The Harris County Law Library is pleased to announce a new partnership with Procertas that unlocks legal technology learning opportunities for our local legal community. The Procertas Legal Technology Assessment is now available to all at the Law Library, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. This innovative online learning platform combines real-time assessment of skills on drafting software, like Microsoft Word and Excel, that attorneys and self-represented litigants need to accomplish modern legal work with targeted video content to provide instruction at the point of need. The result is a customizable experience that helps you learn the skills you need on Word and Excel at your own pace on a platform built to promote efficiency and retention.
“We are very pleased to be the first public law library in the country to offer the Legal Technology Assessment from Procertas,” said Law Library Deputy Director Joe Lawson. “Anyone engaged in legal research and drafting needs to have a basic understanding of how to create documents digitally, so it is important to make this resource available for free to all as we do with all of our learning opportunities through the Law Library’s Legal Tech Institute.”
Inspiration
The inspiration behind Procertas revolves around a simple question - Should lawyers charge for time spent inefficiently using Microsoft Word or Excel? Casey Flaherty didn’t think so when he was in-house counsel for Kia Motors and was tasked with ensuring the multi-national corporation was not overpaying for legal services. To determine whether his company was paying for inefficient use of office technology for legal work, Flaherty developed the Legal Tech Audit. He administered the timed test to top law firms vying for Kia’s business and discovered that although these lawyers were some of the best and brightest in terms of legal analysis and argument, they had no training on the basic tools it takes to efficiently translate that expertise into a modern work product. So, he got to work on building the Legal Technology Assessment and making it available to attorneys through Procertas.
How Does It Work?
Visit our downtown location and ask about Procertas at our reference desk. A law librarian will set up a training laptop for you and help you get started with the Legal Technology Assessment. You can peruse the collection of tutorials, take a timed assessment in the Word or Excel modules, or view training videos. If you have questions or you have completed your session, alert a law librarian and we’ll be happy to help. Access is free to Law Library patrons, so the amount of training and topics covered is up to you!
For details on access to the Procertas Legal Technology Assessment, visit or call our reference desk today!