& emerging technology and issues regarding technology
You can download Volume 1, Summer 2014 of Circuits, the newsletter of the Computer & Technology Section of the State Bar of Texas. Please share this post with your friends, colleagues, and social networking connections!
PDF Download: Circuits – Volume 1: Summer 2014
Click to access Circuits-Volume-1-Summer-2014.pdf
Among the ‘Big Boyz,” Thomson Reuters and Lexis pushed their online versions as always, but the competition and diversity that is developing is likely a signal of things to come. As the ability to buy up the technology that these big companies used to propel their control over the market may be on hold as competition from startups and mainstream competitors move forward in the post ’08-recession environment.
‘Almost’ mass marketing to Texas Lawyers seems poised to take off after the State Bar’s delayed acceptance of Fastcase as the preeminent half of it’s free legal research offering to all lawyers. For those attorneys who haven’t seen it yet, it debut’d at the State Bar of Texas’ Annual Meeting in June and access is now free and universal to all Texas Lawyers via their sign in credentials on Texasbar.com. The 
Fastcase offering finally gives Texas lawyers a free option of really good full search capability a mere click away and could possibly propel greater competitiveness in pricing and use.
In the disruptive legal market of the past two years, the Adaptive Lawyer track backed by the Bar has become ground zero to the various trains of legal movement that keep appearing at CLE’s.
Jones McClure’s O’Connor’s online, recently launched in beta and introduced at Advanced Family Law 2014, now boasts the majority of their annotated codes in an online and customizable search format. This offering including the Rules of Civil Procedure, Civil Forms, Estate Code, Criminal Code, Family Code, Causes of Action, Property Code and Texas Civil Appeals, among others. 
According to uber-legal-techie and Vice-President, Jason Wilson, for a price of about $600.00/year, you would now have access to searchability with filters such as practice area, type of motion, and links to the related motions.
Also making a presence known were Clio and MyCase, two of several cloud based practice matter systems. While Clio has received a massive amount of venture capital money this past year, MyCase has quietly moved into contention with the likely competitor RocketMatter. All boast access to their online portals from between $49 and $65 per seat or license and allow attorneys to create bank-like, encrypted portals for their clients, similar to those many of us have had to recreate from non-legal cloud based systems for years now.
The level of sharing now available via shared cloud document management systems like Dropbox, Box, Evernote and others make these a viable alternative to the ever changing and massive ‘terrabitic’ storage options desperately being pushed by Microsoft (OneDrive), Google (Google Drive) and Apple (iCloud), all of which are continuously trying to sandbox consumer/attorneys into usage with tempting and giant repositories of online space, for lower and lower prices. Clio and MyCase both sync to Dropbox and Box, as two of several ways to share documents and pleadings with clients.
OurFamily Wizard (www.ourfamilywizard.com) made another welcome appearance and has become the now ‘goto’ cloud based portal for parent communication, scheduling, requests for reimbursement of uninsured expenses and third party/ expert access for those such as Parent Facilitators and counselors.
Also boasting the “push of the technology envelope” was LawPay, which partnered up with many bar associations years ago to offer online co-branded merchant accounts, such that attorneys can now send a link to pay with their statements and (if properly motivated), clients can click the link to pay online (either to operating or IOLTA/trust accounts). Keep your eyes open, as the company is now beta testing a “square” type device to connect to iPhones and allow card swipes/payments directly in law firm accounts.
All in all, the seminar was a huge success with top family CLE speakers continuing to update lawyers on the law. Legal technology, however appears to be what’s driving the most innovation and cuts across practice areas and I’d expect this type of legal tech among vendors to increase their appearances at other seminars as well.
A Texas Business & Commerce Code statute helps you work with email and work with other attorneys.
Texas has passed its version of the Uniform Electronics Transactions Act (UETA). If parties agree, then they can conduct transactions electronically, which includes using email. Email and other “documents” are referred to in the act as an electronic record, i.e., a record that is either created, generated, sent, communicted, received, or stored by electronic means.
UETA comes into play when parties mutually agree to conduct business using electronic communications. Assume you are Party A and you contract with Party B.
Only members of the State Bar of Texas Computer and Technology Section have access to the Section’s new iPhone and Android apps.
Please follow these instructions to join the Computer & Technology Section.
If you see “Computer and Technology”, congratulations, you’re already a member.
If not, click the “Purchase Sections” button and follow the instructions to add the Computer and Technology Section. Please note: It may take several days for the State Bar to process your section membership and update our system.
You can also complete this form and mail or fax it in.
It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that we announce the passing of the Computer & Technology Section’s 2011-2012 Chair, Ralph Brock of Lubbock, TX. Ralph was loved and respected by all who knew him. We are better for knowing him and deeply saddened by the loss of this great Texas lawyer.
