Please join us on Monday, December 18, 2pm-3pm, for Legal Practice Technology. Emily W. Lawson, Law Reference/Research Librarian at the O'Quinn Law Library, University of Houston Law Center, will highlight technology of interest to lawyers, such as legal apps and software. Information about how to research legal technology options and stay up to date on technology trends will also be provided. For further details, and to register for this event, please visit the Legal Technology Insitute Events page.
MyHein, A Personal Research Tool for HeinOnline
HeinOnline is one of several legal research databases available at the Harris County Law Library. Its digitized collection of law journals is the very best source for comprehensive, up-to-date, full-text legal scholarship. It's an excellent resource for a number of other publications as well, including United States Congressional documents, federal legislative histories, state session laws, legal classics, treaties and agreements, restatements, and so much more. If you haven't used HeinOnline, we'll be happy to help you navigate the available content and to take advantage of all the database's best features, including a relatively new tool called MyHein.
MyHein is a personal research tool that allows you to bookmark articles, save search queries, and set up eTOC alerts. The MyHein User Guide is a four-page document that details (1) how to set up your MyHein account and (2) start using it to create personal libraries of saved content for later access and retrieval. Content includes any of the articles, documents, books, reports, or journals available in HeinOnline. That means the entire database is yours to bookmark, track, and save. Additionally, MyHein is portable, meaning that you can log on to your personal account at any subscribing institution and still have access to your bookmarked items and saved search queries wherever you are. If you've dowloaded the HeinOnline app for your iPhone or Android device, you can even access the database -- and your MyHein account -- remotely.
To gain remote access to HeinOnline via the HeinOnline app, first download the program to your device. Click here for Android or here for the iPhone. Then, visit the Harris County Law Library to authenticate your device through our HeinOnline subscription. Once IP authenticated, your device will be able to access the database from any location for 30 days. At the end of that period, visit us again to re-authenticate and never be without access to MyHein and HeinOnline!
Upcoming Courses from the Legal Tech Institute at Harris County Law Library
The Legal Tech Institute at Harris County Law Library has a complete lineup of events planned for the next few months. Please visit our LTI Course Catalog to view the upcoming programs and to register for each course. The following are currently scheduled.
- Vendor Visit - Lexis Advance: November 30, 2017
- Legal Practice Technology: December 18, 2017 (Please note the new date.)
- Vendor Visit - Westlaw: January 18, 2018
Through its course offerings, the Legal Tech Institute introduces you to trends in law practice technology. LTI helps you become more proficient legal researchers using the tools freely available in the Law Library, including Westlaw and Lexis Advance. Whenever possible, the LTI provides Texas CLE credit for the courses offered, and we bring this all to you free of charge. In addition, we also record the courses and make them available via our website within a few weeks of the live presentation. Those who view the videos can claim CLE credit for up to one year after the courses are presented.
If you have an idea for a legal tech topic that you would like to see presented, please let us know. We welcome suggestions and feedback, and we appreciate your involvement in making the Legal Tech Institute the best that it can be.
The Rise of the Legal Chatbots
Hello, I’m Lawson, your legal robot assistant. How can I help you?
This is the kind of prompt you might encounter on a website that offers customer service by chat. Friendly avatars greet you on retail websites, ready to sell you everything from appliances to vehicles. A virtual concierge, for example, might help you plan your next vacation. Even tech support is often provided via a chat or messaging feature. And now in law, chatbots or “robot lawyers” are facilitating access to the legal system and helping users handle simple legal matters.
Perhaps the most well-known legal chatbot is DoNotPay, a tool that guides users through a series of questions designed to dispute parking tickets. In recent months, the DoNotPay chatbot has expanded considerably to address a variety of legal concerns including consumer rights, employment law, and landlord-tenant disputes. Soon, the creator of the site, Josh Browder, hopes to offer a chatbot that will handle your divorce.
Hate Crime Help is a newer addition to the army of chatbots ready to help people who have been victims of hate crimes, including violence, verbal attacks, property damage, and harassment. The app lets you specify that the crime was motivated by discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, gender, or sexual orientation. It then provides contact information for local resources linked to your zip code that will help you get the legal relief you need. Additional information about what the law says regarding hate crimes at the state and national levels is provided, along with a point-by-point comparison of hate crimes and bias incidents.
ProTechMe uses a chatbot to quickly and efficiently collect information needed for securing a protective order in Harris County. Its design is based on the Texas Attorney General's Protective Order kit (which can be found here on TexasLawHelp.org). Information that is gathered via the chatbot auto-populates a pdf document that the user can then print out and submit to the district attorney or to a legal aid office. Victims of family violence are often closely monitored by their abusers, and using the Internet to search for help may not be a safe option. Although ProTechMe is still in development, it may, eventually, become a safer and more practical way for victims to get the help and information they need.
Robots are unlikely to replace lawyers any time soon, if ever, despite media reports that sometimes sensationalize the impact of chatbots and related AI technologies. However, there is no doubt that technology will continue to shape the practice of law and change how clients interface with the legal system. Embracing technology as a tool for facilitating access to justice is advisable, for, as the robot overlords always say, resistance is futile.
Legal Tech Institute CLE: Finding & Formatting Legal Forms
Please join us for the next Legal Tech Institute CLE, Finding & Formatting Legal Forms, on Thursday, October 26th at 12:00 noon. Presenters will guide attendees in using three of the most popular legal databases -- Westlaw, Lexis, and O’Connor’s -- to locate legal forms. In the second part of the program, presenters will edit one of the forms found in one of the three legal research databases to demonstrate the use of various formatting features in Microsoft Word.
PLEASE NOTE: The location of this CLE has changed. It will be held in the Conference Room on the 17th floor of Congress Plaza at 1019 Congress, Houston, TX 77002. Please see the announcement for further details and to register for this program.
