Resource Round-Up: Social Media & the Law

As we approach the end of November, Social Media Law Resource Month at the Harris County Law Library is coming to a close. The Legal Tech Institute presented its first CLE, Social Media for Lawyers, as its debut event in late October, and several articles pertaining to social media and the law have been featured on Ex Libris Juris over the last several weeks. Now, to conclude this month, we are featuring a final round-up of social media law resources.

A number of law firms and news outlets publish social media law blogs, some of which are featured below. References to additional resources in the Harris County Law Library's collection, including legal texts and treatises and featured articles by leading social media law experts, can be found on the Social Media for Texas Lawyers Resource Guide. 

Social Media Law Bulletin, published by Norton Rose Fulbright

Social Media & Games Law Blog, published by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP

Social Media Law, published by Above The Law

TYLA Pocket Guide: Social Media 101, published by Texas Young Lawyers Association

On Demand Learning at the Legal Tech Institute

With the launch of its On Demand resource page, the Legal Tech Institute at Harris County Law Library is continuing to grow. A collection of educational resources, including recorded CLE presentations and quick-reference screencasts, is available with the click of your mouse. The first LTI CLE, Social Media for Lawyers, was held in late October. If you missed it, please see our On Demand learning library to view the recording. You can then submit the CLE course number to earn one free hour of CLE credit, including .25 ethics credits. Visit the page again to view future recordings of our CLE events, or come see us at the Law Library and attend the programs in person. All are welcome and there is always more content on the way. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Harris County Law Library wishes you a very Happy Thanksgiving! 

Coding for Lawyers – Novelty or Necessity?

Should lawyers learn to code? Opinions differ widely. Those in favor, including David Colarusso and V. David Zvenyach, say that lawyers and computer programming are a natural fit. Lawyers are sophisticated information managers who acquire, process, organize and deliver content to meet clients' needs. They analyze, solve problems, and reverse engineer complicated issues. Lawyers have the skills and ability to read detailed instruction manuals, and they’re adept at complex file management.  They deal less in abstractions and more in practice, applying the tools at their disposal to the issues they confront. At the same time, lawyers must be systems thinkers who are skilled at conceptual thinking and able to see linkages between components. All are the traits of a good programmer.

However, despite this overlap in skill sets, encouraging overworked attorneys to dedicate the time and energy that a coding boot camp or do-it-yourself course of study requires is no small recommendation. Coding may be a nice skill to possess, like bilingual fluency or a second advanced degree, but it’s not a necessity, say skeptics like Edward Hartman, and unlike language skills or an MBA, computer programming does nothing to improve a lawyer's ability to provide competent representation, or so the argument goes.

Whichever side of the debate you might support, there's no doubt that technology is significantly changing the practice of law. Whether automating routine office tasks or harvesting evidentiary data from large files, technology has a role to play. Lawyers who have a baseline understanding of technical concepts and who understand how their computers operate will be better prepared to troubleshoot problems and to communicate more knowledgeably with IT staff when those troubleshooting efforts fail.

Our nation's legal documents have been described as the operating system of our country. Understanding how the judiciary and the legislative process work is akin to understanding how the Internet works. The better familiarity one has with these critical systems, the more intuitive they become. If building that kind of intuition is something you seek to accomplish, visit the links below. They are all god places to start your journey

Coding for Lawyers

Hello World! Should Attorneys Learn to Code?

Online Forms Meet Local Document Automation (Cut-and-Paste Coding)

Geography and the Law -- Data Mapping to Improve Access to Justice

Today marks the last day of Geography Awareness Week, an annual event sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the National Council for Geography Education, and the American Association of Geographers. The purpose of this week is to call attention to the importance of geography as a discipline and as a field of inquiry. It is also a good opportunity to discuss the role that geography can play in the access to justice movement.

The Self-Represented Litigants Network created a geospatial story map called America's Civil Courts: Whom Do We Serve?. This analysis of publicly-available datasets from the 2014 American Community Survey, the Esri Racial Diversity Index, and the FCC Form 77 County Data on Internet Access Services examines the potential impact of social, economic, and demographic factors on access to justice in communities across the nation. Depicting the data geographically helps identify problems that contribute to the justice gap and provides insights about the need for improved access to the legal system. Those who serve low-income, self-represented litigants, can predict the prevalence of various legal problems, identify high-value collaborations, evaluate the responsiveness of providers, and assess the impact of various interventions.

Using geographic information software to examine the variables that affect diffusion of legal services to low-income litigants is just one example of how geography plays a role in law. Another dataset, The National Registry of Exonerations, has been mapped to reveal trends in the number of exonerations by state and the factors that contribute to false convictions. Several other datasets are just waiting to be mapped, including the legal data from Data.gov and the Datasets for Empirical Legal Research at Yale Law School.  The White House open data initiatives are continually generating data that can be mapped to reveal trends over time in various areas of the law and legal system. The possibilities are endless!