Announcing the Legal Tech Institute @ Harris County Law Library

The Harris County Law Library is excited to announce the launch of our Legal Tech Institute, a collection of free learning opportunities focused on the tech that you need to work more efficiently. A new learning session will be offered every month, with content designed for a diverse audience of legal tech beginners and experts. For details, visit the LTI webpage.

On the LTI webpage, you'll find links to affordable practice management solutions; organizations, networks, and institutes for innovation; and legal media outlets where podcasts and blogs on the latest in legal technology are featured. You'll also have access to legal news via our archived collection of Tech Tuesday blog posts. The LTI Course Catalog contains our upcoming legal tech programs, including a seminar in November on Microsoft Word for Lawyers, and another in December on Blending Your Legal Research. December will also feature a Vendor Talk on Lexis Advance.

We'll be adding more content to the LTI page as the Institute develops, including short video tutorials on basic tech tasks such as converting a Word document to a PDF, inserting tables of contents, and using the Find and Replace feature as well as other tips and tricks for creating and managing your documents more efficiently. 

If you have any ideas for content that you'd like to see included on the LTI page or added to the Course Catalog for a future LTI program, please let us know. We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you in attendance at our upcoming programs!

Latest & Greatest – Texas Bar College Annual Summer School Course

Summer School. Those two words can conjure up feelings of dread in almost all school-age children (and a few parents as well). The last thing we wanted to suffer through as kids was more school, especially during the summer when the rest of the entire world, it seemed, was on vacation and having fun. As adults, our perspectives change, and we realize (maybe) that summer school might not be so bad. Case in point: each summer Texas Bar College, in collaboration with the State Bar of Texas, offers its Texas Bar College Annual Summer School CLE course. It’s an opportunity for lawyers to not only get those CLE credits that they might desperately need as their birthday month approaches but also an opportunity to be exposed to varied and timely legal topics. Unlike the more focused Advanced Family Law or Advanced Real Estate Law courses, the Texas Bar College CLEs cover the latest developments in such areas as criminal law, immigration law, business law, and employment law, and emerging issues in technology, like social media and electronic discovery, all in one two- or three-day seminar. The articles can be of great value to general and/or solo practitioners or anyone who is seeking to broaden their legal knowledge.

If you were unable to attend any of these useful courses and want to see what topics were presented, come to the Harris County Law Library. The library acquires the coursebooks from these as well as many other State Bar CLE classes and maintains them as part of its CLE collection, providing you with access to all that the State Bar of Texas offers. Check out the library’s online catalog to see what coursebooks are available.

For those of you who are interested, the next Texas Bar College Summer School is scheduled for July 13-15, 2017. See the website from Texas Bar College for more information.

Social Media for Lawyers, a free CLE at the Harris County Law Library

The Law Library is offering a free, 1-hour CLE program this Thursday, October 27th, at 12:00 pm. Please join us! The program will cover the basics of social media -- what it is, why it matters, and how solo and small firm attorneys can leverage it effectively to reach potential clients. 

Assistant County Attorney, Kristen Lee, will address the ethics of using social media for promotion and advertising, as well as the restrictions imposed by the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Conduct.

Deputy Director of the Harris County Law Library, Joe Lawson, will discuss social media as evidence, and Assistant Law Librarian, Heather Holmes, will present the mechanics of using various social media platforms, providing examples of how to maintain accounts in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. She will also discuss strategies for building connections with clients and professional peers. 

For additional program details, please visit our Events page. To attend, RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/hmrvqp7

I-9 Compliance and the New "Smart" Form

Under the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986, all U.S. employers must verify the identity and eligibility of each new person hired. Form I-9 must be submitted for citizens and noncitizens alike, and the penalties for not completing this form properly can be substantial.

As of August 1, 2016, penalties have increased along with the possibility of facing an audit. In light of these changes, employers are well-advised to review their I-9 processes and implement best practices for ensuring compliance with the law. 

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is introducing a new "smart" version of Form I-9, which is designed to enhance the quality, utility, clarity, and accuracy of the information collected. The new collection process will be automated, allowing respondents to submit data electronically.

The Harris County Law Library has a number of immigration law resources, which we are featuring on our blog and in the library throughout the month of October. One such resource is the Immigration Employment Compliance Handbook 2016-2017 Edition, a Thomson Reuters publication in the Immigration Law Library series. At the time of publication, the proposed "smart" PDF version of Form I-9 was still under review. The USCIS has been accepting public comments on the draft and is now awaiting approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The new form is to be released on or before November 22, 2016, but employers may continue to use the 03/08/2013 edition of the form until January 21, 2017. 

For a good discussion of the many changes to the I-9 form as well as advice about what employers need to know, visit Law360, and as always, the Law Library staff are available to help you locate additional resources, such as I-9 Central, and to ensure that you keep current with changes in the law. 

Latest & Greatest – Paperless in One Hour for Lawyers

By Sheila M. Blackford & Donna S. M. Neff

Published by American Bar Association Law Practice Division (2014)

KF 318 .B53 2014

Joining the other titles in this series, Paperless in One Hour for Lawyers introduces the solo or small-firm attorney to the art of becoming less dependent on paper and becoming more comfortable with the idea of going paperless. Organized as a series of lessons, this book guides the lawyer through the process of transitioning to a digital office. The authors discuss the hardware and software needed to better enable the change, cloud-based storage, and useful apps that will make it easier for lawyers to go paperless. In addition, the authors offer some suggestions on procedures and protocols that allow attorneys to manage the documents that are now stored digitally. They even explain how to create an electronic signature and an authenticated digital signature. (Yes, there is a difference. Check out Lesson 7 for the explanation). Also, because client information will most likely be involved in the transition to go paperless, there is a lesson devoted to ethical considerations. In the back of the book, there is a listing of many useful books, blogs, publications, and websites that could help in the quest to dig yourself out from under all of those paper piles.

So, what are you waiting for? Why drown in all of the paper? Learn to ditch the paper in 60 minutes with Paperless in One Hour for Lawyers.