently is to create a personal action plan. Set an agenda, and stick to it. And don’t let email rule your day. Microsoft Outlook is a powerful application and an indispensable tool for communicating with clients and colleagues throughout the workday, but some of its default settings may be interfering with your ability to perform at your best.

The blue “toaster” alerts that pop up in the lower corner of your screen and sometimes chime to demand your immediate attention are just one example. Notifications are helpful, but they can also break your focus, interrupting your concentration, and disturbing your workflow. Responding to the needs of others before addressing your own priorities allows external influences to determine your agenda. This deviation from your personal action plan is usually counterproductive. Of course you want to be available for your clients and to address pressing issues as they arise, but giving your attention to matters that don’t warrant an immediate response can add time and money to your balance sheet, making you less productive and your services less cost-effective.

Fortunately, the same system which tries to make your life easier by notifying you of every incoming message you receive can be customized to limit your alerts. Slaw, Canada’s online legal magazine, provides detailed instructions for turning off your email alerts or limiting the volume of incoming messages. You receive notifications for only the most important or immediately actionable items, reducing the intrusive and distracting demands on your time and giving you peace of mind. 

Magna Carta to Miranda - The Due Process link between Law Day themes

Don't you just love it when Law Day themes click?! Each year, the American Bar Association establishes a theme for Law Day, which is observed on May 1. This year's theme, which turned our attention to the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, followed the 2015 Law theme celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. So, what do a medieval statute and a Warren Court decision separated by 751 years have in common? Simple - Due process.

The connection is extensively examined in a digital exhibit from the Law Library of Congress' titled Magna Carta: Muse & Mentor - Due Process of Law. Prior to June 15, 1215, Englishmen (and everyone else for that matter) had little protection from kings and noblemen hauling them away without cause or trial. When King John placed his seal on Magna Carta, chapter 39 of the document provided that:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.

Subsequent English statutes interpreted the phrase "the law of the land" to include procedural safeguards that protect individual rights. One such statute enacted in 1354 added the phrase "due process of law" to the English legal vernacular to describe this collection of procedural rights. The phrase continued in use and found its way into the U.S. Constitution via the Fifth Amendment. By the time Miranda v. Arizona was decided in 1966, the privilege against self-incrimination was a well-established tenet of American jurisprudence and the Court prohibited use of such statements without a showing of the use of procedural safeguards like the warnings that became known as Miranda Warnings.

For more on the Due Process connection from Magna Carta to Miranda v. Arizona, visit the Law Library of Congress digital exhibit Magna Carta: Muse & Mentor. You can also visit the Harris County Law Library's Law Day digital exhibits Magna Carta and Miranda: More than words to discover more about these landmark legal resources. Be sure to also visit the Law Library's lobby to view our 1763 copy of Magna Carta on display during the month of June.

Latest and Greatest – Texas Small-Firm Practice Tools

By Cindy Stormer

James Publishing, Inc. (2015)

KFT 318 .S76

As a small-firm or solo practitioner, you may handle a large variety of cases, thus requiring you to be an expert in many different practice areas. Attorney Cindy Stormer has made your job a lot easier with her book, Texas Small-Firm Practice Tools. Loaded with checklists and over 560 forms, this book focuses on 16 main practice areas, including: civil and business litigation, car accident cases, consumer protection and fair trade practices, landlord-tenant issues, employer-employee relations, credit and collections, small business issues, marriage dissolution, estate planning and administration, criminal defense, and real estate. For each practice area, the author discusses the essential law and procedures with which you need to be familiar and provides you with some useful samples of letters, motions, and client interview questions. It truly is a toolkit for the small-firm or solo lawyer. So, come on down to the Harris County Law Library and find out for yourself how valuable Texas Small-Firm Practice Tools can be to your practice.

Monthly Features: Magna Carta & Constitutional Law Resources at the HCLL

During the month of June, the Harris County Law Library is commemorating Magna Carta. Don’t miss our digital exhibit and the exhibit currently on display in the Law Library's lobby, where you can explore the origins of this historically-significant document and its impact on both the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as its influence on the rule of law in Texas.

To complement our Magna Carta exhibits, the Law Library has adopted a theme, Constitutional Law Resource Month, which will feature items from our collection, including treatises, reference works, CLE course materials, form books, and other practitioner tools that may be useful in conducting constitutional law research.

The Law Library will also feature a small display of commentaries and related examples of case law that demonstrate the connections between Magna Carta and American law. All of these resources and exhibits will be featured until the end of June. Don’t miss your chance to see them, and please feel free to ask the Law Library staff any questions about the materials you discover.

Free Online Resources from the Texas State Law Library

The promise of the Internet is free information available at the touch of a button wherever you are connected. The reality is businesses need to make money, especially on the Wild Wild Web, and paywalls are a constant obstacle for attorneys and self-represented litigants trying to find relevant and accurate legal information. In the constant struggle to find a balance between the interests of the governed to have access to the law and the economic interests of those who publish the law, the latter often carries the most weight. However, recent enhancements to the Texas State Law Library's Digital Collection have made progress toward making legal information freely available for all Texans.

As detailed in the April 2016 issue of Texas Bar Journal, the Texas State Law Library has done a tremendous amount of work in the past few years to expand its Digital Collection and bring legal research materials within reach of all Texans. New resources, including eBooks from Matthew Bender and Nolo Press, and databases from Fastcase and HeinOnline, make previously-unavailable resources accessible remotely via the Internet. The only requirement is that the user sign up for a library card, which can also be accomplished remotely through the digital portal. By expanding access to these valuable legal resource, the Texas State Law Library has done an impressive job of making legal information more widely available and expanding access to justice for all Texans.

To see all of the new content from the Texas State Law Library, visit their Digital Collection page and read about the expand of the library's digital collection in the April 2016 issue of Texas Bar Journal. If you need access to a computer for legal research or would like assistance using online legal resources, visit the Harris County Law Library in downtown Houston.