How to Practice Artisanal Law on National Let's Laugh Day 2019

Today is National Let’s Laugh Day, 24 hours dedicated to jokes, laughter, and all things funny. In honor of this silly day, which happens to fall on Tech Tuesday, we at the Harris County Law Library are turning our attention to legal humor with a tech focus. Instead of highlighting a new development or trend in technology, however, we’re calling for a moratorium on tech (just for today) with a reminder to remember a simpler time when artistry, craft, community, and tradition still mattered. Reclaim this heritage, slow your pace, and embrace your inner Luddite. Claim your title as an “artisanal lawyer” as the authors of the following articles have done.

• How to Practice Artisanal Law (Big Legal Brain)

• I Am an Artisanal Attorney (McSweeney’s)

• In Which the Artisanal Lawyer Dismisses Google (BitterLawyer)

For further laughs, try the following, two analyses of laughter at the United States Supreme Court.

• Taking Laughter Seriously at the Supreme Court (Tonja Jacobi, Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law & Matthew Sag, Loyola University Chicago’s School of Law) (2019)

• Laugh Track (Jay D. Wexler, Boston University School of Law) (2005)

Happy National Let’s Laugh Day 2019!

Click for a Laugh!

Women's History Month at the Harris County Law Library

March is women’s history month and the Harris County Law Library marks this important commemoration with an exhibit celebrating the contributions of Camille Elizabeth Stanford Openshaw. Among her many accomplishments, Ms. Openshaw was the first woman to serve on the Law Library’s oversight board and helped shepherd the institution through the Great Depression. All who benefit from access to legal information at the Law Library today can thank Ms. Openshaw for doing her part to ensure access to the Law Library for all.

To learn more about Ms. Openshaw, please visit the Harris County Law Library’s downtown location, where an exhibit honoring her accomplishments will be on display throughout the month of March. An accompanying digital exhibit can be viewed on the library’s website.

Texas Bar Journal Short Story Contest 2019

Anton Chekhov wrote The Bet in 1889. Franz Kafka authored Before the Law in 1915. And more than 100 years later, Rosann Gordon penned The Protective Order, the winning entry in last year’s Texas Bar Journal Short Story Contest, an annual opportunity to showcase the creative talents of Texas lawyers.

Attorneys are naturally adept storytellers. They are also keen observers of human behavior and good with a turn of phrase. Combine these qualities with a knowledge of the law, and perhaps you, too, have a prize-winning work of short legal fiction to share with the world. Craft a compelling narrative with convincing characters who engage in conflict and seek a resolution. Add a little intrigue, action, drama, comedy, romance, or some combination thereof, and package the whole creation into 2,000 words or less, and you may be the next award-winning author! To enter the contest, click here. Submit your completed entry by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, March 4, 2019.

Not a Texas lawyer? Don’t fret! The ABA Journal/Ross Writing Contest for Legal Short Fiction will accept entries for their competition through June 1, 2019.

The Lawyerist.com has, in years past, has held its own Legal Short Fiction Contest, and previous winning stories are available for reading and inspiration here.

Good luck! Happy writing and reading from the Harris County Law Library.

Neglect of .govs Impacts Consumer Safety and Privacy During Government Shutdown

January is Consumer Law Resources Month at the Harris County Law Library. Consumer law research materials from our print collection are on display throughout the library until the end of the month. In particular, we are featuring titles from the National Consumer Law Center as well as self-help sources published by Nolo. Topics run the gamut from product liability and food safety to financial market transparency and identity protection.

With consumer law occupying our thoughts this month, we were naturally drawn to the headlines in recent days (see below) announcing the potential for compromised consumer safety during the federal government shutdown, now entering its 25th day.

• Consumer protection services falter during government shutdown (The Daily Dot)

• Consumer protection websites are down due to the government shutdown (The Verge)

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC, the Washington Post, and several other news organizations, a potentially increasing number of .gov websites are now blocked or completely inaccessible due to the inability of individual government agencies to renew their HTTPS security certificates. Tech Crunch explains:

Every time your browser lights up with “HTTPS” in green or flashes a padlock, it’s a TLS certificate encrypting the connection between your computer and the website, ensuring nobody can intercept and steal your data or modify the website. But TLS certificates are notoriously delicate things. Certificates expire — a common mistake as people often forget to renew them. Depending on the security level, most websites will kick back browser errors while other sites won’t let you in at all until the expired certificate is renewed. Except in this case, they can’t — because there’s nobody there to buy and install a new certificate

Websites affected by the shutdown include the US Department of Justice, the Courts of Appeals, and NASA. Also impacted is the Federal Trade Commission, which helps protect consumers from identity theft and scams by offering free credit reports and maintaining the “Do Not Call” registry. As a consequence of the shutdown, the Washington Post reports, a surge in robo-calls has already begun. Neither DoNotCall.gov nor IdentityTheft.gov is currently operational, thus reducing privacy protections and preventing victims from reporting their stolen personal and financial information.

As the shutdown continues, more website certificates will expire. This will expose the unprotected sites to vulnerabilities that hackers may exploit to gather data on citizen-consumers who, during periods of full government funding, enjoy the protections of the regulatory agencies operating in the best interest of all Americans.

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Image credit: https://media.threatpost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/103/2019/01/11104051/tls-1.png

For a full history of all 20 previous federal government shutdowns dating back to 1976, take a look at this timeline from Vox, and for a humorous take on many of the government agency shutdown notices, ranked from panicked to indifferent, click here to get the rundown from Quartz.

Finally, don’t forget that the Law Library of Congress is operational, and access to this beginner’s guide to consumer protection is a great place to start your consumer law research.

Happy New Year... and, also, Happy Public Domain Day!

Happy New Year!

We’ve made another successful rotation around the Sun, which means two things for sure:

1. The Law Library is closed today, January 1, 2019, but don’t fret because we’ll be open tomorrow at 8 a.m.; and

2. New laws go into effect in Texas! While most laws from the last Texas legislative session went into effect in September, some have an effective date of today. Check the Effective Dates for Bills page on the Texas Legislative Reference Library’s website for details.

New Hampshire by Robert Frost is one of many works from 1923 entering the public domain on Jan. 1, 2019.

Happy Public Domain Day!

For many years, copyrighted works regularly entered the public domain each New Year’s Day. However, in 1998, Disney successfully lobbied Congress to extend existing copyrights by 20 years. Today marks the first time in two decades new works will be released for copyright-free use. Visit the Duke Law School Center for the Study of the Public Domain website for a listing of books, movies, and music published in 1923 that are now available to all.